Berghain holds a curious position in Berlin’s nightclub scene: most Berliners – native, adopted, weekend-trippers and everything between – will likely have a kind of snarky opinion of least one of the clubs, bars, parties, and raves that cover the city (Watergate is full of Italian tourists, Bar25 is full of waster wreckheads, Weekend is full of 18yo white rich kids who don’t know anything about techno, Cookies is full of horny businessmen in expensive shirts who don’t know anything about anything, Tresor is o-v-e-r), but Berghain is the nightlife common denominator: EVERYONE goes there.
Berghain is an exercise in absolute extremes from the very beginning; the queue is almost always heartbreakingly long, the openly sneering door staff may let you in, may not let you in dependent on their mood. The word-in-the-line rumour changes each week, “they’re not letting anyone in who speaks English”, “they’re not letting anyone in who looks Spanish”, “they’re not letting anyone in who is too dressed up”, “they’re not letting anyone in who looks too young”, “they didn’t let me in and wouldn’t tell me why”. Many a time I’ve had to reason with a visiting friend “Look just zip your lip, look pleasant. Don’t smile too much, don’t look like you have an attitude, don’t argue and just fucking do as you’re told.” The frisking, barking and bossy security staff can reduce the coolest of hipsters to the verge tears (literally, I’ve seen it). Cameras are surrendered, entrance fees handed over, mutely, with shaking hands.
Once you’re in though, you’re in! you’re in! you’re in!
The difference in energy between the entrance hall and the cloakroom is true juxtaposition. The level of pure joy in the cloakroom area is striking, I always keep an eye over my shoulder to catch the inevitable person making a triumphant double-door diva entrance through the swinging partitions, beaming, bouncing. Even now on my whateverth visit, and with my queue-jumping guestlist privileges I’m still overcome with a physical sense of relief at the site of the cloak room, like Pavlov’s dog with its cocked happily towards a subwoofer, rather than a nifty gramaphone speaker.
As a person with an admittedly strange and hilarious (to others) phobia of really big things – big statues and planes up close = *shudder* – I realise in retrospect why I didn’t care for Bergahin on my first visit. The place is VAST. There are certain vantage points and aspects in Berghain that seemed designed just to enforce that point. As a former power plant it’s an appropriate space, as a nightclub it is overwhelmingly tall, imposingly large, seemingly impossible to fill to capacity. A crazy mix of vast empty industrial spaces with pockets of sweaty body-to-body proximity. From the back walkway the floating Berghain dancefooor looks like a strange and crowded flashing island, an ocean away.
The Berghain dancefloor is no less strange or flashing up close, and is also very, very gay. Strobe flashes of bare/bear chests, harnesses, tranny cleavage, itty-bitty hot pants or no pants whatsoever. Berghain IS techno. There’s little point trying to describe it for somebody who doesn’t get it – I myself only get it about 63% of the way – but it’s loud, fast and infectious. The bar and chillout area to the left is almost exclusively male and almost exclusively gay, and the only place I have felt if not unwelcome then definitely uncomfortable. But that may be because a nice gay man who I met and befriended in there one night, and was discussing something fascinating with french kissed me mid-sentence, then picked up the conversation again without missing a beat.
Berghain seems absolutely designed for naughtiness of the sexual kind. The permissive pan-sexual attitude, the ban on cameras and the seemingly endless nooks & crannies, cubby holes and dark doorways are perfectly designed for 2 (or more) bodies to get up close and personal. While I’m sure I’ve witnessed the act in there on more than one occasion it’s so dark and shadowy and heady that you can’t really recall seeing anything than silhouetted and tangled human forms.
Up the stairs, one last glimpse over the throbbing Berghain dancefloor, and leftwards to Panorama Bar. It seems deceptively simple at first. A large simple room, a large simple bar, accessible house-techno fusions. A simple bathroom-tiled DJ area with a rig built of what looks like the results of forage & steal mission to a building site. But… before you know it you’re in, you’re dancing, you see a familiar face or 5, you’re ordering a round of Hemmingways at the bar and you never want to leave. The panorama that I’m assuming inspired the name is redundant in the dark and completely hidden during the day, except for when the remote control shutters are randomly opened by the bar staff for a few seconds at a time throughout Sunday. Dancers shriek with delight and fear and thrill and scramble for sunglasses. One memorable winter day there was a collective chorus of “It’s snowing?!?!” when the outside world peeked in for a bit.
As familiar as it is as the back of my door-stamped hand, there’s still plenty of Berghain/P-Bar experiences that I’m yet to have. I’ve never found the mythical outdoor beer garden. I’ve never ventured into the darkness beyond the sofas on the bottom floor, where hand-holding, butt-groping, face-eating twosomes of several flavours disappear to, well, you know. I’ve never done the 12am to 8pm 20-hour shift (but my best friend did, and me and my laundry bucket were witness to the messy broken-down-doll aftermath). I’ve never made it to the basement sex club – but if i ever do I want it to be for the Wednesday night PVC fetish party, Gummi, purely because of the name which never fails to me chuckle.
But there are plenty of things I have done. I’ve eaten gelato from the little gelato bar tucked away above and to the right of the Berghain dancefloor, one that I bought myself and one that was offered up randomly by a random boy – I then noticed through the haze that he had been giving spoonfuls (from the same spoon!!) to every dogs-breath cotton-mouthed person in there, and I’m still full of icky regret about that one. I’ve seen the sun come up and go down. I’ve been part of contraband picture-taking missions. I’ve drunk too much, stayed too long and indulged in 4-in-a-cubicle giggling drug runs. I’ve left, gone home, then changed my mind, changed my clothes and gone back. And I’ve had the best, best moments of pure musical ecstasy with my eyes closed and my arms up and my awareness of the proximity and sweat of strangers completely dismissed for the moment.
