Lord Byron’s Pistol Club

I was going to love Berlin. That is what everyone promised me. Berlin is amazing. Berlin is unreal. Berlin might just change my life.

It did not. Berlin was not the Dead Edgy hotbed of vice and depravity I had been anticipating. Of course, both my expectations and my, franky, Not Dead Edgy self were certainly to blame . That I was nearly reduced to tears before I even left the airport by the German train ticket machines probably set me off on a bad foot. Or, that I spent my first night out in Tascheles – which is Europe’s most uber-squat, apparently, and therefore the very definition of Dead Edgy – buzzing off a bottle of the Rhein’s finest non-alchoholic wine. The fact about the wine was not discovered until the next day, but it explains why I spent the night sulking on a picnic bench. Similarly, on our first day there, instead of wandering the streets, catching some impromtu performance art, we spent our time in department stores, looking for cheap tents to house us, The World’s Least Prepared Festival Goers, at Melt!, The World’s Most Poorly Organised Festival. So thorough was our search for camping equipment, that by the time I was brought to a charming second hand shop, it was all I could do to prop myself up against a rail.

So perhaps I didn’t give myself the best run at Berlin, the rave capital of Europe. But yet, I cannot shake the feeling that I have missed the rave-boat, somehow. I have been listening to these enthusiastic accounts of Berlin for the last two years, if not more. I think that now, people have moved on from wide eyed wonderment at flea markets selling stuffed badgers and gold lamè accessories and warehouse clubs, to a kind of competitive alterna-tourism – “Haven’t you been to that place where they sell entire stuffed scenes from Watership Down?” “And then we stayed up until dawn in this underground place where they only play speed metal and Motown.” So it’s hard not to feel cheated when you have spent your day in the Galleria Kaufhof instead of Arkonaplatz (I hope that place is cool, I had to look it up, having been in the Kaufhof when I was meant to be there)

Still, I haven’t given up hope entirely. My day out sightseeing with friends was a gem. Also, on our last night, we went to Cookies, which had red velvet cutains and what appeared to be accountants and City boys on their night out, but also had a disco funk annex, and poeple were smoking inside. And a rat ran over my foot, although I missed it. And the food (always the most important factor in a holiday ever since I was six and my Dad made us wander around Dingle for what felt like hours in search of the most superior pub grub) was einfach klasse. So you see, the ship may have passed me by, but they may just throw out a life raft yet.