My Berlin: Davi
We will get back to the graffiti soon, as it is present everywhere. In this place, one can find also bars, cinemas, theaters, small shops and so on. It is almost a “subculture mall”, if such a place could exist.
If you go to Taschelles during the day, there is no way to imagine how this place is active – and fun! - at night. The bars are full, but not overcrowded, many cool people around, beautiful girls, good music and so on. One must just be careful about the barmen - they tend to be very generous with themselves when giving back your change, so be sure to care small bills and many coins, specially if your currency is cheaper than the euro! Hopefully, you can stay in the place until down and drink on the streets without having any problem with local laws. Anyway, for those who are up for the night, it’s surely a good place check.
From there, we were taken to a place called name of the place, which is, again, a fertile ground for (sic) subculture. And, besides the small and quite park we have in the area, surrounded by very cheap apartments, what can we find? Graffiti. Once more graffiti. Huge graffiti. Just check it:
Before we got into this place, we went through some buildings with the entrances entirely painted by a guy called fulano de tal, which has became famous for these graffities.
It’s said that the area is a very good place for students, young couples or people who just want to live alone and independently at a fair price. Such combination of low price and young people has been making the place an attractive point for artists, entrepreneurs and even investors.
The graffiti on the buildings around give the area an air of informality. As seen in the pictures, there are some beautiful pieces of artwork, like the two fully painted entrances.
The first one makes part of a series of big wall paintings on the entire building.
Are you really up to go to Berlin?
Ok, dude. First of all, get yourself a good pair of shoes: comfortable, good for walking, and which may look fancy for you to get along with the crowd. Or not. You’re going to get along with the crowd anyway. Why? Because Berlin is big. No, it is huge. No, it is massive!
People from every corner of the World gather in Berlin, with their own cultural backgrounds, dressing codes, languages, and mixtures. There is also people wearing business suits coming along with punks. As long as I can see, in a grater atmosphere of tolerance as sometimes are shown around. So, people is not going to notice you unless you wish so and go for it.
I try to imagine how is to live in here, having a regular life, complimenting your neighbors every morning, taking the pets for a walk, buying bread in the closest bakery, seeing the beautiful girl next door passing by and so on. I just can wonder; I am a tourist, I’ll be here just for a very short period. No way for really integrating the place. But I can survive that.
By the way, people I’ve met are really gentle and honest.
But, back to the beginning, are you really up to go to Berlin and stay there for a while? What do you want to do there? What do you want to learn in there? What do expect to find?
Well, a good way for beginning, as long as you’ve already got you comfortable pair of shoes, is doing walking tours.
These walking tours are free (just leave a tip for the guide by the end of the tour, it is surely worth of it!), are fun, are really interesting, and may take you the entire day sometimes. In these tours you can surely meet lots of people and hang out with them by the night.
You can choose many flavors of tours: historical Berlin tours, Second World War tours, museum tours, alternative tours and so on.
About a week ago, I’ve done this historical Berlin tour. The guide was a cool guy, had a very didactic way for telling the people the history of the places he was taking us to, but no great novelties. Nice for doing once, knowing the history of the place, seeing in loco where many important events for the World took place on, realizing that this history shaped a lot on our nowadays’ way of life. In Berlin, it seems, the scars from the WWII are much deeper and visible than in other places I’ve been at. And not to mention, these same scars are also responsible for a significant part of the tourism, as they are great source of history.
Today, I went to an alternative walking tour. By alternative, you can pick up nightlife, young people eager for fun, alcohol, subculture (I really cannot understand the concept of subculture, for me, I just another face for culture, a way of expression and, for some, even a way of life, which, in my humble-but-not-so-humble opinion, do not deserve to be put down, being called “sub”), music, extreme sports, wannabe exclusive, cheap, and kindda hippie clothing stores, and the “I don’t care for capitalism” attitude. And the conjunctive tissue for all of this, Mr. Freud may surely explain.
In this tour during the afternoon, we visited many places that are supposed to be very cool places during the night, where the locals usually go.
I missed this part, but people started to walk at Alexanderplatzt, where many young people and tourists gather around, heading next the Hacksheke Market, where lies some universities and, as I’ve heard, is a prostitution area as well. Going down through the Oranienburgishestrasse, we went to a very old fire station building, half destroyed, where people have made a kind of open air atellieur, doing some artwork with metal, glass and grafitti. Oh, grafitti! It is simply everywhere! There are many colorful, huge and very creative ones! They contest authority, they praise music and pop art, and are sometimes placed in a fashion that may show a great contrast, almost a paradox, with tome traditional ways of seeing art, like in this picture below:
Ok, dude. First of all, get yourself a good pair of shoes: comfortable, good for walking, and which may look fancy for you to get along with the crowd. Or not. You’re going to get along with the crowd anyway. Why? Because Berlin is big. No, it is huge. No, it is massive!
