alternative Berlin

Harjuku the name of the area around Harajuku Station on the Yamanote Line in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, Japan. East of Harajuku Station lies Takeshita-dori/ Street, known throughout Japan as a popular hangout for 13- to 15-year-olds. Every Sunday afternoon, hundreds of teenagers gather in amazing outfits to meet with friends.. They dress totally wierdly and wonderfully, because here, anything goes… and the wierder and wilder, the better..

Tourists from all over the world come to Harajuku to view the Japanese teens who congregate in the area to shop, eat, and hang out. The Japanese youth around Harajuku often wear extreme clothing styles influenced by cosplay, punk, gothic, lolita, hip hop, and other international and Japanese subcultures.

View of Takeshita-dori/ Street

Impressed by their style, Gwen Stefani popularised Harajuku girls a few years ago, she uses Harajuku girls as her stage dancers, and it had such an impression on her that it also played a major role in influencing her choices in the clothing she designed for her label, L.A.M.B. She also recently released a perfume called Harajuku Lovers.

Many different styles of fashion can be found on display here:

Decora- is a style carachterized by wearing many bright colours of the rainbow and hairclips

Kawaii- meaning ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’. Clothing appears to be made for young children or clothes which accentuate the cuteness of the individual wearing the clothing.

Cosplay- when clothes are worn to imitate a known band or anime carachter. Cosplay is an abbreviation of Costume Play. It is a Japanese subculture based on dressing like characters from manga, anime, bands and video games. The term cosplay pronounced “kosupure” in Japanese.

Gothic loli- aka Gothic Lolita refers to the fashion of frilly, ruffled knee-length dresses and head-bands etc. Gothic Lolita clothes have a sometimes very dark look or sometimes very kawaii (cute) look – demonstrated by Baby The Stars Shine Bright.

Gothic Aristocrat refers to a more subtle and refined dressing consisting of longer dresses and coats- it is a very elegant style.

Ganguro- a style in which the girls have fake tans and died blonde hair and put white make-up around their eyes with white lipstick.. black eye-liner is also worn around the white make-up..Ganguro girls wear brightly coloured clothes including miniskirts, tie-dyed sarongs, lots or rings, necklaces and bracelets.
Ganguro is believed to have started as a kind of revenge against the traditional norm in Japanese society as to what feminine beauty should be. Many Japanese researchers believe that the rebellion against japanese society is due to resentment of neglect.

Kogal- girls are know for prominently “showing off” their disposable income through the fashions they wear, their taste in music and their social activity in general. Kogal fashion is similar to that of the sun tanned California Valley Girl. Similar to Ganguro although the two should not be confused. Kogal girls sport designer accessories such as louis vuitton handbags and are often the first consumers of japanese mobile phones. Kogal girls may partake in “compensated dating”, which some consider to be quasi-legal prostitution. Internet usage of the word has led some Westerners to believe that “kogal” means “prostitute”.Kogal is a fashion that involves wearing an outfit based on a Japanese school uniform, but with a shortened skirt, loose socks, and often dyed hair and a scarf as well.Aside from the pinned-up skirt and the loose socks, or rusu sokusu, kogals favor platform boots, makeup, and Burberry scarves. They may also dye their hair brown and get artificial suntans. They have a distinctive slang peppered with English words.

Harajuku’s roots trace back to the end of World War II when U.S. soldiers and their families began to occupy the area known as Harajuku. It became an area where curious young people flocked to experience a different culture.

In 1958, Central Apartments were built in the area and were quickly occupied by fashion designers, models, and photographers. In 1964, when the Summer Olympics came to Tokyo the Harajuku area was further developed, and the idea of “Harajuku” slowly began to take a more concrete shape.

After the Olympics the young people who hung out in the area, frequently referred to as the Harajuku-zoku or the Harajuku tribe, began to develop a distinct culture and style unique to different groups and the area. From this distinct style grew the culture of Harajuku as a gathering ground for youths and as a fashion mecca.

Watch a short video about Harajuku bridge here

Less than half the Earth’s landmass is accessible to existing wheeled and tracked vehicles. But people and animals using their legs can go almost anywhere. This is the Reason that Boston Dynamics have been working on it for 25 years, and have now created a robot called Big Dog.

