Down, down, down, into the Berliner Unterwelt! Photo (cc) flickr user escpeapalumni

The meeting place was normal enough; if I hadn’t known what was going on beneath us and where we would spend the next hour and a half, I never would have guessed at what was just below the ground on which I stood.  Berlin’s Gesundbrunnen metro stop, both inside and outside, lacked the kind of dank, enthralling mystery that was waiting several stories beneath us in the Berliner Unterwelten.

My fascination with tunnels goes back a long time.  After reading a science fiction book called Neverwhere and a nonfiction book called The Mole People, I began searching out information, both nonfiction and otherwise, regarding tunnels of all kinds and, most importantly, the worlds they contained.  As journalists had learned, there had been a shanty town in the metro stations of New York.  As Hollywood would have it unused subway tunnels were always populated by psychotic mutants, werewolves, and deranged runaways.  And as legend had it there was an albino crocodile living in the London metro tunnels.  Fictional and real, there was a world going on underground, whether it be the lives of the water pipes that fed my faucet and the sewer canals that carried it away again, the tunnels run with subway car tracks, or empty bomb shelters, abandoned once the threat of war subsided.

I wasn’t the only one whose imagination went wild at the very thought, and if fiction writers, journalists, and Hollywood hadn’t already proved that, then the line for a ticket for one of the Berliner Unterwelten tours certainly did.  After a ten minute wait, we gratefully bought the last two tickets (9 Euros a pop) just before the woman behind the counter hung up a sign reading “sold out.”  Tickets clutched in eager hands, we the scuttled off to another unassuming location across the street where we would be led down concrete stairs and into the labyrinth of some of Berlin’s many remaining underground bunkers.

"Doors to the gas lock and shelter should first be closed when bombing becomes audible." Photo (cc) flickr user therealneurox

If I had had more time, I would have gone on every one of the seven tours the Berliner Unterwelten Society offers.  But with only a few days time, we had chosen “Tour C-The Classic Tour” that would give us an overview of what underground Berlin has to offer.  When our turn finally came, our group filed into a “reactivated” Cold War bunker through heavy metal doors, and into a small room used to generate the bunker’s power.

The irony, it seemed, was that the bunker’s power supply came from the city grid.  This power supply ran the bunker’s light, water, and ventilation systems.  So what happened when the bombing people were in the bunker to escape knocked out the city’s power?  Well, two people could turn a large crank to keep it going.  Our tour guide selected two members of the group to try it out, and then she turned out the lights.

With considerable effort, they managed to turn the lights back on, but both were breathing heavily afterward.  And how long could someone in peak physical condition turn the crank?  They had done studies, our tour guide told us, and the answer had been fifteen minutes.  I thanked my lucky stars that I had not been born into a time of war as we shuffled through maze-like hallways hung with portraits of those, I assumed, who had spent time here.

After several stops for short speeches from the tour guide about how many people could have fit into various rooms, and how uncomfortable all of them would have been at maximum occupancy, we came out a door and found ourselves in the middle of a subway station.  “So this is where those unmarked doors in the metro lead…” I thought excitedly to myself.

A tour guide shows visitors the former bunker's bathroom. Photo (cc) flickr user escpeapalumni

We walked through the station, past people waiting idly for the next U-Bahn, and into a bunker preserved from World War II and the home of the Berlin Underworlds Museum.  We saw rooms with light-sensitive paint that would glow for up to 45 minutes after a power outage, we saw cots and rooms where people in the bunker could store their luggage, and we saw the old toilets–most of which were now gone as after the war people had stolen anything they could burn in order to heat their houses.  In the last room of the museum we stood in front of a reproduction subway car, and then, introspectively, we climbed blinking back up into the light above.

Your underground Berlin

Our tour was organized by Berliner Unterwelten e.V.  Most tours cost 9 Euros per person and last an hour and a half.

The local public transportation company BVG offers open-topped subway car tours of the city Friday evenings for 40 Euros per person.  The tours are very popular, however, and it is advisable to book six months or more in advance.

The most active player in transfer musical chairs is Schalke 04. With the amount of fluctuation in the squad (26 changes!), it’s hard to believe that they were vice-champions last year. You’d think that coach Magath would just sit back and let a successful team have another go, but at the moment, I’m not at all sure whether the team we saw this week will still be there in seven days time! It’s certainly making life difficult for autograph-hunters, who are best advised to hang around airport departure areas if they’re looking to get signatures from players like Tore Reginussen (Tromsö – Schalke – Lecce).

The latest Schalke-signings are a Romanian named Ciprian Deac and the wing defender Hans Sarpei from Bayer Leverkusen. Meanwhile, negotiations are at fever pitch surrounding Klaas-Jan Huntelaar from Milan and Rafael van der Vaart, currently at Real Madrid, where Schalke have been faithful customers of late. The only question is, whose money is it that they are spending? We can only hope that Magath still has a close eye on the bank balance – and on the wording of the contracts. Albert Streit, for example, who was signed by Schalke on an easily misinterpretable contract is still laughing all the way to the bank.

