Berlin is not a parfume city
Pit Schultz
it was not like they told us. It is not even
becoming what we expected. Instead almost 20% unemployment.
Some of my friends go back to wherever they came from
after they came here around 92. The cultivation of the
miserable becomes hi culture again. Only the red Info-Box
at Potsdamer Platz is a building that people seem to need.
A temporary one to represent the future plans in cheesy
multimedia installations and panorama format.
(www.cityscope.de) Not far away, the Fernsehturm (365m)
puts everything in the right scale (www.nasa.gov) Compare
Peking tower (??) Singapore tower (??), HongKong tower (??).
Why New Zealand has no tower? This liberal land is in the
press all day, the Keyword for the German Version of
Thatcherism. Getting forced to globalize and open the
social scissor. Giving up on the hard DeutschMark and
celebrating the not-only-economic trauma of the 30s. The
impertinent winner is the stock market, and it seems to
route itself around Berlin.
Last week, they found 80 men living in metal boxes
in the mud working 7 days a week for around 4 Dollars
an hour. The men had too leave the country. A week before
they thought they found a WWII-bomb in the sand under a
street in East Berlin, but instead it was an illegal Gas
depot. The Reichsbank (where the Nazi-Gold was) near
Alexanderplatz goes more then 5 floors down under; there
are connections to the canal that can flood them in some
minutes. Now it contains the recirculating paper money of
the Bundesbank.
The Deutsche Bank is starting an experiment with
e-cash. (www.deutsche-bank.de) while the new law of
telecommunication (www.anwalt.de) gets applause for its
liberal use of encryption and digital signatures. There
is a will to export German Law at least onto Euro-level.
(www.akademie3000.de)
The Bundestag (www.bundestag.de) decided to move
here before 2000. Until then, Bonn will hold contact
through one of the first running cyberoptic Datenautobahns.
The millenium bug comes to press these days, too. (www.taz.de)
Fashion celebrates the 30s. Especially in the East.
Cabaret, Hermaphrodites, Depression, Whiskey, expensive
Evening clothes and workers hats, women in furs. (sorry no pix)
Music: Drum and Bass stinks if you don't know where to go.
After Techno it seems to become the default-beat. Hard-step
at Kantianstr. Best club these days: Club for Chunk.
Rosenthalerstr. Thursday, Sunday. Undefined, eclectic
liveacts and Jim BBB on the decks. Panasonic closes April.
(some sounds www.icf.de/RIS/)