The Company aimed to develope a new breed of rough-terrain robots that capture the mobility, autonomy and speed of living creatures. Such robots will travel in outdoor terrain that is too steep, rutted, rocky, wet, muddy, and snowy for conventional vehicles. They will travel in cities and in our homes, doing chores and providing care,where steps, stairways and household clutter limit the utility of wheeled vehicles.

An onboard computer controls BigDog’s behavior, manages the sensors, and handles communications with a remote human operator. The control computer also records large amounts of engineering data for performance analysis, failure analysis and operational support.

BigDog has a variety of locomotion behaviors. It can stand up, squat down, walk with a crawling gait that lifts just one leg at a time, walk with a trotting gait that lifts diagonal legs in pairs, trot with a running gait that includes a flight phase, and bound in a special gallop gait. Travel speed for the crawl is about 0.2 m/s, for the trot is about 1.6 m/s (3.5 mph), for the running trot is about 2 m/s (4.4 mph) and BigDog briefly exceeded 3.1 m/s (7 mph) while bounding in the laboratory.BigDog weighs about 109 kg, is about 1 meter tall, 1.1 meters long, and 0.3 m wide.

BigDog’s longest continuous operation was a 10 km hike that lasted 2.5 hours. Boston Dynamics are continually developing BigDog’s reliability.

I find the dog super scarey though and don’t think I would want one in my house.. pretty wierd stuff!

Watch Big Dog in action here

This is Alfred Lomas- an ex meth and crack addict and former gang member in Los Angeles’ Florencia 13 Gang. He is also the founder of LA gang tours, a tour which does exactly as the name suggests, takes people on tours of the LA gang lands.

Although critics say the idea of Gang Tours exploits the poor and is demeaning to the residents in these neighborhoods, Lomas and the other people standing behind his project insist that it’s a great way to empower the community.

“This is an non-profit organization, it’s community based and we’re creating jobs,” Lomas said. “Our first priority is saving lives by getting the gang members to sit down and honor this first and foremost.” LA Gang Tours was established to create jobs, provide work training, help bring money into the area and educate others about the area’s people, culture and challenges. Lomas also directs a good works ministry that feeds more than 50,000 people per month.

Lomas, 45, hopes to create jobs for residents of the areas the tour goes through and will give a percentage of profits back to the community for projects.

With tickets selling at $65 a head (including lunch), it a wonder that all the places on these tours are continuously sold out. Since the first tour took place on the 19th of January 2010, the daring tours remain consistent in popularity.

I have to say that I would be nervous to go on this tour as, although Lomas says his group has negotiated cease fire “safe passage” zones with street gangs along tour bus routes, I mean can one really stop a gang shoot-out if something goes down? People willing to take the risk still have to sign a release form.. not sure if I woulld spend $65 with the possibility of being shot at, but the concept is very cool.

Watch two videos about the tour and it’s founder here and here..

See the website here.

Ever wonder where this punk symbol came from? I had no idea that it was associated to this football club that has been going for absolute ages.. Many football fans will probably laugh at my naivety, but I am not a big football person, so I was quite astonisehed to find out about the football team that has been taking Germany by storm for 100 years this year and has a fan base of over 11 000 000 in Germany alone – there are also about 200 registered fan clubs, many of them outside Germany.

The club began its existence in 1899 as a loose, informal group of football enthusiasts within the Hamburg-St. Pauli Turn-Verein 1862. They were soon founded as an official football club on May 15th in 1910, and will be celebrating their 100 year birthday this May..

This group did not play its first match until 1907 against a similar side assembled out of the local Aegir swimming club. They originally played as St. Pauli TV in the Kreisliga Groß-Hamburg (Alsterkreis) until 1924 when a separate football side called FC St. Pauli was formed.

For more information on their playing history.. see an article here

It was in later the mid-80’s, that St. Pauli went form being a traditional club to a cult club. The club was also able to use the location of its ground in the dock area part of town St. Pauli near Hamburg’s famous Reeperbahn – centre of the city’s nightlife and its red-light district – to its advantage. An alternative fan scene emerged built around left-leaning politics and the social event and party atmosphere of the club’s matches.

Supporters adopted the skull and crossbones as their own unofficial emblem. The club started to become associated with the punks and the antifascist movement. St. Pauli became the first team in Germany to officially ban right wing, nationalist activities and displays in its stadium in an era when fascist inspired football hooliganism threatened the game across Europe. In 1981, the team was averaging crowds of only 1,600 spectators: by the late 90’s they were frequently selling out their entire 20,000 capacity venue.