Anyway, all this cash flying around doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the performance of the teams involved. Just look at Schalke, and wealthy counterparts Wolfsburg, on the second match day this season. They both played poorly, with Schalke losing 1:2 to Hannover. The newly-formed defence based on Sarpei and Metzelder was weak; Schalke haven’t lost their first two matches since 1987, and this was the year in which they went down a league. My tip for Magath: it’s a good idea to have a whole functioning team before the start of the season.

Meanwhile Wolfsburg, who’d got the cheque-book out for Diego, did actually manage to make a good start and were 3:0 ahead of Mainz after just 30 minutes. Nevertheless, Mainz coach Thomas Tuchel just didn’t give up and his team fought back: 1:3, 2:3, 3:3, 4:3. This should prove more than anything else the old adage that “money can’t buy goals”, and whilst Chelsea and Madrid might seem to contradict that rule, it’s still the case that money doesn’t always win.

There was even more corroborating evidence for this in the form of Kaiserslautern’s astonishing victory against Bayern Munich. It was a big fight with a lot of effort and a bit of luck that got the newly-promoted players their victory against last season’s champions. The man of the match was without doubt Ivo Ilicevic. In the space of two minutes, he’d scored one goal and laid the groundwork for another. This has put him on the list of players Bayern want to sign for the sole reason that it will harm their opponents.

“We had a great talk and he’s on the right path. The aim is to get him back to top fitness; until them, we won’t nominate him for the first European Cup games.” That’s what Joachim Löw said last Friday about Michael Ballack, now at Leverkusen. The coach doesn’t seem to be convinced yet. My advice to you Michael, try and get back on track in the everyday matches: that 3:6 home defeat against Mönchengladbach just won’t do; it makes you and Hyypiä look less like old masters and more like stumbling pensioners!

What else is going on then? Well, the award for caring and sharing goes to the Bremen trainer Thomas Schaaf. He managed to integrate the new player, Marko Arnautovic, into the successful squad, and got the thanks he was looking for in the form of two goals in the 4:2 victory against Cologne. This was, by the way, one of the only two home wins this time round, with Kaiserslautern being the other team to win in their own stadium. No draws, by the way, and seven away wins, breaking all Bundesliga records in this category. What a match day!

(by Stefan Reichart and Brian Melican)

Results Matchday 2
1. FC Kaiserslautern - Bayern München 2:0
FC Schalke 04 - Hannover 96 1:2
Werder Bremen - 1. FC Köln 4:2
VfL Wolfsburg - 1. FSV Mainz 05 3:4
Eintracht Frankfurt - Hamburger SV 1:3
1. FC Nürnberg - SC Freiburg 1:2
FC St. Pauli - 1899 Hoffenheim 0:1
Bayer Leverkusen - Borussia Mönchengladbach 3:6
VfB Stuttgart - Borussia Dortmund 1:3

Table
1 1899 Hoffenheim 6 P
1 1.. FC Kaiserslautern 6 P
3 1. FSV Mainz 05 6 P
4 Hamburger SV 6 P
5 Hannover 96 6 P
6 Borussia Mönchengladbach 4 P
7 FC St. Pauli 3 P
8 Borussia Dortmund 3 P
9 Werder Bremen 3 P
9 Bayer Leverkusen 3 P
11 SC Freiburg 3 P
12 Bayern München 3 P
13 1. FC Nürnberg 1 P
14 VfL Wolfsburg 0 P
15 FC Schalke 04 0 P
16 Eintracht Frankfurt 0 P
17 1. FC Köln 0 P
18 VfB Stuttgart 0 P

On a sunny day the view from the Hercules monument is spectacular. Photo (cc) flickr user andreasmarx

Once upon a time I had a friend, another fresh-off-the plane American ex-pat au pairing in Germany, who wanted to see the fairy tale road.  The Brothers Grimm, you see, had travelled all over Germany collecting local yarns and inspiration for the fairy tales that would make them famous worldwide.  The places where they had lived, worked, and visited comprise the fairy tale road.

The clock that, just maybe, had turned Cinderella’s coach into a pumpkin when it struck twelve and the city where the pied piper had played, she told me, were on the 600 kilometer route that runs from Hanau to Hamburg.  So one rainy Sunday morning we got up at 6 am, bought a Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, and got on a regional train to Kassel, one of the most popular stops along the fairy tale road.

The German countryside really is the stuff of fairy tales, Brothers Grimm or not.  The Black Forest, the Alps, and the quaint old half-timber villages make it easy to imagine Snow White and those dwarves living in the forest, Cinderella cleaning the floors of her snotty step-siblings posh city house, or a cat in boots strutting down narrow cobblestone streets.  Then again, to a stranger in a new country, just about everything is enchanting.

