Day five

Thursday March 3

Mark:

Moving day. Our hotel was booked up until today and we decided on Monday to check out the Kiez Bude, the hostel I stayed at all that time ago. And boy were we impressed. Even more so when they agreed to beat our room rate at our current place. It’s also right across the road from us, so a really simple transition to an amazing, pink en suite double room in, and yes this is really true, a former brothel. And they fully, er, embrace their past in the whole decor of the place, which includes their famous side by side two person toilet. The place is empty and we have our pick of rooms and so are able to bag their most famous and most popular room, the pink room. It’s up one flight of stairs, so a little carrying for us, but nothing major. We can handle this. A game changer here is that it has a kitchen with a microwave and a fridge. Things you normally take for granted, but a major deal when living on the road. This now means we can make more of our budget which, up until now, had seen us cutting back by mostly having noodle cups made with hot tea water from the last place, supplemented by as much fresh fruit as possible. Living like we do, when you have no kitchen facilities at all, it’s noodles and the like, supplemented by as much fresh fruit as possible, or have breakfast, lunch and dinner on the street or in cafes or bars, or restaurants in extravagant moments, and damn that can add up. 

Not only does the Kiez Bude have a kitchen, it also has a bar. Or at least a bar type area. Currently unstaffed and unstocked, but still a really cool hang out place to have. And at the back of the bar is a huge, and I mean huge, sofa on a slightly raised stage type construction. This will become our office for writing sessions and we sit here, literally as I type this, surrounded by sex memorabilia – is that the right word? – and erotic pictures. There’s even a Kiez Bude calendar over the bar, and the picture of the page for March is our room. This bar is just two or three metres from our room. And from our window we look right out onto the Reeperbahn and Beatles Platz. We can now see exactly how busy things are without even venturing outside. And yes. It’s Thursday, so approaching the weekend, and there is indeed a little more activity than we’ve been seeing since we got here on that explosive Saturday. Maybe we can actually find a few more bars open now. Time to go hustle.

A little high lighted inventory.

The London Bar. Why not? Quite small, but could possibly be good for low key daytime gigs if they’re up for it. They’re not. Apparently they’ve tried music in the past but neighbours upstairs got that thing vetoed and they don’t want to touch it anymore.

We go next door to the Scandinavian bar. We’ve hesitated about this place due to it’s silly boxing machine but we’ve thought, why the hell not, so here we are today. We meet the actual owner Anil. He says we could possibly do something in here tomorrow but he’s also leaving Hamburg tomorrow for the weekend. He may well let us know today, he may not. He doesn’t.

A few more bars are open that we’ve not seen and we go and check them out, everytime having to stop and have our Corona stuff checked before we can even go in and see the place to decide it’s too small or unsuitable and so we immediately turn and walk out.

What we are finding quite a bit is that people perk up when we tell them why we’re here, but we’re also finding that a lot of managers aren’t about and so we still can’t make any inroads.

One place we might be able to make some kind of inroad is Cowboy Und Indianer. And anyway, it might be a place to go have a drink. As soon as we arrive, Sven is there to greet us like long lost friends. And there’s a band playing. Great. We order a pint and settle back to enjoy the band which is a three piece playing covers. Before our drinks are finished, Sven is round to us with free shots. Wonderful. Thankyou very much. Then, when our drinks are finished, he returns and gives us free beers. We might just be able to get used to this. When we order another round, he comes and talks to us and says that we may be able to play here on Monday. Nothing confirmed, but cool. Something of a possible. 

We arrive back at the hotel to discover there’s nobody there. Nobody. Not, no guests. I mean, no staff, nobody. The admin office is a few doors down the street and there’s no-one running the bar or anything else. And we know the guests for the week have left and that no-one else has checked in. We are totally alone in here.