Abandoned Bierlin - Zur alten Brauerei - Böhmisches Brauhaus

It never ceases to amaze me... the vast amount of spectacular, dilapidated sites ubiquitous to Berlin. Motivated largely by boredom, having been recovering in bed all week on some pretty hefty antibiotics, I decided to commence exploration of such sites.

Now, it might be said that those of you who know me well, and have any sort of idea just exactly how clumsy I am, would surely advise me against the idea of exploring abandoned Berlin buildings and sites alone. But nonetheless, against my better judgement, I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind and do it anyway. Further to that, I best get cracking! There is simply too much to see and too little time. Berlin is an adventurer’s wet dream! (not that I’d label myself as an ‘adventurer’, okay?! I’m 30 years old for goodness’ sake! I’m more of the curious, moderate sort...)

Tucked away in a backstreet of busy Friedrichshain, a stones-throw away from a bustling Grundschule (Primary School), you will discover ‘Zur alten Brauerei’, which literally translates to ‘To the old brewery’. 
(The quick research I've done would indicate that, in spite of the sign, the brewery is actually called 'Böhmisches Brauhaus')

Zur alten Brauerei- To the old brewery

'Böhmisches Brauhaus' 

The brewery was built in the years 1868 and 1869

Like so many other of Berlin’s abandoned sites, how I’ve managed to pass this one almost daily without noticing it, I find an indictment to my observational skills.

I arrived out the front and immediately noticed the flimsy fence erected around the premises- an invitation to curious passersby. I swiftly ducked through a hole in the fence, and started exploring...FOR TWO MINUTES MAYBE (!!), after which point I realised that I had no idea how exactly to explore things! All of a sudden I’d exhausted all the possibilities I could think of for gaining entrance. Shit. Okay, so what now? I figured there must be a way to do it, people DO this kinda shit all the time! And by george, I was determined. So, I hoisted myself up onto a roof, covered my jeans in filth in the process, realised that was fruitless, jumped back down, and sat for a moment to reflect on my options. 

Notice the gaping hole in the fence? Yep, I'm pretttttty skilled at break and enter, clearly!

Just like MacGyver, all of a sudden, things became clear. There was another fence I needed to enter. Noticing that there were people watching me from a neighbouring apartment block, my mannerisms became stealth-like. I slipped my hood over my head and jumped, like a leopard, over the fence. Okay, I was in. Now I needed to climb the wall to gain entry into the building. Like a freakin’ mountain goat, I scale the brick facade as quick as lightning, and find myself at what appears to be the former main entrance side of the brewery, now, completely fenced off from access. Feeling much more concealed and safe, I relax and have a little wander around the premises.

Just like me, scaling the brick wall

I manage to find a narrow entry point into what appears to be the former production line room. It is pitch-black but after a moment my eyes readjust and I make out the silhouettes of incredible machinery. With burners and belts and... things I have no idea what they are, I carefully, step-by-step, make my way through the room. 

A way in! Hallelujah!

Vorsichtig! 

All of a sudden, I come close to slipping into a large gaping hole in the flooring, and I am reminded of my vulnerability. If I fall and break my neck, what happens? I die here, in this pile of rubble, and nobody knows where I am. OR, in true MacGyver style, I reach for a piece of rusty aluminium and cobble together a neck-brace, just strong enough to alleviate my spinal cord from the crushing force of my vertebrate. I stand up, and I walk outta there, with blood and sweat on my brow. A modern-day hero. The children who are finishing up their school day and flooding out onto the street see me approach and they run to me, screaming ‘Meine Helde! Meine Helde!’ Although in pain, I understand the importance of being a role-model, so I stoop down to the height of the children and shake their hands. They applaud me and I get back onto my bicycle and cycle to hospital. The children chase me, screaming with admiration and excitement.

Okay, but back to reality (boring, I know!), I sit back and imagine the room in full operation. The grains tumbling down the large conveyer belt into the mill for crushing. The sweet smells of crushed barley. The giant oven roasting grains until they’re a caramel colour, the burning husks sharp on the nose. OH mein Gott! It’s kinda like beer porn for me. An abrupt jolt back into the now, and I realise it’s just a giant pile of, most probably, defunct crap. It kind of breaks my heart a little bit.

Maschinenhaus(Lower left image taken from Wikipedia, but if you compare it to my image on the lower right, you can see it is the same corner of the room, albeit better lit)

Drunk on the idea of commandeering this place, I lose all inhibitions and find some ladders I decide to climb as high as I possibly can. I climb, and climb, and climb. I reach the top, and again imagine if I were to slip down the precarious ladder. It’s scary, yet kind of exciting. 