The city of Kassel isn’t known for being exceptionally beautiful, but who can blame the place?  Ninety percent of the city was bombed during World War II, and reconstruction was done as quickly and pragmatically as possible afterward.  The gems that remain are just outside of the city: Wilhelmshöhe Castle, Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, and the Hercules Monument from which, my companion told me, we would be able to see all the way to the former DDR.  That is, if the weather played along.

It didn’t.  In Kassel and we walked from the train station to the park through almost-empty streets.  (It being early on a rainy Sunday morning, most folks were still in bed.)  The walk was further than we’d estimated, and after over an hour, we finally reached the Bergpark (mountain park).  My friend, intrepid tourist that she was, was determined to hike to the Hercules Monument on the park’s highest point.  We had forgotten to bring breadcrumbs, but we had raincoats to keep out the drizzle, so into the park we went.

The Hercules Monument perches atop a small octagonal structure that is also open to tourists. Photo (cc) flickr user andreasmarx

We passed a lake where a lone white swan floated peacefully, its bright white feathers a rebellion against the grey weather and the artificial ruins that dabbed the landscape behind it.  We walked through forested areas and passed wrought-iron bridges built purely for aesthetic purposes.  We found boulders, more artificial ruins, fountains, and tiny lakes whose discovery make you feel as if you’ve  just been told an exciting secret.  Wilhelmshöhe Castle seemed almost drab in comparison to the park landscape that my imagination was populating with the characters of every fairy tale I’d ever read.

Then we began the ascent, climbing large stone stairs lined with roughly cut stone walls.  Up and up and up and up we walked, the weather still grim (or was it Grimm?), and it didn’t feel like the Hercules monument towering above us was getting any closer.  We stopped to rest several times, and finally, panting hard, calves burning, we reached Hercules and stopped to look down at what, if it hadn’t been overcast and foggy, would have been a spectacular view.  Later, I found out that we’d climbed 550 meters on that hike.

Potentially beautiful as that view may have been, the rain eventually started to get heavier, and we trudged back down the mountain, this time ignoring the meadows and bridges and ruins that had inspired and enchanted us on arrival.  We took a tram back to the train station, grabbed a snack, and hopped back on the train for Frankfurt.

And then, of course, we lived happily ever after.

This kind of praising criticism is exactly the right tone for the first day of play in this new Bundesliga season. There were a lot of people looking forward to it: players, coaches, fans, all of them raring to go. Well, everywhere except at Schalke, where they were all at each other’s throats before the first whistle had been blown.

Why such a bad atmosphere so quickly? Because the spokesperson for the Supporters’ Clubs had been sacked. After 22 years. By telephone. All down to coach Magath, who becomes the target of the angry Schalke fan clubs. Things aren’t any better at the team’s first game in Hamburg, with ex-Real-Madrid star Raul’s debut turning out to be a real disaster. Somehow, it looks as if Schalke have signed the wrong Madrileno: Raul looks lost, out of breath. Meanwhile, Hamburg do well, with Ruud van Nistelrooy scoring two goals to take them to a 2:1 victory.

“Hey, thanks to you guys at the German Football League! Doin’ a great job!” That’s the kind of ironic train of thought that was probably running through the heads of coaches and players in Cologne and Freiburg, with the first match day showing that the new additions to the league aren’t to be taken lightly. Newly-promoted Kaiserslauten were away at Cologne, and Cologne’s mid-fielder Mohamad managed to make football history by bagging himself a red card after just 87 seconds. It’s never been done faster than that! Nevertheless, Cologne went ahead, but chucked away a 1:0 lead in the last twenty minutes to finish at 1:3, with Lukas Podolski continuing in the same vein as last season: a vein of exceptionally poor performance. He looked as if he was just trying to keep himself busy between the really important national games.

Things looked pretty similar in Freiburg, with newly-promoted teams from the first division showing their quality. Here, it was St. Pauli, the supposed anti-capitalist alternatives from Hamburg, who turned a 0:1 defeat into a 3:1 win. There followed a lot of talk by football analysts about the “St. Pauli phenomenon”. Well, if you ask me, the phenomenon is exactly the same as at all other football clubs: cash. This club is a dominated by the rules of capitalism as any other, however much they always try to present themselves as the friendly underdogs.
Meanwhile, there was frustration in Bavaria, with Wolfsburg’s players doing their best to get a draw against the far bigger Bayern Munich. After three quarters of an hour, they finally manage to get into the game, their trainers McLaren is seen doing acrobatics up and down the line, and nevertheless Bayern’s Ribéry gets the ball into the box just in time for Schweinsteiger to come storming in and smack it into the back of the net. Bloody bad luck!

