#206: Museum night, A100 ravedemo, scooter fire, sex-thieves
25 years since Run Lola Run
Hey 20 Percent,
I’m sneaking this event into my intro, becauase I know my colleague Andrew despises it and won’t mention it Friday: Die Lange Nacht der Museen aka The Long Night of the Museums, which takes place this coming Saturday, from 6pm to 2am.
On my second trip to Berlin around 1998 or so, I ended up doing the Lange Nacht by chance — and loved it. Taking free shuttle buses around to random exibitions, large and small. Odd little installations, performances, pop-up cocktails bars, street food, balmy weather, and of course, some DJ sets thrown in. It probably cost 10 deutsche mark then, now it’s €18 (concessions €12/kids up til 12 free). This year the theme is “Sounds of Berlin”, meaning live music, sound installations and instrument workshops, etc. in dozens of museums, alongside access to their regular exhibitions — from the Pergamon Museum to the Stasi Prison, from the Haus der Kulturen der Welt to the Zeiss Planetarium.
Andrew hates the LNDM because there’s too much to do (and too many people). He has a point. Their site suggests no more than four stops, otherwise you’ll be exhausted.
Some news below!
Maurice
P.S. Thanks a million to our lovely sponsor Expath — who are offering a great deal on totally non-boring German courses below.
Bonfire of the batteries
Another weird, but thankfully non-life-threatening fire: At former Tegel Airport, 130 electric scooters and 60 e-bikes caught fire on Saturday afternoon. They’d been parked in an outdoor area for maintenance, the fire deptartment told rbb. “We noticed the fire ourselves because of the smell. Our fire station is only about 100 metres away.” Allegedly, batteries were lying all around the area but the cause of the fire is unclear. Hatred towards e-scooters is running high, so I wouldn’t rule anything out.
Men duped online and robbed blind
The Berlin public prosecutor's office has filed charges against a 20-year-old man who allegedly lured men to sex dates with three different female profiles in order to rob them. According to ntv, the man is accused of three counts of “aggravated predatory extortion”, in one case in combination with dangerous bodily harm. The attacks took place between December 2022 and February this year. Apparently the robber pretended to be various young, female sex workers. When the johns shown up at an agreed meeting place in Alt-Hohenschönhausen, the 20-year-old and an accomplice mugged the men while brandishing knives, baseball bats and hockey sticks, making off with cash and phones.
Techno vs. autobahn
An alliance of clubs and citizens’ initiatives is throwing a “ravedemo” at Ostkreuz on September 2 in protest of the planned extension of the A100 highway from Treptower Park straight through Friedrichshain up to Storkower Straße at the fringes of Prenzlauer Berg. “Bass away the A100”, so goes the motto. Twenty clubs and culture venues — and even a school — are threatened by the next phase of the inner-city freeway. Organisers expect 10,000 participants to demonstrate in the temporary car-free zone around Ostkreuz.
Factoid
Twenty-five years ago, in August 1998, director Tom Tykwer’s cult Berlin film Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) premiered in German cinemas. Lola (Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to find 100,000 deutsche marks or else her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) gets a bullet in the head. Lola sprints across the city in search of the cash. Three versions of the story ensue, each with different life-changing turns due to minor coincidental occurances. It’s experimental but entertaining and has a zeitgeisty techno soundtrack! Run Lola Run won the audience award at Sundance and put Berlin on the map as an edgy, cool place once and for all. You can watch the whole (German) version for free on YouTube.
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I LOVE long night of the museums! It's not when you should go to the big places, except maybe to dance in their vaults. Pony up to see those collections. The long night is when you try all the crazy obscure tiny places and figure out which ones are worth going to during the day.
I think there are a lot more battery explosions going on than people are talking about, though I had a debate with someone on mastodon about this and he said insurance claims show very few incinerations of e vehicles compared to regular ones. But my relatives' ecar burst into flame on their driveway at 5am (which never happens with regular cars?) and the insurance is forcing massive investigations, so who knows whether they are accepting reports? And there was that transport boat. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-cargo-ship-fire-electric-car-suspected-source-dutch-coastguard-2023-07-26/
I also hate cars, love movie tips, and learned a ton from expath.