St. Pauli gift shop outside their home, the Millerntor-Stadion in Hamburg.

St. Pauli is also a worldwide symbol for punk and related subcultures.The unofficial Totenkopf logo and the team’s brown and white football jerseys have often been worn by international artists such as Asian Dub Foundation. Turbonegro recorded a special version of their song “I Got Erection” with re-worked German lyrics for St Pauli. Bad Religion played a charity match against St. Pauli’s third team in 2000. KMFDM frontman and Hamburg native Sascha Konietzko is a recognizable St. Pauli fan, even at one point placing a huge picture of a fist smashing a swastika on his band’s main page with the caption St. Pauli Fans gegen Rechts! (St. Pauli fans against Nazis) underneath it. One of the most notable supporters and sponsors is Andrew Eldritch, lead singer of band The Sisters of Mercy. On his latest tour, Sisters Bite The Silver Bullet in 2006, Eldritch wore the famous Totenkopf shirt. German musicians: Fettes Brot, Die Ärzte singer Bela B, Kettcar, Tomte and many other bands, most of them underground. Punk rock is an anti-establishment music movement beginning around 1976 (although precursors can be found several years earlier), exemplified and popularised by The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned.

In 2008 a movie about Saint Pauli was released in Germany, called ‘Sankt Pauli – Rausgehen. Warmmachen. Weghauen.’ Click on the cover to see the movie preview.. I am sure it can be found on DVD.

I am tempted to go to a St. Pauli game now. Although I am not the biggest football supporter, I do occassionally watch a game just to feel the excitement and be a part of the fun and I am sure there would be a lot to see at a St. Pauli game.

My partner and I had the unfortunate experience of ordering a pizza from and unknown take out joint in Berlin a few nights ago. I was warned before by many sources about ordering food from places u don’t know about in Berlin, but I didn’t really believe the rumours until the pizza arrived. We were hungry and it was 11pm, we wanted pizza, and it was the only pizza delivery that was going until midnight, so we took a risk.. we ordered a bottle of wine with it and a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. I opened the box when it arrived and I decided not to eat any just from the look and smell of the pizza! It’s base was an odd beige/ brown colour and looked kind of like playdoe or clay and it really smelled wierd. It was the most digusting pizza I had ever seen.. I tried a small bite the next day and the taste, which was fowl, just would not leave my mouth!! I only ate some of the Ben and Jerry’s as I was worried about the wine too which looked like the label on it had been printed from a home printer. My partner ate half the pizza and drank some of the wine and I have no idea how!! I think it was regretted the next day though.. We tried to drink the remaining wine the next day and it was truely undrinkable!!

Anyway, the reason I am telling you this is because it is best to listen to word of mouth in Berlin when it comes to what is good in terms of food.. I swear by a few places that I have been to and I am willing to divulge these secrets to the readers of this blog as I would not want you to have a bad Berlin food experience like I have had the unfortunate displeasure of having.

I live very close to WHITE TRASH FAST FOOD and we go there all the time. Not only is the place awesome and full of bourgeois freakish panache, but it also serves amazing burgers and some of the best fries I have ever eaten. They are thick and crunchy and come with a rather suprising name.. but I don’t want to tell you the name so as not to ruin the suprise.. I would recommend that you go there. They serve good old American Diner food with other things such as fish and chips, salads, soups, nachos and steaks to name a few items.. but whenever I take guests or tourists there, I always recommend the burgers.

I am a vegetarian and LOVE these burgers!! That’s because all the burgers are served as vegetarian versions too. My favourite burger is the one with goats cheese mmmm..

We are yet to have one non- entertaining evening at White Trash as it is filled with entertainment.. The first night I went there, it was late, around 1am and I was drunk and wanted something to eat.. while we were eating, we could watch a porn- almost a soft porn, but slightly harsher than that, about these Nazi German women torturing eachother.. very interesting dinner entertainment.. also we have been there with live dinner shows, with one in particular showing the manager going into the kitchen and putting a woman’s leg through a meat grinder to make burgers which we coulld see displayed on the screens whilst we were eating.. thank god I am a vegetarian!!

One of White Trash’s infamous burgers- highly recommended!!

Beef Nachos

Mom’s warm apple pie

The decor is also very cool.. set in what used to be a chinese restaurant, with the plush red colours and crazy props scattered around the restaurant such as a jar full of eyeballs or a bull dog with glowing red eyes, it is a visual feast..