“Bloody Özil” is what they’ll be thinking in Bremen. Not that they’d have needed him in Hoffenheim! After all, one Özil wouldn’t have been able to do much to counteract the four goals by which Bremen lost, so it’s not really much of a problem that they sold him to Madrid for 18 million. Nevertheless, the sports press seem to think that it was all down to his departure and just couldn’t stop asking everyone and anyone – the coach, the goalie, the bus driver – if they thought that that was the reason they lost. I’ve got another explanation, though: maybe the opponents just happened to be quite good?

What, though, could possibly explain Dortmund’s home 0:2 loss to Bayer Leverkusen? Perhaps it was Bayer’s blue tops that blinded the Westphalians, with Michael Ballack looking like he was still at Chelsea in that royal blue top. Whatever the case, the referee was certainly so confused by the blue that he refused Dortmund a perfectly good goal that would have put them at 1:1; Ballack’s minions then had the advantage and pressed it home to gain victory.

So, overall: Schalke, Cologne, Freiburg, Wolfsburg, Bremen and Dortmund all had bad luck. Apart from that, though, it was great!

Any by the way: since there are so many German stars abroad, here’s a quick anecdote for you. With German players still not getting into the swing of things – Özil and Khedira at Madrid are still waiting for the Spanish season to begin – it’s a shame that Jerome Boateng couldn’t get started in the English league. The reason? A stewardess hit his knee with her drinks trolly on the flight over and now he’s laid up with a torn tendon. Who’d have thought it?

(by Stefan Reichart and Brian Melican)

Results Matchday 1:
Bayern München - VfL Wolfsburg 2:1
1899 Hoffenheim - Werder Bremen 4:1
Borussia Mönchengladbach - 1. FC Nürnberg 1:1
1. FC Köln - 1. FC Kaiserslautern 1:3
SC Freiburg - FC St. Pauli 1:3
Hannover 96 - Eintracht Frankfurt 2:1
Hamburger SV - FC Schalke 04 2:1
1. FSV Mainz 05 - VfB Stuttgart 2:0
Borussia Dortmund - Bayer Leverkusen 0:2

In Cologne's Qlosterstüffje, you can get a drink, a bowl of soup, and a game of nine-pin bowling in one place. Photo courtesy Qlosterstüffje

We had spent a quiet morning in Bingen, playing music to a smiling crowd of cafe goers and passersby on the Rhine.  From time to time a ship docked behind us, releasing enthusiastic groups of tourists onto the river banks to snap photos of the grape fields lining the hills across the water or of the castle perched just above them.  On a sunny day the Rhine moves, sparkling blue-green and silver in the light.  On a sunny day, this stretch of the Rhine is everything that the travel guide books promise.

The night before our band had played a small festival on an outdoor stage facing that same view, a view that, despite five years of seeing it on various trips north, I still find worth a good long stare and a handful of pictures every time I pass through.  But we didn’t spend long on the river, and before noon we were back on the road and on our way to a Straßenfest (English: street festival) in Cologne where an usual pub awaited us.

The Straßenfest was set up like a long, brightly lit carnival.  Rides with colorful, blinking lights filled sidewalks, and vendors selling cheap trinkets and sugar-coated snacks filled the spaces between them.  People walked slowly by, filled benches and tables in front of pubs and restaurants, and crowded the spaces in front of the stages set up every few blocks.  It reminded me a lot of the county fairs I had visited in America as a child.

We had been invited to play by the Qlosterstüffje–a smoker’s pub with drinks, food, and two bowling lanes in the back rooms.  A pub with bowling lanes? Now this I had to see.

They were tucked away in the back of the building: past the bar, the kitchen, and the bathrooms, and if I hadn’t known they were there, I might not have seen them at all.  Each lane was lined with 70s-style wood paneling and shelves full of gold, plastic trophies.  Walking into those lanes you felt like you had slipped back in time 20 or 30 years, like The Big Lebowski’s Dude was about to appear to offer you a white Russian and a game.  But there was something else I hadn’t expected: The bowling balls didn’t have the three finger holes I remembered from bowling in America.

Kegelbahn is German for bowling alley. Photo courtesy Qlosterstüffje

“This is kegeln, not bowling,” one of my bandmates explained.  “They’re two different games.”  Though my German-English dictionary translates the word “kegeln” as “to bowl,” it turns out that the word refers more accurately to nine-pin bowling, or skittles.  “When we talk about the game with the balls with the grip holes, we just call it bowling.  But this is kegeln.”  Even after years living and breathing German, there is always something about the language I have yet to learn.

We turned on the machine that controlled the pins and began to play.  It was pretty much the same as the bowling I knew, except for the fact that you balanced the small, heavy balls between your hand and wrist before throwing them toward just nine awaiting pins.  Then a machine sent the ball barreling back down the lane into the queue of unused balls at hand-crushing speeds.    The pins dangled at the end of the alley on strings that facilitated the machine to pull them speedily back into place after each player’s turn.

