Waiting for No Snow

For people who come from anywhere other than Spain, waiting for clubs to open on a Friday or Saturday night in the winter can feel like Chinese water torture.  Things start late.  How late, you ask?  Imagine the time when you'd go home from a typical club back home and well, that's the time when you'll be expected to arrive at a club in Berlin.  And if you want to be there when the party is full-on, in some clubs it's better to arrive around the same time that you'd normally be waking up.  

In the summer, there are glorious tree-filled green spaces to while away the endless pre-club hours by basking in the sun, drinking Sekt, flying kites, riding unicorns (at least, I thought it was a unicorn), but in the winter, there is nothing but bitter cold and bitter, bitter Berliners to fill the vacuum between dinner and dancing.  It's like waiting for Godot: an existential exercise in riding out an alien & arbitrary nightlife rhythm that refuses to adapt.

That's why I've been off the radar for much of the winter.  I've tried every way to fill the pre-club hours: having dinner with friends, going to the gym, interviewing myself for my blog, juggling miniature bottles of Kleiner Feigling... but every attempt ends with me asleep on the couch by midnight.  Even after three years of conditioning, it takes more discipline than can muster to flip the switch from having a 'cozy night in' to a 'wild night out' at 11:00 p.m.  How does anybody do it, without help from certain substances? The answer is that they don't go out on Saturday night at all -  that's for tourists, silly - they go out on Sunday.  By Sunday morning, all the lightweight chaff has fallen from the wheat of the city's club populations, leaving people too tightly packed with energy to be undone by mere daylight. 

But where do you go for some of that Sunday action?  The most reliable places are as usual, Berghain and Kater Holzig, but their door staff make getting up on a Sunday feel just as existential and arbitrary as waiting to go out on a Saturday.  However, it still is more worthwhile to try either place on a Sunday daytime than on a Saturday night time, because they are slightly less picky then.  Golden Gate is a more inviting prospect... their music policy of minimal and techn house doesn't vary much from day to day but Sundays there tend to have a good crowd. 

Today, if you're quick, you might catch the tail-end of Legotech's (open air?) party Emphase, which is supposed to stop later this afternoon.

But if you miss that you can also be free from door charges and doormen at this fluffy snow party in the Open Air which starts @ 3 p.m. in Jannowitzbruecke. 

As it's St. Patrick's Day today, the Paddy pardy crew from Kleine Reise are promotoing a parade that starts at Oranienplatz at 1:00 p.m.  It ends up at Burg Aa See in Ratiborstraße 14c, 10999 Berlin where there will be an open air concert, followed by a party at Loftus Hall.  Dressing up is strongly encouraged!  Should be a good time, especially for U.K./U.S./Commonwealth expats who prefer getting wasted in their native language ;-)  

And at R-19 in the old WYSIWYG space on Revaler Str. 19, there is an afterhour party for Techn19 which will be on until at least 18:00. 

After that it's back to the usual nightlife cycle of waiting for the night to begin some time the next morning... so if you want to get the jump on Godot, go now!