Unscene Berlin

 Deutsch I love art and I love parties and when you put the two things together, I'm in seventh heaven. Cassiopeia and Tacheles are well known examples of venues which combine clubbing with culture... and climbing too, if that's your cup of tea, but I find them a bit crowded and impersonal. That's why I am always on the lookout for places which attract the masses without feeling mass-produced. Last weekend I finally checked out Brunnen 70 and what I saw there put it at the top of the list. I went there with a friend on a Saturday night.  After passing the chilled security check, we were ushered into a small room, empty except for an old-fashioned settee against the far wall, and two door staff who were propping up a table with a shoe (labeled 'tips') on it. They smiled at us as a second steel door slid closed behind us, sealing the room shut. My friend and I were slightly freaked out. "Wow, okay... this is a small club..." I began to say, befo...

Red lights, red wine and a singer in a bowler had and a green sequined scarf. The scarf shimmered like dragon-skin as the singer draped over her face and belted out another middle-eastern gypsy tune. Her voice was a deep, rich vibrato that tied the tinkling, timorous backing instruments together like a snake-charmer's rope. This was Mr. Mostash’s last gig and I was lucky to see it. I was here courtesy of a bemused and slightly winded Hungarian tourist - I'll call him 'Pete'. Pete had sat next to me earlier that night at Cassiopeia, during a screening of Berlin Calling. Once the end credits rolled we shared a bottle of red and asked the usual questions: why are you in Berlin? how long are you staying? what do you like about the city? I liked his answer to this last question the best. “I feel like I renew faster in this city,” he said. Just like that, he managed to capture in words the feeling that I had been struggling to describe for the past two weeks. It's no...