Though no one managed a strike, we had a good time over bowls of the pub’s delicious soup.  But as usually happens when I encounter something new in Germany, my German vocabulary made it hard for me to communicate with the others about the game.  So for those of you new to German who would like to have a go at kegeln, a short tutorial.

Photo (cc) flickr user streetpreacher83

Bowling auf Deutsch

Skittles/nine-pin bowling = das Kegeln

To play skittles/to nine-pin bowl = kegeln

Bowling = das Bowling

Bowling alley = die Kegelbahn

Bowling pin = der Kegel

Ball = der Ball

Gutter = die Gasse

Gutter ball = der Gassenwurf

Strike = Alle Neune

Things get going for the 48th time on Friday 20th August with Bayern München coming up against VfL Wolfsburg. The Bavarians are everyone’s favourites to take the championship again, whilst newly promoted St. Pauli in Hamburg is where the smart money is for relegation. The rest of the league will fit in somewhere in between.

Raul from Spain is the top signing this year, with Schalke having taken a second ex-Madrid player into the team, Christoph Metzelder. By way of exchange, Real Madrid gets Sami Khedira from VfB Stuttgart and Mesut Özil from Werder Bremen, showing just how much higher-profile German football has become and how popular the Bundesliga is world over. Oddly enough, big players leaving it only makes the league more famous as new talent comes in to fill the breach and make a name for itself; current hot names are Robinho at Schalke and Hatem Ben Afra at Bremen.

Big news: Michael Ballack is back in Germany, having joined the Bayer Leverkusen squad. Simon Kjaer, a Dane who got teams all over Europe interested, is now at VfL Wolfsburg; the Wolves’ trainer Steve MacClaren is also from foreign parts. Borussia Dortmund, too, are looking abroad, with their hopes resting on the Polish striker Robert Lewandowski.

Nevertheless, not one game has been played yet, so there’s not much more that can be said really, is there? So you’d think. The team websites, however, are already in action, interpreting the empty tables to suit themselves and using their placing order to put out some quite strong statements before the first whistle has been blown.

A little more diplomatic in terms of its use of language is the German Football Association (DFL), which has simply taken the listings from the end of last season, added the two newcomers onto the end, and set all the scores to zero. No-one gets hurt, but it’s kinda boring.

Werder Bremen, however, know how to get a guy interested and have taken the same table – but put themselves at the top.

There’s even more fun to be had by looking at the relationships between teams that are rivals: 1- FC Kaiserslautern, for example, have put themselves at the top of their table, but placed their duelling partners Frankfurt at number 9. They give their mates in the state capital Mainz, however, 4th place.

HSV in Hamburg is in a more generous mood, putting themselves at no. 1 and their derby rivals St. Pauli at no. 2. Their arch rivals in Munich, however, get kicked to last place.

Meanwhile, 1. FC Köln is a little less friendly to its Derby sparring partner Borussia Mönchengladbach: they got their webmaster to put the pesky Gladbachers down to 17th place.

There’s a clear desire for revolution on the 1. FC Nürnberg site, with their table consistently placing small teams before big: Mainz, Pauli, Mönchengladbach and Cologne, followed by Kaiserslautern, Nürnberg and Hannover. The big teams are all at the bottom: Leverkusen, Munich, Stuttgart, HSV, Bremen and Schalke. If this prophesy turns out to be true, it sure will lead to no small amount of surprise amongst both fans and bookies alike.

So despite the rather businesslike atmosphere the teams like to aim for, anyone who knows where to look can see the old rivalries poking livening things up. Let’s hope that the star players, too, really get into the spirit!

(By Stefan Reichart and Brian Melican)

Dockville 2010: Friska Viljor rock the dock! (Photo: Nicole Runschke)

After last week’s post about how Germany as a country is unexpectedly well-versed when it comes to BBQing, here’s another post about a thing that Germans are great at, but that isn’t really associated with them – yet.

And that thing is: festivals. Now, when people hear the word festival, they tend to think immediately of Woodstock (USA), Glastonbury (UK) or maybe – if you like your peace-and-love a little more recherché – Roskilde in Denmark. What a growing number of people across Europe are starting to associate with the term, however, are names like Watten, Hurricane, and Melt - some of the continent’s biggest festivals and all of them taking place in Germany.

Rethe Speicher, an impressive festival backdrop (NR)

Why Germany, then? Partly because of its prime location at the heart of Europe, making for easy road-tripping and interrailing access for the young and alternative crowd. Another reason would have to be the German knack for good and thorough planning, allowing them to successfully stage festivals the size of small cities. Yet probably the biggest single factor in this is Germany’s huge range of brilliant festival locations. There is no shortage of disused industrial sites on a massive scale – especially in the former East – and these make genuinely impressive backdrops for banging techno beats and grungy rock guitar chords.

