Unscene Berlin

March 18 I feel bad throwing out my disinfectant spray bottle with a few dribbles still in it; it may be worth 50 Euros an ounce, soon. Available only drop by the micro-dosed drop in Gorlitzer Bahnhof. Ah, well. March 19 I go for a walk, then work, then go for another walk. Keep finding loads of Z u Verschenken  ("to give away") boxes on the ground, chock full of stuff; probably no one wants to touch other people's old things in case some of it's infected while, at the same time, everybody has more time to clear out all their secret underfloor catacombs and bomb shelters and make way for... even more toilet paper, I guess? A friendly East Indian man sees me eyeing some books in the road near Rummelsburger Bucht. He starts shaking his head gently and saying, ' Aber nicht fassen. Nicht fassen ' as I stop for a closer look. I reassure him, I have no intention of touching those books. Though it's hard to fight the reflex to pocket free stuff wh...

Flow Cafe, Schoeneweide Last week, while cycling through the eastern borough of Schoeneweide for the first time in years, I saw streetart, scrap art, industrial-residential hybrids, new pedestrian bridges, squares and all kinds of sophisticated little urban touches that I have never seen in the utilitarian streets near my place, before.  As they race relentlessly away from the Mitte, gentrification's stylistic enhancements seem to have shot straight past poor, fugly (yet still not managing to avoid those rent hikes) Lichtenberg, and carried on to the admittedly more scenic environs around Schoeneweide, where they have settled in like a hand in a glove. The area is a nice mix of natural open spaces, derelict buildings and cute little residential streets that seem to have survived by sheer virtue of the fact that nobody remembered they even existed, until recently.  Stuff to do in this area include the Flow Kaffeehaus , the Funkhaus , and nearby  Sisyp...