 

I take some snaps of the beautifully graffitied chimney.

Not content with the extent of my adventure, I decide to keep exploring. Eventually I manage to get into another large room, this one clearly destroyed by fire. Its gaping expanse makes me wonder what its former use was. Probably bottling or packaging. It’s huge, and filled with fibreglass insulation sheets. I cover my mouth and nose for fear of breathing in undesirables. Asbestos. Fibreglass. Who knows what the poor homeless people living in these ruins expose themselves to.

I stop to read some of the graffiti on the walls. It’s mostly written in English. I wonder if that’s because English is the International language of graffiti, or if it’s just English speaking scum buckets that have the propensity to break into private property and destroy it with their crap. Not that all of the graffiti here is crap- some I find myself quite enamoured with. 

The other thing I can’t stop wondering about... what exactly happens with this site now? How long will it remain in this dilapidated state before some fat-cat comes along and buys it up to create commercial apartment complexes? Could it ever resurrect as a brewery again? The idea of what its future holds is bittersweet for me.
 
Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine that I was born into a family of money...
Equipped with enough money, the possibilities for this site are endless... I think about buying it, and starting my own brewery. I think about its restoration, and it’s potential. It is so goddamned exciting!

What on earth was this pretty tiled bath exactly used for? 

  

BIRLIN BIRDS

Exposed, vulnerable and humiliated

The birds are so clever. The way they build houses in the trees, concealed from all. And then comes Autumn, and with the shedding of the leaves, they are exposed, vulnerable and humiliated. Poor birds.

written: 25/02/2014
images: 19/03/2014

 

DR(ama)ESDEN!

There are few city skylines more striking than that of Dresden’s

I don’t often take pleasure in adversity, but I must say, although my recent weekend away with my very good friend Josefine (Fine) in the beautifully baroque Dresden happened to be filled with misfortune, in true ‘Cristal-style’ accident after accident, it was, indeed, an incredible weekend! 

Fresh off the back of my tonsil tantrum, with antibiotika streaming through my blood, we ventured to Dresden by train, equipped with vegemite sandwiches and mandarins. 

Although I had absolutely no money in my account, I had a plan! Serendipitously (or suspiciously perhaps?), last week sometime a bundle of money from the Australian Taxation Office landed itself into my Australian bank account. What a dichotomy for me! My head was saying ‘ohhh, Cristal, forget it- it might be a mistake, they might want this cash back in the future, and then you’ll be truly screwed’, but my heart was saying ‘created for you, Cristal, to spend in this otherwise financially difficult period! GO ON! What are ya waitin’ for?!’
And in actual fact, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. My hands were tied. I needed that money.
SO, my plan was as follows: arrive in Dresden, go to ATM, withdraw money from Australian bank account. Have money.
Simple! Or so I thought...

Firstly, it turns out I’d been very clever through recording my Australian PIN (Personal Identification Number) inconspicuously under the alias of a false person in my mobile phone contact list. Okay, that’s good... Clever, even. I could remember the ‘persons’ name. I looked them up, only to have forgotten which permutation / combination within the false number my PIN actually was! I tried once. I tried twice. I stopped trying for fear of the ATM swallowing my card! Holy shit.
THEN it dawned on me! I realised that I was using the wrong card all together! I had done a little ‘purse clean out’ a few weeks earlier, because I realised I was carting around all of this superfluous crap from Australia not applicable to living in Germany. I’d taken out my Australian debit card because that account was fully drained anyway...BUT I’D NOT THOUGHT TO PUT IT BACK! And that was how I was going to access the ATO ‘birthday present’ (let’s call it that).
Wow. What to do? Waiting for my MacGyver instincts to kick in, to no avail, I soon realised I was screwed. 

Fine had brought along 100€ for the weekend. Bless her cotton socks, she offered to give me 50€ to borrow for the weekend, and so we both proceeded to tough out the duration of the weekend in Dresden living a lifestyle more poverty stricken than I’d even lived as a university student. Humbling, to say the least...and also not so conducive to seeing the sights of a new, amazing city (insert emojicon here of face embarrassingly clenching its teeth).

So, equipped with 50€, 17€ of which was immediately evaporated through accommodation costs (it should be stated that we stayed in the most incredibly tacky hostel Dresden had to offer, ‘Australia Stop’. It was, however, extremely comfortable and inviting. Recommended to anybody travelling to Dresden. 5 stars), we began our adventures.