Take Dockville, for example, a small-to-medium-sized festival which has just taken place for the fourth time on a patch of former docklands right in the middle of Hamburg’s huge harbour. I decided to go down to it – and camp there for two nights – to get to know this part of town, at once so central and yet so distant. So on Friday, laden with a tent, a BBQ, and provisions for three days, we got off at the Wilhelmsburg S-Bahn station and took a slightly rickety-looking shuttle bus through streets that are only five miles from my flat, but whose names I’d never even heard of. Soon, the gigantic Rethe Speicher warehouse was looming overhead, and I knew we’d arrived at Dockville.

There is something bizarre and limbo-like about being on a camping holiday in the city you live in; you’re close to home in geographical terms, but far away in terms of your thinking. Because, let’s be honest, all we had to think about was putting up a tent, drinking a beer, and then deciding which bands to see.

Dockville is not just about the music; it's about art, too, man! (NR)

This latter task, however, proved far harder than anticipated. With two big stages, several smaller locations, and a whole bunch of other stuff to do and see, we were in danger of starting to do things that we might do at the flat a few miles away, i.e. making plans and setting alarms - all the small annoyances of everyday existence.

Is it okay to call this art? Well, it sure was a lot of fun! (NR)

So we took it easy, seeing a great mixture of chilled indie (Friska Viljor), proper rock (We were promised jetpacks), and mildly violent-sounding hip-hop courtesy of KIZ. Alongside that, we also fitted in some serious techno (Frittenbude) and a round of oriental-flavoured shisha pipe music played by the Bucovina Club. In between, we took tours around the art-installations spread around the site, which ranged from the abstruse and almost pretentious through to the purely and deliciously childish.

And when we’d had enough sizing up swings, seesaws and model ships made of sugar and having our eardrums blasted, we’d toddle off back to the camping ground for some a spot of down-time with our tent-neighbours, drinking, smoking and generally doing all the stuff you’re supposed to do at festivals.

Hmm, BBQ, uhuhuhh. (NR)

Nevertheless, I’m never one to just sit around drinking myself stupid without some form of elegantly whiling away the hours. And since the festival took place so close to home, I’d been able to take my wheeled BBQ and cool box out for a little excursion, allowing us to keep us – and the inhabitants of the tents around us – happy with a good supply of sausages, bread, and salad. What with the German love of grilled sausages, we made ourselves very popular.

Which came very much in handy as we were packing up on the last day of the festival, and the rain clouds started gathering; we were able to leave our tent and assorted baggage in our neighbours tents, since they were planning to leave a day later. As Jan Delay was almost rained off by a deluge of near-biblical proportions, we took comfort in the fact that, despite our being soaked through to the bone, the tent was fine. The return trip was cold, wet, but not at all long, and we even had enough time for a hot shower before bed.

So even if Germany as a whole might not be the ideal location for festivals in terms of its sometimes quite inclement weather, the individual locations – impressive and as easy-to-reach as they are – are simply unbeatable.

Thanks to Nicole Runschke for braving the rain and taking all of these photos!

A slightly ambiguous photo of a park sign... "Please BBQ dogs" (Flickr: bleicher)

If I said to you barbeque, you’d say to me: America! After all, it is the land of BBQ sauce, rib and steak cook-outs and, oddly enough, a variety of grilled “dogs” – which, I have to confess, I always had the Koreans down for, but whaddya know?

Anyway, I’m not the only one who’s a little limited in his range of associative thinking when it comes to barbequed food: after all, how many of you would instantly think of Germany when you smell charcoal and singed sausages?

No, I didn’t think so, but you should! Because, for fans of char-grilled meats, Germany is one hell of a destination. I know you don’t believe me; Germans are supposed to be good at preserved meats, cabbage, and beer, right? But BBQ? BBQ is something for countries where you can actually, like, sit outside in summer without getting rained on – like Brazil, Mexico, and, of course, the good ol’ US of A. How can you have expert grill-meisters in a country where the skies are grey, the winters cold, and the urban settlement structure based on apartments with balconies?

The answers to that are as blindingly simple as they are surprising. First to deal with the weather-issue. Now, Germany may be, in relative terms, a cold country, but there are long periods between May and October when the temperature frequently goes above, say, 20 degrees Celsius and, thanks to global warming, this is getting more and more usual. Further to that, Germans are a weather-hardy people: you will often see Germans wearing shorts well into November, and busting out their sandals before March is over. So a light summer rain shower is not enough to deter them from BBQ-related antics. This may be incomprehensible to, say, my French readers: but Germans just don’t get too bothered about meteorological conditions.

About as mobile as your average rocket launcher - but just as powerful! (Flickr: gnal)

Secondly, for my American readers: you might think the chronically overcrowded nature of German human geography would stop them from BBQing too frequently; but believe you me, Germans do not require their own garden with a “picket fence” to get grilling. Either they’ll get going on their balcony – provided the neighbors don’t mind – or they’ll head for one of German cities’ numerous parks, squares, or other random urban open spaces.

