Plucky Survivors See Europe Day 6: Berlin

The story of the musical about a brick is coming, but it’s at the end.  It’ll be worth the wait.

Since my actual last day in Berlin will be spent doing laundry, working, and packing, I considered this to be my spiritual last day and what a beautiful one it was.  The weather was perfect for a stroll, and I did lots of it.

For the record, I submit to you my step count numbers starting with a random Sunday from a couple of weeks ago (in my defense I wasn’t feeling well) and the last five days.

I’m pretty sure I’ve walked more in those five days than I have in the last five years.  My step counter app keeps asking if I’m being abducted.

Today was all about exploration with no specific agenda, starting with the Kruezberg neighborhood.

I started along Bergmannstrasse, a gorgeous tree-line street where I found Marheinekeplatz Markt, an indoor food market with purveyors of meats, cheese, bread, produce, pastries, and more.  I wanted all of it but satisfied myself with a slice of strawberry-rhubarb streusel.  I took one bite and had to physically restrain myself from hoovering down the entire thing.

Strolling down the street I stumbled upon an outdoor flea market with vendors selling just about everything including clothing, records, books, collectibles, jewelry, musical instruments, and so much more.

I came upon a table with some random flea market stuff on it and spied a simple, clearly vintage wooden box with playing cards painting on the top.  Inside are two sealed packs of cards and an instruction booklet for how to play canasta in German.  I was taken by it and bought it on the spot – my Berlin souvenir.

A little research later on led me to discover that this is from FX Schmid Muncher Spielkarten, a manufacturer of playing cards from 1860 to the mid-1990s.  It’s hard to know for sure but the box is probably from the 1960s.  I love it.

I sat on a bench and looked at my card set and ate my strawberry-rhubarb streusel and life was good.  If and when it gets harder later on, I will remind myself of this moment and force myself to have more of them.

I kept walking and found a few beautiful buildings to gawk at, including this gothic church built in the 1890s.

Directly across the street was yet another outdoor market, this one with more food I wanted all of.  I talked a produce vendor into selling me a couple of strawberries and they were ridiculously sweet.  I’ve literally never tasted a strawberry that good.

More walking across the scenic Landwerhkanal.  On one side of the bridge was some sort of pipe that they put steps up and installed a couch on the top of it.  If people hadn’t been sitting on it already, I absolutely would’ve gone out there.

You may have noticed graffiti in a lot of the photos.  This is omnipresent in Berlin – it’s almost rare to find a building that hasn’t been tagged in one way or another.  A little research helped me make sense of it as it was a movement started in the 1980s as people painted protests on the West Berlin side of the wall.  There are certainly some random scrawls, but a lot of it is beautifully rendered and quite artistic.

Along the canal was yet ANOTHER streetside market.  They really love them in Berlin.  This one seemed to be focused on crafts, with stall after stall of bolts of fabric plus handmade jewelry, clothing, and more.  The fabric was dirt cheap, so attention all drag queens… if you need inexpensive material for your next dress, just fly to Berlin and you can get all you need for bargain basement prices.

I walked across the river to the Ost Hafen event center for lunch at the Italian Street Food Festival.  There were about a dozen vendors of all things Italia, and I dove in with a Bolognese spaghetti ball (pasta inside fried dough!) and then a pizza with spicy salami, mozzarella, onions, and chili oil.  I know I’m going to have really good food when I get to Italy, but this was a very nice preview.

More walking took me to the Neukolln district and the Richardplatz village, with buildings dating back to the 1700s and several biergartens, shops, and restaurants.

After that I need a break, so a couple of trains back to the hotel for some rest, work, and more car stuff including a quick dash for a dash cam to the place I bought the German computer from.  Luckily the Dashcam is all in English, so I should be good there.

After a rest, I headed back out for another absolutely terrifying Uber ride.  Seriously, the guy drove through construction zones and spent most of the time muttering what I believe were German curse words at the traffic.

My destination was Monsterkabinett, located in the same complex of courtyards in the Hackesche Hofe where the Chameleon theatre is located.  This particular alleyway and courtyard have a completely different feel, very artsy-boho with graffiti and cool hipster kids hanging out.

What is Monsterkabinett?  That’s a good question.  At its core, it’s a mechanical theatre, but it’s done with a bizarre, Germanic, theatrical sheen that is both deliriously bad and deliciously entertaining.  The guide explains that you will be taken into the basement where the monsters live, then takes you down a set of steep stairs, her flashlight providing the only light (at first) in the pitch-black cellar.

She spins a yarn about waking up the monsters and then things come to life (and light) out of the darkness.  All the mechanicals were built by an artist collective, and it has a definite Tim Burton nightmare feel.  The monsters herk and jerk and make “music” and spin and do all sorts of other things as the guide sort of twirls around gleefully like she really believes these things are real.  It was weird and awful and wonderful and I couldn’t get enough.

On my way to my final Berlin show, I first saw this sign and had to take a picture of it because I want to hear the punchlines you come up with.

Then I happened upon a restaurant called QBA, as in the country.  Being a major fan of Cuban cuisine, I decided to give it a twirl and I’m so glad I did.  The first thing that excited me is that the glass of Sprite they delivered had ice in it.  That doesn’t happen – literally anywhere – but it gave me some glee.  The second thing that excited me was the Cuban version of their chicken fajitas, a sizzling skillet full of tender white meat, onions, peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and more done in a rustic red sauce.  A side salad with some fantastic garlic dressing and a pile of soft tortillas made this a fantastic choice.