Also, you can go there any time as the kitchen is open till very late (2am) and afterwards you don’t even have to leave the building if you feel like partying and it’s the weekend, as there is a club downstairs which has great bands and DJs performing on weekends.

If that is not enough, you can also get a tattoo from the ‘No pain no brain’ tattoo shop which is open till 8pm from Mon to Sat. White Trash also offers a smoking cinema which plays very interesting movies you wouldn’t usually see. And by smoking I literally mean smoking. Stuff your pipe or smoke some ciggies and sit back enjoy the show…

I am a sucker for this type to of place, but it is not really for the faint- hearted or for someone after a formal dining experience and more for party animals with taste for the obscure and different who really appreciate good food and fun and don’t mind rock/ rockerbilly and a whole load of freaks and tattoos.

White Trash Fast Foods
Schönhauser Allee 6/7
10119 Berlin
030 5034-8668
Closest Subway: Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz U2

www.whitetrashfastfood.com

Image by:Vivo (Ben)

On 26 April 1986, shortly after midnight to be precise, reactor # 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, 100 km north-west of Kiev in the Ukraine, blew up during a routine daily operation. Nearly nine tons of radioactive material – 90 times as much as the Hiroshima bomb – were hurled into the sky. Winds over the following days, mostly blowing north and west, carried fallout into Belarus, as well as Russia, Poland and the Baltic region. It was by far the worst nuclear reactor accident ever.

Within days radioactive mists wafted beyond Soviet borders and spread across most of Europe causing anxiety, apprehension and fear.

The most badly affected were the Republics of Ukraine and Byelorussia. They suffered large scale involuntary irradiation, due to extensive secrecy, and great economic damage. Furthermore the contaminated air mass passed over large areas of Poland and also over parts of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia and a number of West European countries.

Image by:misterbisson

Till now the land is abandoned, thousands of houses, thousands acres of the land, everything now stays almost the same as it was 20 years ago.

Although scientists agree that there is no risk of the sarcophagus exploding, the status of the estimated 180 tons of radioactive material trapped inside the nuclear power plant is still unclear.

The nearby city of Pripyat was not immediately evacuated.

Only after radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden, did the Soviet Union admit that an accident had occurred, but authorities attempted to conceal the scale of the disaster. To evacuate the city of Pripyat, the following warning message was reported on local radio: “An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. One of the atomic reactors has been damaged. Aid will be given to those affected and a committee of government inquiry has been set up.” This message gave the false impression that any damage or radiation was localized.

Only after 2 people died and 52 were hospitalised, did authorities order the evacuation of the nearby city of Pripyat.

The evacuation began at 14:00, 27 April. To reduce baggage, the residents were told the evacuation would be temporary, lasting approximately three days.

As a result, Pripyat still contains personal belongings. An exclusion zone of 30 km remains in place today. There is now, also a tour of Chernobyl and Pripyat, the surrounding evacuated area. Click here for more information.

If you would like to experience something similair and also visit some abandoned places right here in Berlin, then please come on one of our ‘Twilight tours’. Click here to find out what they are all about.

A tragic tale leaves a barren landscape of very beautiful imagery which few brave photographers have dared to capture and many brave tourists have dared to behold.

Images by:Vivo (Ben)

Image by:Pedro Moura Pinheiro

Watch a short movie about Chernobyl and Pripyat here

Also, see an article here

I haven’t really listened to Heavy Metal since I was 12 years old apart from the occasional trip down memory lane with a bit of Metallica, but I am often amazed at how huge the scene is worldwide and how much it has grown and keeps growing all the time. In Germany it is bigger than ever with thousands of Metal heads from all around the world flocking every year to countless festivals and to the biggest one in the world in the small town with 2000 inhabitants of Wacken, in Schleswig-Holstein in the North of Germany, just above Hamburg. Lately the Festival has been sold out to some 70 000 attendees. 2009 set a sales record; it sold out on December 30, 2008. All 70,000 tickets were sold over 200 days before the opening of the festival.

See a video about Wacken’s metal scene here

Germany has a long and strong history with heavy metal. It is considered by many to be one of Europe’s heaviest contributors to the scene. Early Hard Rock / Heavy metal was brought to German soil with the success of Scorpions, probably Germany’s most famous Metal Band.

