Badehaus - Berlin 🇩🇪

I realize it's an insane time to reminisce on the good times I had in Berlin, given the recent events that have unfolded south of the border that loosely tie in with German history. However, fuck The Donald, Musk and everyone else that wants to align themselves with those self-serving, underhanded, snide, extremist pieces of shit. This blog is only big enough for one us to be filled with hatred, and that's me.

Having spent a number of weeks in this glorious country, travelling from gigs in Dusseldorf too Marienmünster, or nights off in picturesque looking towns like Gehrden & Bremerhaven, I have to say I love it here. We’ve played some amazing shows, met some greet folks and created some lifelong memories. For those of you who have never ventured out this way, Germany is extremely distinct in many ways. From their biers and schnitzel, to their architecture and nightlife, the dirndls and lederhosen’s, it’s all very Germanic and frankly wonderful. We rocked up to Badehaus for the last show of the tour and whilst I was excited to start the voyage home to my own bed, a regimented lights out by 9pm policy and copious amounts of tea, I found myself to be equally as sad this tour was ending. Funny how "living your dream" becomes exhausting in the moment and then a great memory thereafter. Who knows when I'd be back here again, if ever?!

There have been so many great memories from this run of show, small moments like getting McFlurries at midnight in Frankfurt, dinner with everyone at the Augustiner Bier Hall in Munich, or even just me being an idiot and not knowing that "ausfahdt" meant "exit" on the motorway. After 45 minutes or so of driving to Dusseldorf on night one I remember looking over at Matty and saying "how fucking bigs this town?!". Berlin was a special one for me, because it also marked the arrival of a very special guest on this run of shows, my mum. Mum had been to Germany a couple of times before, but never Berlin. Ya see, post WWII, Berlin was divided into four quadrants, East Berlin was run by the Soviets and in a matter of what probably felt like minutes, East Berlin was effectively cut off from the West and allowed next to no movement of people between the two. There were enormous political fall outs and before anyone knew what was happening, Check Point Charlie would play host to a 3 day tank stand off between the Allied forces and the Soviets which would have certainly launched the world straight back into war. Thankfully both sides quietly backed down from said standoff and WWIII didn't take place. If you haven't seen it, I implore you to watch The Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks, it capsulated the mood of the moment perfectly.

The venue itself was epic, a dark little Rock n Roll joint in the middle arts district of Berlin. A total bastard too park a van full of gear, but we rocked up to a bustling flea market which much like the markets in Camden Town, there were some true characters roaming around. On my travels after soundcheck I also found this weird dystopian back corner of the market where I had to pay a euro to pass the threshold, I was strictly told no photography was allowed but I can only describe it as a scene out of Mad Max if they had a rock climbing wall and an eclectic flea market of their own. There was a very underground crust punk band playing and tins of Berliner was flowing like Niagara Falls.   

 The gig went great and it was a perfect send off. After we said our goodbyes to our new found Danish mates, we checked into the hotel and went out for one last Donor Kebab before the boys headed home the next morning. Funnily enough and in true Air Canada fashion, they lost their luggage on the way home as well. Why not stick to tradition eh? Since my mum had traveled to see the show, and I imagine more so her favourite son, we took an extra day to cruise through the city we'd both been longing to see. We toured through the Bradenburg Gate, walked by the Reichstag, paid our respects at the various Jewish monuments, and had coffee at the Potsdamer Pier where part of the old wall still stands. We found a Berlin Wall Museum on the river Spree which overlooked where Soviets actually patrolled, killing any deserters that dared to escape the iron grip the communist had on them. Extremely heavy stuff. Of all things I'd be willing to try in my lifetime, communism isn't one of them, seems good on paper, bad in practice. That's the summary of most things in life, if it seems too good to be true, it usual bloody is! After a solid feed, a couple lagers and 30,000 steps I called it a night, utterly exhausted from the weeks and weeks of late nights, early morning and I dread of think of how many sausage rolls and lagers I had just put my body though. The next morning we set the GPS for home; London. 

I hope to be back at Badehaus for another gig sometime in '25 with the lads, there seem to be some great things in the works at the moment with the band that I'm excited to share with everyone when the time is right. Hopefully we can delve into some new markets and get into Prague and Vienna as well, but I'll leave that to our agent and management team. In the meantime, I have another bunch of stamps to collect in my passport and some more rock n roll bars to find around the globe.

6/6.