Fine goes safari! 'Australia Stop' Hostel. Who KNEW Australia had lions and giraffes? They must be in Perth.

The weather in Dresden (and Berlin also) had taken a turn for the worse this day, and, although we were lucky that the rain was largely kept at bay, the gale force winds alone were a force to be reckoned with! 

Windy windy! This photo doesn't capture quite just how windy it was here...

With a spring in our step, a wind on our tails, and very little cash in our pockets, we headed to the Altstadt (Old City) to see some of the beautiful sites. 

As Fine and I were both equipped with cameras, it was quite humerous to later compare photos, only to realise that often we’d captured each other capturing something else. 

In this image, I’d gotten down low to incorporate the daffodils into the shot as I took photos of Augustusbrücke (August’s Bridge) leading into the Altstadt. In doing so, I had inadvertently obliterated the mandarin in my jacket pocket... sticky, wet, cold. Crrrrrristal!!! This is why YOU CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS!

Spot the camouflaged artistic Cristal, sacrificing comfort for art. Or, just a shitty photo with lots of lamp posts actually...

Now, as most of you know, the city of Dresden suffered terribly during the 3-day long devastating bombing raids by British and American planes in February 1945, which flattened most of the city. 3900 tonnes of explosives were unleashed on Dresden in four huge air raids, with ashes raining down on villages as far as 35km away. Consequently, tens of thousands of Dresdners lost their lives and 20 sq km of this once elegant baroque city lay in smouldering ruins.
Not content with a fate of ugliness, Dresden rose from the ashes and rebuilt, re-assembling nearly identically, many of the city’s most important landmarks. 

Frauenkirche- The original ‘Women’s church’ lasted for 2 centuries before collapsing 2 days after the February air raids. The East Germans elected to leave the church as rubble as a war memorial, but eventually decided upon a consecration in November 2005. The present day Frauenkirche is an identical replica. 

Zwinger (~dungeon)- Primarily a party place for royals commissioned in Dresden’s cultural heyday in the 18^th-century under the reign of Augustus der Stark (August the Strong).

Feeling slightly fatigued after an afternoon of intense sightseeing coupled with constant physical battles against the wind, we eventually decided to cross back over to the trendy Neustadt to get some cheap Vietnamese noodles (fortune cookies provided with our bill proved to be incredibly insightful for both Fine and I), have a beer in a bar, and head back to the hostel to kick back and fall asleep. I still had my vodka from the night before, so as Fine retired to our 10-dorm room, I sat in the communal area ‘gargling’ vodka and thinking about my future. A typical Saturday night for a 30 year old I’d say.

In view of the evenings conversations, this 'fortune' proved to be very apt!

The next day, after a leisurely sleep in and slow start, Fine and I had some loose plans to see a few more sites in the Altstadt. With our plans largely dictated by our funds (or lack thereof), we spent our last pennies going underground for some incredible, 400 year old catacombs- the last preserved city gate of the former capital of Saxony, before electing on one exhibition (the Grünes Gewölbe- Green Vault) to fritter the rest of the day away in. A curious exhibition I thought filled with ludicrous and hideously ugly precious objects wrought from gold, ivory, silver, diamonds and jewels... Not really my cup of tea, I was far more impressed by another transient exhibition based on Dionysus, the Greek God of the grape harvest, wine making and wine. I could relate far more to his ideals on the importance of intoxication.

Dresden's Fortress / Catacombs

 

Taken on the sly in the [no photos allowed] exhibition, I felt this explanation of Dionysus's life philosophy was remarkably poignant! We're totally samesies! We would have been good together...

“Through the drinking of wine his presence became tangible, and in a state of intoxication his divinity could be experienced”

As a side note, and just to demonstrate further how determined I was to create as much drama and stress in one weekend as possible, I then dropped my iPhone and shattered the screen thoroughly. Acutely aware of just how annoying being in my prolonged presence must have been for poor Fine, I concealed, quite effectively I think, the internal panic attack this resulted in. I knew I had no money to have my phone repaired, yet that, with my phone serving largely as my lifeline here in Germany, its repair was compulsory. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit! 

It hurt my heart as much as it hurt my screen, trust me!

In the face of this constant drama, this wonderfully pleasant (inexplicably) weekend was topped off with a rushed dart back to the hostel for our bags, before heading to Dresden’s Hauptbahnhof to catch our train back to happy, non-stressful, Berlin. 

Fine posting me my ritual post card to myself (this time with a secret little message from her)