In fact, the question isn’t really where Germans go to BBQ, but where they don’t go. The rapid inroads made by Einweggrille – disposable barbeques – have given German youth a much wider striking range when it comes to grill attacks. And for those of us who bemoan the collateral environmental damage caused by this kind of armament, the German grill-industrial complex has thought up another solution: mini-BBQs on wheels. They may be about as nimble and maneuverable as a Sherman tank or your average rocket launcher, but these babies will guarantee you victory in any cook-off in the field.

Hmmm, flam-ey! (Flickr: tacker)

In terms of munitions, you won’t really require much. This isn’t like in the States, where BBQers take pride in huge chunks of exotic or unusual meats or where the less experienced reach for burgers.  When it comes to BBQing, Germans already have an almost inexhaustible arsenal of products taken straight from their traditional cuisine. Guessed it yet? Yes, that’s right: sausages are the German grill lieutenant’s weapon of choice. I suggest you arm yourselves with a few Nürnberger Bratwürste, the slender white rockets, or perhaps a couple of batteries of Krakauer, shorter, fatter, and reddish-hued with a payload of pink meat and spices. Other favorites are the humble Frankfurter or the Bockwurst. And even if you decide to go with some of the other special munitions available like pork belly (Bauchfleisch) or spiced pork steaks (marinierte Holzfällersteaks), just remember that Germans are uncompromising about the presence of sausages on the grill: Würstchen müssen sein! Want proof? They even make tofu Grillwürste so that vegetarians don’t have to go without.

Grillwürste - No German summer is complete without them! (Flickr: Markusram)

The other thing to remember when trying to win a BBQ cook-off in Germany is the side dishes. Well, one side dish in particular: you will need a veritable ammo-dump of potato salad if you don’t want to be banished into the realm of BBQ amateurs – or Grillettanten as my flatmates call them (it’s a portmanteau of Grillen and Dilettante and has a vague connotation of ‘old woman’ through the syllable –tante). Germans stick to what they know when BBQing, and potato salad is something of a national institution here. Try making your own, but be prepared for a tactical withdrawal if your opponents turn up with their mum’s potato salad, which will always be considered superior by all Germans present. If they bring their grandmother’s potato salad, then you might as well surrender right away: in grill-off terms, that’s the equivalent of an atomic air strike.

And when tucking into perfectly done sausages (slightly crispy skin, warm fleshy interior) and granny’s Kartoffelsalat (hmm, double cream, uhuhuh), you’ll realize why Germany has earned itself a place on the grill globe.

The dunes of Norderney. Photo (cc) flickr user HaystackPhotography

An island that can be reached only by boat?  The thought alone had images of pirates and buried treasure dancing in my head.  Budget airlines had made “exotic” locations easier to reach, and so, several articles told me, people had been flocking to foreign coasts instead of Germany’s own bit of the North Sea.

But the tide was coming back in, and I wanted to get a look before too many tourists remembered that the German coast is a pretty sweet spot to spend a few relaxing days.  So when a friend invited me to come along to Norderney, I jumped at the chance.

The train ride from Mainz to Norddeich took eight hours.  Just past the train station–the last on this line–a boat was waiting to whisk us away from the Festland (English: “the continent,” as islanders quaintly referred to the bits of Germany back across the water) to the shores of Norderney.  On the cold, windy upper deck we watched the island getting closer and closer, and in a little under an hour we had docked.  The sky was blue and bright, the water warmer than the air.  In short, it was a perfect day for the beach.

"Beach baskets" can be rented by the day. Photo (cc) flickr user Johannes Lietz

In the summertime, driving is forbidden on Norderney except for those driving to or from the ferry we had just arrived on.  All other driving requires a special permit, and this deters most visitors from using their cars.  Instead the streets were filled with bicycles, those in turn laden with beach blankets and picnic lunches.  No cars and a beach?  It was just getting better and better.

I grew up in Pennsylvania in the United States, so when I was a kid a beach vacation meant a trip to the Jersey shore.  I would swim all day, build sand castles, and have fun with my cousins, but the beach was always sardine-can crowded and of questionable sanitary repute.  Here, the beach, though crowded according to the Norderney natives I was with, seemed empty and idyllic in comparison.  A few tourists loitered on towels or in rented “beach baskets.”  For the most part, as we walked barefoot in the sand it felt like we had the shore to ourselves.

The tidal marsh on Norderney. Photo Nicolette Stewart

A bit too cold for swimming, we spent most of our beach time walking: up and down the sandy shore, through the dunes, between little souvenir shops in town, or in the tidal marsh–part of the Wattenmeer National Park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site–mud on Norderney’s opposite shore.

