Alexanderplatz Field Recording

Alexanderplatz was the old centre of East Berlin, known for its World Clock, and home of the Centrum department store where you could get exotic imports like jeans. When I first started going to Berlin in the mid 2000s, it still felt full of tumbleweeds, like they didn’t quite know what to do with the place after reunification. Nowadays it’s shrine to chainstore consumerism and generic tourism, there’s even a Primark. I once bought some discount AirPods at the branch of Mediamarkt there at a very reasonable price. I wonder what an East Berliner transported there from the 80s would think of it. It’s certainly lost its 70s and 80s cachet.

It’s more like this now: Saufen, morgens, mittags, abends ich will saufen. Der Hahn muss laufen. “I wanna get drunk mornings, afternoons and evenings. The tap’s got to run” in front of an assortment of mid-range chain restaurants.

With all the crowds and tourists, it’s a good spot for field recording however.

The family in Goodbye Lenin lived somewhere around here.

“Vegetarians kill vegetables”

The Konrad Tönz bar in Kreuzberg. I went there for the first time in 2005, and it’s still essentially unchanged. Kreuzberg around it certainly has though!