Review: Five Days, Two Nights.

Saturday.
Last weekend began - and ended - with me going to Sisyphos with Sandra and Andreas, for Spieglein Spieglein An Der Wand. The weather was perfect for a club with its own lake, and the music was great in both rooms. The smaller room was playing an electronic funk fusion which gave Andreas ample opportunity to demonstrate his robot dance, while the main room tended towards late 90s techno, textured with enough modern beats to keep it fresh. More and more punters joined us throughout the night, and the atmosphere casually built to a dull roar. Sandra and I left before dawn, telling ourselves we'd be back - and we will, maybe next week.

Spindler und Klatt.Weekday clubbing has become a bit tedious, what with the weather repelling me and everybody from leaving their homes. Thankfully, a new club like Fiese Remise opens now and then, giving us an excuse to go out and explore the city on a Tuesday night.

In the street where Fiese Remise is located, every building looks like a former industrial, derelict something-or-other. It’s the heartland of the Mediaspree, where you never know if you’re going to walk into genuine heaven or gentrified hell. On the way there with my friend Ange and her dog, we wandered into number 16 Koepenicker Strasse. The signs were all wrong, literally; there were Samsung signs hanging over the entrance in place of anything which indicated the venue’s name. We went around the back of the building and made for an outdoor bar at the end of a long, minimalist white boardwalk. There were businessmen lounging on white cubes of foam, looking around in a roving stupour.

Midway to the bar, we crossed over a man-made stream which had been sunken into the boardwalk. The minimal design of both stream and bridge blended together so seamlessly that Ange's dog walked straight into the stream by accident, then jumped out of it again with a surprised yelp. Everybody in the bar turned to stare while Ange and I cracked up laughing. You just can't take us anywhere...

Moments later, a burly man who was talking to his lapel asked us if we had invitations to be there, thereby shifting my opinion of the place towards 'gentrified hell'. However, he generously let us look around and take photos before making us leave. The venue’s interior was as trendy, elegant and chilly as a hostess in a Manhattan restaurant, with huge metallic walls and ceiling lights whose ghostly white shades fall nearly to the floor. The bar staff helpfully told us that we had come to Spindler & Klatt by mistake, and then gave us directions to Fiese Remise. For some reason they kept on calling it ‘Sage Bar’, getting it mixed up with the restaurant next door to FR. It must get confusing to keep track of venue names when there is so much development going on, in the run-up to MediaSpree's takeover.

Fiese Remise.
Fiese Remise, next door, was also set inside an industrial storage unit. It had been styled up but did not obliterate every trace of its origins like Spindler & Klatt did. For some reason (noise restrictions?) everybody there was wearing silver headphones with little blue lights set in the band. There was music playing over the soundsystem, and Ange and I wondered if there was different music playing on the headphones. But there wasn't, and so the mystery of why everybody was wearing headphones went unsolved. Personally, I think it would have been sehr geil if there had been different mixes on each set of headphones, coming from a bunch of different DJs who were playing simultaneously behind the decks. What a splendidly confusing party that would make.

Outside the bar was the obligatory sandy beach area, with deck chairs and an old bus that appeared to have washed ashore. Ange and I boarded the bus and found a cosy seating area in the back. While Ange chatted with a friendly guy sitting next to her, I closed my eyes and imagined that I was on the road with a band – albeit one made up of French tourists and German clubbers. Then one of them jostled me as he climbed out the window and left, thus dispelling my illusion.

Next?
There are still a few days in this week. Do you know of somewhere cheap, new, or exciting that I haven't reviewed yet? Feel free to send me your venue recommendations, via the comment box below, and I will check them out.
Peace.