For the main show of the evening, I was going to go to a thing called Circus Elusion, another queer-focused sideshow type things, but I was worried after the last two shows that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it enough because of the language barrier.

For the record, I’m not expecting shows here to be in English, but I specifically picked shows that seemed like they wouldn’t have a lot of dialogue or story – think Cirque du Soleil – so I could keep up.  Both shows left me confounded and I felt like Circus Elusion would do the same.

As I traveled around Berlin, I kept seeing advertisements for a show called “Blinded by Delight” and so I finally looked it up.  It bills itself as a variety spectacular and in the FAQ, under the question “Is the show also suitable for foreign guests?” was the answer, “Our Grand Shows are great for international guests as, unlike musicals, revue shows do not have a classic storyline. This means that there aren’t any spoken texts to understand – so anyone can enjoy the show.”

They lie.  A lot.

The show is at the Fredrichstadt Palast, a grand theatre dating back to the 1980s that replaced a similarly grand one dating back to the early 1900s.  It has 1,800 seats and claims to have the biggest theatrical stage in the world at just over 30,000 square feet, although this is another lie.  There’s one in China that is over 47,000 square feet

There’s no denying that this place is vast and technologically cutting edge.  The show featured more than 30 dancers, acrobats, BMX bike riders, aerialists, and enough stage wizardry to make a Broadway show jealous.  This is a multi-multi-million-dollar spectacle that would be right at home in Vegas.

Except for the German part.  Despite what they said about it not having spoken texts or classic storyline, this show absolutely did.  A lot of it!  Dialogue, entire spoken scenes, songs – original ones, so I couldn’t even hum along.  Since I didn’t understand what was going on, I decided to make it up as they went.

This is where the story of the brick comes in.

The show is about light.  We first meet the entire cast as they sing and dance and are led by three of our four main characters.  The main guy sort of looked like Alex Brightman who played Beetlejuice (and others) on Broadway, so I’m going to call him Alex.  Alex is the slick ringleader who carries the light – literally.  He walks around with a glowing cube that represents all things good and happy and light.  Get it?

Alex has two sidekicks.  First is woman we’re going to call Judy-Katy, because she is dressed like she is a live-action movie version of Judy Jetson as played by Katy Perry.  Second is a non-binary person wearing a bustier, chunky heels, and a glittery skull cap.  We’re going to call them Pat, because it’s a good non-binary name.

Alex, Pat, Judy-Kate, and the rest of the ensemble live in a land I’ve decided was called Zahnpasta.  If you didn’t look that up when I mentioned it in a previous post, it’s German for toothpaste, but I think it works here.  After all, use some and your teeth will sparkle and shine and be happy and light, just like Alex, Pat, and Judy-Kate are in Zahnpasta

They and their friends sing and dance and basically explain how wonderful things are and then acrobats do crazy things on see-saws because Zahnpasta is just that cool.

But then something bad happens.  The light starts to flicker and fade, and everyone runs for the hills outside Zahnpasta except for Alex, Pat, and Judy-Kate because they’re plucky.  As the lights fall to dim and dark, Alex mentions someone named Lucy – several times, which is how I was able to pick it out.  I decided Lucy is the Chosen One who will guide them out of the darkness back into the light.

As they stand there discussing Lucy, a single brick falls from the sky and crashes to the stage, breaking into two pieces and leaving a pile of dust on the floor.  Alex, Pat, and Judy-Kate glance at the brick, but don’t interact with it in any way.  I found this curious.  What does it mean?  What could the brick represent?

It’s simple!  The brick is the light, you see.  Because it fell from up above and has now broken, it is the demise of all things light.

Alex, Pat, and Judy-Kate exit, leaving the brick behind mind you, and a new character emerges… Lucy!  She is dressed in rags and people in rags around her dance with desperation because Lucy has lived somewhere other than Zahnpasta.  Somewhere sad and depressing and desperate.  We’ll call it Florida.

So, Lucy is trapped in this awful place and as the dancers do their “I’m from Tampa” dance, Lucy almost surreptitiously picks up the pieces of the brick and stuffs them in her pockets.  This made total sense.  Lucy is the Chosen One, so at some point she will put the brick back together and light will be restored to Zahnpasta.

Except then the music stopped and the curtain came down and an announcer said something in German and then, helpfully, said in English, “Due to a technical issue, we must pause the show.”

Turns out the brick had nothing to do with the show, it just literally fell out of the ceiling onto the stage.

I have to admit; I was a little disappointed.  I was enjoying the brick’s journey.  I wanted to see how it turned out.

About 30 minutes later, they finally started the show back up again and if you remove the brick from the explanation, I think I was pretty close to the overall plot.  There was a weird detour where Alex and Lucy got married in Vegas, I think – there were people dressed as roulette tables and dice – but who knows, really?

The thing is I still enjoyed it.  The dancing is phenomenal – better than a lot of shows I’ve seen on Broadway.  They do everything from contemporary to ballet to jazz, including a stunning, sexy number done in a shallow pool of water.  There’s even a full Rockette style kick line at one point.

The variety acts were also fantastic and thrilling.  As good as anything you’d see in a Cirque show.  Pictures weren’t allowed during the show but I snapped a couple at the bows to give you a sense of the scope.

I just really wish it had been about a brick.

One more day in Berlin and then the road trip part of the trip begins!