People from every corner of the World gather in Berlin, with their own cultural backgrounds, dressing codes, languages, and mixtures. There is also people wearing business suits coming along with punks. As long as I can see, in a grater atmosphere of tolerance as sometimes are shown around. So, people is not going to notice you unless you wish so and go for it.
I try to imagine how is to live in here, having a regular life, complimenting your neighbors every morning, taking the pets for a walk, buying bread in the closest bakery, seeing the beautiful girl next door passing by and so on. I just can wonder; I am a tourist, I’ll be here just for a very short period. No way for really integrating the place. But I can survive that.
By the way, people I’ve met are really gentle and honest.
But, back to the beginning, are you really up to go to Berlin and stay there for a while? What do you want to do there? What do you want to learn in there? What do expect to find?
Well, a good way for beginning, as long as you’ve already got you comfortable pair of shoes, is doing walking tours.
These walking tours are free (just leave a tip for the guide by the end of the tour, it is surely worth of it!), are fun, are really interesting, and may take you the entire day sometimes. In these tours you can surely meet lots of people and hang out with them by the night.
You can choose many flavors of tours: historical Berlin tours, Second World War tours, museum tours, alternative tours and so on.
About a week ago, I’ve done this historical Berlin tour. The guide was a cool guy, had a very didactic way for telling the people the history of the places he was taking us to, but no great novelties. Nice for doing once, knowing the history of the place, seeing in loco where many important events for the World took place on, realizing that this history shaped a lot on our nowadays’ way of life. In Berlin, it seems, the scars from the WWII are much deeper and visible than in other places I’ve been at. And not to mention, these same scars are also responsible for a significant part of the tourism, as they are great source of history.
Today, I went to an alternative walking tour. By alternative, you can pick up nightlife, young people eager for fun, alcohol, subculture (I really cannot understand the concept of subculture, for me, I just another face for culture, a way of expression and, for some, even a way of life, which, in my humble-but-not-so-humble opinion, do not deserve to be put down, being called “sub”), music, extreme sports, wannabe exclusive, cheap, and kindda hippie clothing stores, and the “I don’t care for capitalism” attitude. And the conjunctive tissue for all of this, Mr. Freud may surely explain.
In this tour during the afternoon, we visited many places that are supposed to be very cool places during the night, where the locals usually go.
I missed this part, but people started to walk at Alexanderplatzt, where many young people and tourists gather around, heading next the Hacksheke Market, where lies some universities and, as I’ve heard, is a prostitution area as well. Going down through the Oranienburgishestrasse, we went to a very old fire station building, half destroyed, where people have made a kind of open air atellieur, doing some artwork with metal, glass and grafitti. Oh, grafitti! It is simply everywhere! There are many colorful, huge and very creative ones! They contest authority, they praise music and pop art, and are sometimes placed in a fashion that may show a great contrast, almost a paradox, with tome traditional ways of seeing art, like in this picture below:
We will get back to the graffiti soon, as it is present everywhere. In this place, one can find also bars, cinemas, theaters, small shops and so on. It is almost a “subculture mall”, if such a place could exist.
If you go to Taschelles during the day, there is no way to imagine how this place is active – and fun! - at night. The bars are full, but not overcrowded, many cool people around, beautiful girls, good music and so on. One must just be careful about the barmen - they tend to be very generous with themselves when giving back your change, so be sure to care small bills and many coins, specially if your currency is cheaper than the euro! Hopefully, you can stay in the place until down and drink on the streets without having any problem with local laws. Anyway, for those who are up for the night, it’s surely a good place check.
From there, we were taken to a place called name of the place, which is, again, a fertile ground for (sic) subculture. And, besides the small and quite park we have in the area, surrounded by very cheap apartments, what can we find? Graffiti. Once more graffiti. Huge graffiti. Just check it:
Before we got into this place, we went through some buildings with the entrances entirely painted by a guy called fulano de tal, which has became famous for these graffities.
It’s said that the area is a very good place for students, young couples or people who just want to live alone and independently at a fair price. Such combination of low price and young people has been making the place an attractive point for artists, entrepreneurs and even investors.
The graffiti on the buildings around give the area an air of informality. As seen in the pictures, there are some beautiful pieces of artwork, like the two fully painted entrances.
The first one makes part of a series of big wall paintings on the entire building.
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