I’ve lived in Berlin for the best part of a year now and can safely say that it feels like home. I don’t miss Britain’s imperial hubris, its shitty weather or Nigel Farage. However, most of all, I don’t miss its clubs. It’s not that I hated British clubs – I spent a lot of my spare time and disposable income in them – but no part of me pines for the sweatboxes full of lecherous men and £7 doubles that I’ve left behind. Surprisingly enough, I have no desire to return to a pitch-black room and listen to chart hits while a rugby player tells me ‘I want it’. Hey, here you can even happily eat a kebab afterwards without the worry that you might end up shitting yourself the next day.
Full line up, venue and ticket details here »
I’ve swapped all that for a clubbing experience so vastly improved it feels strange even comparing them. Now, I can be more than ready for the club on 5 euros worth of pretty decent tasting beer, head down at 1 a.m. and not come home until 11 in the morning. In that time, I’ll hear hour after hour of incredible techno, buy drinks in the club for 2 euros a piece and spend my time smiling at the person next to me revelling in the euphoria, rather than trying to free myself from their grasp for long enough to file a harassment charge. Whereas I used to go outside to the smoking area to get some respite from the attrition of Britain’s clubs, now I go there to carry on the night, dancing on terraces, round a bonfire or under the trees as the sun rises over my newly adopted home.
Having said all that, there is one part of British life that I do miss: festivals. I don’t like being in a dark room with lots of sweaty British people, but I don’t mind being in a field with them, especially when British festivals usually come up trumps with the line-up. Therefore the imaginatively named ‘Berlin Festival’ seemed like just about the perfect combination of my old and new homes.
Boasting a host of Britain’s finest (Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, Mount Kimbie) alongside some of Berlin’s (Moderat, Sven Vath, DJ Koze), as well as acts from around Europe (Woodkid, Trentmøller, Nina Kraviz) you get to listen to great music and feel a bit like you are sticking it to Nigel Farage in the process. For all you could probably see all these acts over the course of a year in London (and maybe all on the same bill at a British festival), I feel with £7 beers and those guys who wander around with vests so baggy you can see their belly buttons, there’d be something missing in comparison to this Berlin show. Apart from anything, hearing Hudson Mohawke drop TNGHT’s ‘Higher Ground’ surrounded by happy, chilled drunk Germans is a moment I don’t want to miss.
As well as the music, the story of the venue itself is a testament to the style of Berlin. The location is an old airfield, which was gifted to the city and has been converted into a public park. The space was threatened earlier this year, the march of gentrification in Berlin tried to stop the hoards of picnicking kite-skateboard-wind surfers having fun by building over priced houses on it. So there was a referendum and naturally the people of Berlin voted overwhelmingly to save Tempelhofer Feld giving the festival even more of a celebratory vibe.
Of course, that’s not the only way they do things differently here. This year, the festival has cut the price of tickets, posting a heartfelt message about maintaining freedom for Berliners to do or not do something because of choice, not monetary restriction. There’s even a further reduction for people who can answer a couple of questions and prove they have been to the festival before. This is a far cry from Glastonbury’s £230 ticket, and unlike those trekking to the southwest for Britain’s biggest festival, I won’t have to sleep in a sweaty tent or piss in a giant pit for four days without a shower. Best of all large networks of runways do not tend to disintegrate into endless streams of mud after three hours of mild drizzle.
The festival is completed with art installations across the site, known as the art village. Commitment to local art is central to the ethos here, Becker-Schmitz will design the Yaam Yard stage, Yaam is a Berlin institution, think beach/ graffiti/ club/ basketball space (I know, but it works). Jim Avignon Berlin’s pop art icon will team up with graffiti legends 1UP to paint the festival’s Berlin Wall commemorating the 25th anniversary of its fall by showcasing what the city has become in that time. There will be dance collectives, an affordable art market and a poetry saloon but best of all GLITZERKLUB a female art collective dedicated to making the world sparkle, yeah not totally sure what this means but I know I’m excited.
Essentially, Berlin Festival is everything I loved about Britain; amazing festival line-up, friendly atmosphere, day after day of fun combined with the Berlin mentality, a focus on art and the unique vibe that everyone here feels but nobody can really describe. All this with far fewer wankers and for much less money, what is not to love?
For more information and tickets view our guide to Berlin Festival.
