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It was around the time of my 26th birthday, in September like every year. My girlfriend of two years was with me, and we had just flown to Willy Brandt after spending the summer in the Lemon Region and the spring in ATH like always. As we were waiting for our mate from Hellers to pick us up from WB, there was a well-spoken refugee from Damascus (went to a few clubs there during my time in Syria, very familiar with the scene) who gave us a flyer promoting this five-day-long at Neu-Tempelhof, starting that very evening.
My girlfriend took 10 seconds to read the flyer, rolled her eyes, groaned, sighed, turned to me, and whispered into my ear: Wir sind zurück in Berlin, Baby. She was so used to stapling posters from our time at Snygg Kluppe at that point that she stuck the flyer onto my chest as if she was stapling it onto a wooden lamp post, hahah. That made us all chuckle, especially the Syrian who had now proceeded to show us a paper reading "need 5 Euro for sandwich and water". Obviously we both gave the guy a 50. He even stuck around for a smoke while we waited for Max to pick us up from the airport.
Later at Max's my girlfriend (who is originally from Vilnius) told me she actually didn't feel too comfortable with the rave at Neu-Tempelhof, and proposed we only rave there for two days instead of five. Max looked at me, sat down, stood up again, and half-shouted, in his steadfast East-Berlin fashion: Der Ballsaal kennt keine Zeit, und die Zeit kennt nicht den Ballsaal. My girlfriend collapsed on the sofa, laughing. She was always quicker than me, and it took me an additional 20 seconds to get Max's joke, who was at this point close to exploding from holding in his laughter. Finally I got it, violently chuckled with a visible burst of saliva out of my mouth that landed squarely (of all things) in Max's dog's (also named Max) waterbowl.
Max got on the sofa, laughing, and kissed my girlfriend. I pulled out the C I had brought up from LR, sat next to Max who was still kissing my girlfriend Laima and laid three lines of cece on the glass table (made out of Euro pallets). The moment they stopped and saw the lines, we all knew this was going to be a long one. Laima went first, Max went second. I made sure there was no residue for Max (the dog) to lick off of the pallet.
At around 19 (10 pm for you 12-hour Yanks out there, haha) me and Max arrived at Neuhof (Neu-Tempelhof). We had agreed on Laima arriving later, as she wanted to catch up with some of her girls, Irina and Galina, who were now just a few kilometes from Berlin.
The first thing we both noticed was that the event had no free water, but we had both luckily packed our own amphwater. We made a pact that we'd both pack it in dry from my Toppits until we really, really needed the water.
We proceeded towards the dancefloor, which was still a ways away... We both had Rokossovsky's newest "Selbst-Kopfschuss im Bunkerraum und Zyankali" set (August 2009, I recommend checking it out) pumping in our headphones. As we got closer and started feeling the sub-vibrations on our chests, we, almost at the same time, looked at each other with smiles wider than the roundabout around Nike, turned off our own music, and disappeared into the sonic rainforest that was the rave at Neu-Tempelhof in 2009, when I turned 26.
Two days in (and after about five magnesium shots to undo the violent calf-cramps we all suffered!) we started feeling like the event really was overstretched; a two-day rave spread over five days. Laima had it right from the beginning. We took the Schwerer Gustaf from Neuhof to Hauptbahnhof, scored from Jan at the rafters near the pretzel shop (lol!!! Gz Jan if you're reading this), and fell asleep near the Romanian beggars for like 2-3 hours.
Max was the first one to wake up. He did so energized as always. He shook me awake and immediately whispered "Madrid" into my ear. I had barely opened my eyes, yet my mouth spread into this wide smile. I closed my eyes again with Max shaking me by my lapels (I was wearing a seersucker as is the custom during Berlin's close-off season), and whispered to him a resounding "yes".
We hopped into U-Bahn at Mitte. In a couple of hours we all woke up to a gracious female voice announcing "Wir sind in Madrid angekommen". We saw the Hamburg G20 protests from the window on our way there.
Laima reached out to Speggel (he drives a cab in Barc), who had us at Rex in less than an hour. Totally different vibe, no other German in sight. Backstage we talked to Olaf "entzündete Eichel" Schmurz, and even he said he's actually Swiss, not German, hahah. We kept going for two more days. The most magical moment was Oliver Hass (not to be mixed-up with Oliver Lieb) offering us some Sour Cream & Onion peanuts backstage while Coast 2 Coast played Home mainstage. Apparently Lidl had a campaign where Germans could vote for new Snickers flavours online, and actually Kacke Praline won the popular vote. Lidl refused to use the recipe, as it would've been a bit too on the nose, hahahah, and they just launched this Sour Cream & Onion nut thing instead. Just another anecdote from my legendary six-day rave in Berlin and Madrid.
Yeah I've done four days at Berghain (I know the very ug cult door guy with tattoos and angenorm clothes at the door, even took a few photos of him for Spütz in 2004) before, but timewise this is the longest.
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