On the beach we collected shells and looked for bits of amber.  In the shops we bought sallow thorn jam and Friesengeist, both specialties of the region.  In the dunes we watched wild seals stretching in the sun.  And in the marsh we laughed as we sunk up to our knees in mud.

I didn’t end up finding any buried treasure or meeting any pirates, but the relaxed feeling I had as I boarded the ferry back to the Festland was better than even the best nautical kitsch, and let me tell you, I’m a sucker for pirates.

A "climate capsule" outside the Museum of Arts and Crafts (Image: MKG)

If there’s one thing Germany is good at apart from beer (and there are a few things), it’s museums. They might not be free like in the UK, but they are often of exceptional quality. After all, Germans take education, or Bildung as it is reverently referred to, very seriously, and museum visits are considered indispensable in acquiring it. That’s why Germany has a course of study at University level called Museumspädagogik, or “museum education,” offering training on how to bring visitors closer to the works they come into contact with.

And if that isn’t enough to convince you, just look at Berlin, a city with an actual “museum island;” it’s not called that after just one museum, oh no, but after six – yes, that’s right – six of the things. Or there’s Düsseldorf with its K20 and K21 which, between them, essentially tell the whole story of modern western art from the Impressionists onwards. Hamburg, too, is not doing badly on the museum front. Not only does it have the world’s largest model railway, but also the creative Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe – the Museum of Arts and Crafts – home to a variety of interesting exhibitions in recent years, including a side-splitting excursion into the works of Germany’s most beloved comedy genius, Loriot.

At the moment, though, the MKG is going in a more serious direction, taking a look at the effects of climate change on the way we live. Titled Klimakapseln or “climate capsules,” the premise for the exhibition is simple: what if climate change can no longer be stopped? How will humans adapt to a changed world?

And the central motif is the capsule, the protective bubble, with curator Friedrich von Borries, himself a designer, asking young designers and artists for both practical and theoretical work: what kind of capsules will humans build to protect themselves from an increasingly hostile outside environment?

The results are fascinating, ranging from imagined futuristic contraptions to concrete designs that have already been built and are simply waiting to be used. There’s the capsule-home, for example, a self-servicing house-on-legs built by Danish designers that collects solar power to heat or cool itself and can move from place to place in search of unspoiled natural resources. If water shortages become as common as predicted, this kind of mobile accommodation might be a life-saver in some parts of the world.

Jouji Hikawa, a Japanese fashion designer, takes the idea of the capsule into clothing, producing an anti-heat suit for use in Tokyo, whose summers are currently predicted to regularly bring temperatures around 50⁰C by 2020. The Perspex head-gear may look like something out of a Stanley Kubrik movie, but it’s been designed with a deadly serious purpose.

Finnish artist Ilkka Halso encapsulating nature (MKG)

This is another fascinating part of the exhibition, in fact: many of the less practical, more artistic works on show interact with science fiction, which of course relies heavily on the image of the capsule. After all, how else can humans exist in the roaring vacuum of space?

Indeed, the recurring use of space-exploration and sci-fi themes is what gives this exhibition its disturbing power. Capsules have been conceived both by space research organizations and science fiction writers as ways of helping humans to survive temporarily in hostile external conditions; now, we are being forced to take the same basic idea and apply it to our own planet. Ilkka Hals, a Finnish artist, has produced some particularly tragic images of trees being encapsulated; reminiscent of a last desperate attempt to salvage the natural world man is so intent on ravaging.

By far the most powerful work on show, however, is, as far as I’m concerned, a video installation piece called “Shrink.” In it, a performance artist is shrink-wrapped in a plastic pouch, being given an air-tube to keep him breathing whilst the rest of the air in the pouch is sucked out. The film goes for about five minutes, in which time a range of associations sweep across your mind.

Like almost all capsules, this one is dependent for its existence on materials which are carbon emitters: in this case, plastics. The irony is, of course, that climate capsules are intended to protect their inhabitants from the effects of over-usage of these materials. Furthermore, the slightly sexual nature of the video – we hear the subject gasping for air, see his flesh being pressed against shiny plastic in a slightly fetishistic fashion – reminds us how humans have an irresistible attraction to the objects that are destroying us: think of the way in which cars and planes are often seen as objects of beauty.

"Shrink" by Malstaf, a distubring visual analysis of the capsule (MKG)

The though-train of association goes on: consumer society shrink-wraps products to make them last longer, just as humans are now working on preserving themselves. Therefore, humans are now a product like any other: and it this kind of raw capitalism that is laying waste to the planet. As these thoughts go through your mind, you hear the gasps for air and feel the claustrophobia: a capsule may protect, but it imprisons; it may conserve its inhabitants, but it suffocates them too.

By the time you leave the museum, you’ll be determined not to let climate change go so far as to make capsules necessary: and you don’t even need one of these German “museum pedagogues” to get that far – the works and the way they are juxtaposed is more than enough for you to get the message.