Germany has a strong tradition of Speed metal and Power metal. Early speed metal bands include Running Wild, Grave Digger, Rage, and to some extent Accept. The European style of Power metal, born in Germany, was popularized by German bands like Blind Guardian, Helloween, Gamma Ray, and gained international recognition. In many cases these bands initially started out playing Speed metal, but later switched to Power metal.

Two local variants of metal subgenres exist in Germany. The Teutonic thrash metal scene is represented by such groups as Destruction, Kreator and Sodom. Medieval metal, a branch of folk metal incorporates German traditional music with industrial metal. It includes Subway to Sally, In Extremo and Schandmaul.

More extreme German bands include Necrophagist, Heaven Shall Burn, Caliban and Deadlock. These bands range from genres of death metal, deathcore, metalcore and black metal.

Some of the best bands in Germany according to guy called Chad Bower are:

1. Scorpions (www.the-scorpions.com)
2. Helloween (www.helloween.org)
3. Accept
4. Kreator
5. Destruction
6. Blind Guardian
7. Grave Digger
8. Sodom
9. Gamma Ray
10. Running Wild (www.running-wild.de)

I recently watched an awesome documentary on the Metal Scene around the world called ‘Global Metal’. Watch it here It is not the best quality and you should probably get in better quality, if you want to see it, but it is a must see!! It explains a fair amount about the music.

There is also an older movie by Sam Dunn, the same director, called ‘Metal- a headbanger’s journey’ which u can watch here- I would watch this one first to get a fulller understanding about Metal. (You may have to download a media player to watch the full movie)

I found of the most interesting parts about ‘Global Metal’ about the scene in Brazil and in Iran.. Such as in Sao Paolo, Brazil, there is a 5 story mall solely consisitng of specialized shops featuring the latest alternative stuff (for goths, metal heads etc).

From Gothic and industrial-style clothing and T-shirt shops, to tattoo and body-piercing salons and skateboard stores, the gallery features everything that trendy young Sao Paulistas consider essential to their life-styles.

“It’s mostly about music,” says Sebastian, a Sao Paulo native who goes by the name “Lawless” and recently returned to the city after spending five years in Los Angeles, California. “But, it’s also about attitude, it’s a kind of rebellion.” Sebastian hangs out in Stamp Rockwear, where his friend Alex Melo, a drummer in the rock band Abrasion, works as a clerk. Both Alex and Sebastian are living examples of such an attitude, outfitted in dark jeans, construction boots, and black T-shirts boasting the logos of their favorite metal groups. But the three girls a few feet away, eyeing stacks of shirts that bear the images of such heavy-metal bands as KISS, Led Zeppelin, and Iron Maiden, appear as though they’ve just arrived from their high school classes. They look quite conventional in pressed white blouses and tight-fitting blue jeans. “They’re probably just here to buy something of their favorite band,” Sebastian says, adding that this cultural trend in Brazil is about twenty years old.

Also, some other information I found about the metal scene whilst doing some Research, is about the umlaut (also known as rock dots) is an umlaut mark that is sometimes used gratuitously or decoratively over letters in the names of heavy metal bands, for example those of Mötley Crüe and Motörhead. Among English speakers, the use of umlaut marks and other diacritics with a blackletter style typeface is a form of foreign branding intended to give a band’s logo a Teutonic (old school Germanic/ Roman tribe) quality. It is a form of marketing that evokes stereotypes of boldness and strength commonly attributed to ancient north European peoples, such as the Vikings and Goths- it is generally not intended to affect the pronunciation of the band’s name.

These decorative umlauts have been parodied in film and fiction. In the mockumentary film This Is Spın̈al Tap (spelled with an umlaut mark over the n), fictional rocker David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) says, “It’s like a pair of eyes. You’re looking at the umlaut, and it’s looking at you.”

For more info about where to go in Berlin to get your metal fix click here

Otherwise, according to a fellow metal head, the places to go to catch Metal in Berlin are K17 venue in Friedrichschain as well as 3 popular bars in the same area- Paulie’s metal eck, Feuermelder and Halford’s.

There are also occassional metal gigs at Cassiopeia and Knaack club. But you can go to The Last Cathedral any night of the week for an alternative/ metal vibe but the Kill em All Club night at Last Cathedral looks like a good bet to me. (See our links page under bars and clubs for links to Cassiopeia, Knaack or The Last Cathedral)