Up before 7:30am to finish burning DVDs of all the photos taken on the Arden2 portion of the trip. Joanna was still not feeling well at all. Wojciech and I went next door to get some groceries. Picked up what I needed for breakfast and my impending train ride to Berlin. Picked up a little Żubrówka to take home. Finished packing after a quick bite. Everything I brought and collected fit into my bags, but all the printed material weighed a ton more. Bid goodbye to Wojciech and got a taxi over to Warsawa Centralna. Checked in at a nearby Internet café to find very detailed instructions were waiting from fALk about our meeting in Berlin. Dashed back to the station and awaited the train. Nice to have an assigned seat, but I still scampered onboard to make sure by luggage would have a good place to rest in. Spent the next six hours intermittently watching the landscape flow by, listening to music, devouring snacks and working on getting the blog caught up. Looked up at one point to find that we were pulling into Poznań, which was the first Polish city we stopped in at the beginning of the trip.
Pulled into Berlin a little after 5pm. The city looked a little calmer this time around. When I was last through Berlin in 1998, construction sites overran it. I was very happy to see the TV tower in East Berlin and the Reichstag. Got to the Zoo station right at 5:30pm. Having no Euros on me, I was a little stressed about getting my ticket for the connecting train to take me to my meeting with fALk in Wansee. After wandering around looking for an ATM, I finally found an office that sold tickets. The salesperson seemed less than thrilled that I was buying a 2 Euro ticket with my credit card. Ticket in hand, I raced back to the platform to find the designated train sealed up and about to leave. Fortunately there was another headed the same direction a mere three minutes later. Was a bit worried that fALk would miss me on the scheduled train and not be there when I arrived a bit later. My worries were misplaced, as he arrived at the platform just as I was getting ready to head outside.
Had a long ride back to his place out in a wilder area. His house is in a very secluded neighborhood, surrounded by forest.
fALk’s house in the country. The heart of it all, the office with a pair of G5s.
I got settled in and met fALk’s ex-girlfriend, Annett and their neighbor Nancy. Got connected to the wireless Internet teat. So good to be online with my own computer. Downloading all my email took a good ten minutes. We whipped up a nice supper of pasta, and salad. Had a walk through the woods behind the house. I was very impressed with the 700 year old oak trees. It was starting to get dark, so we headed back to figure out what we were going to do for the rest of the evening.
We decided to head into town and start at a party that fALk’s friend Fred knew about. It turned out to be a little house party in an apartment building with a huge courtyard where we could see at least four other parties going on. There were some interesting musical acts in the far back room. An electronic duo was playing when we arrived. They were followed by a Japanese gentleman playing a one stringed instrument who despite his initial subdued nature proceeded to scream into a microphone.
Some of the musical acts at the house party we stopped at.
Random sights. The TV tower and some construction cranes, a stone shop, the U-Bahn with cool artwork (each one showed some sort of barrier and the text described what sort of thing could traverse it.), the host of the blinkenlights project on the left and the location of the Berlin AVIT.
Eventually we bid goodbye to Fred and headed over to WMF to see Funkstörung. We were able to get right into the club despite the formidable looking line. We wandered around for a bit before settling in to catch the Funkstörung set from 2:30am to about 4am. The visuals started out rather mediocre, but got a bit better as the set went on. The projector system seemed to be a bit overextended, with all three projectors showing signs of being well beyond the range that s-video cables can successfully send signal. The music was a really good mix of breakbeat and acid house, just broken enough to be interesting but still danceable. It took us a good 45 minutes to get out of the club and on our way. The morning trains were just starting up and we were able to grab the 5:07am train back to Wansee. Had a short drive back to fALk’s and crashed out around 6am.
Funkstörung was somewhere behind the smoke.
Pulled into Berlin a little after 5pm. The city looked a little calmer this time around. When I was last through Berlin in 1998, construction sites overran it. I was very happy to see the TV tower in East Berlin and the Reichstag. Got to the Zoo station right at 5:30pm. Having no Euros on me, I was a little stressed about getting my ticket for the connecting train to take me to my meeting with fALk in Wansee. After wandering around looking for an ATM, I finally found an office that sold tickets. The salesperson seemed less than thrilled that I was buying a 2 Euro ticket with my credit card. Ticket in hand, I raced back to the platform to find the designated train sealed up and about to leave. Fortunately there was another headed the same direction a mere three minutes later. Was a bit worried that fALk would miss me on the scheduled train and not be there when I arrived a bit later. My worries were misplaced, as he arrived at the platform just as I was getting ready to head outside.
Had a long ride back to his place out in a wilder area. His house is in a very secluded neighborhood, surrounded by forest.
fALk’s house in the country. The heart of it all, the office with a pair of G5s.
I got settled in and met fALk’s ex-girlfriend, Annett and their neighbor Nancy. Got connected to the wireless Internet teat. So good to be online with my own computer. Downloading all my email took a good ten minutes. We whipped up a nice supper of pasta, and salad. Had a walk through the woods behind the house. I was very impressed with the 700 year old oak trees. It was starting to get dark, so we headed back to figure out what we were going to do for the rest of the evening.
We decided to head into town and start at a party that fALk’s friend Fred knew about. It turned out to be a little house party in an apartment building with a huge courtyard where we could see at least four other parties going on. There were some interesting musical acts in the far back room. An electronic duo was playing when we arrived. They were followed by a Japanese gentleman playing a one stringed instrument who despite his initial subdued nature proceeded to scream into a microphone.
Some of the musical acts at the house party we stopped at.
Random sights. The TV tower and some construction cranes, a stone shop, the U-Bahn with cool artwork (each one showed some sort of barrier and the text described what sort of thing could traverse it.), the host of the blinkenlights project on the left and the location of the Berlin AVIT.
Eventually we bid goodbye to Fred and headed over to WMF to see Funkstörung. We were able to get right into the club despite the formidable looking line. We wandered around for a bit before settling in to catch the Funkstörung set from 2:30am to about 4am. The visuals started out rather mediocre, but got a bit better as the set went on. The projector system seemed to be a bit overextended, with all three projectors showing signs of being well beyond the range that s-video cables can successfully send signal. The music was a really good mix of breakbeat and acid house, just broken enough to be interesting but still danceable. It took us a good 45 minutes to get out of the club and on our way. The morning trains were just starting up and we were able to grab the 5:07am train back to Wansee. Had a short drive back to fALk’s and crashed out around 6am.
Funkstörung was somewhere behind the smoke.
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