Short Notes: Paul van Dyk at Aquanario, Gigantic Grill, Doings at Alex, and El Bocho

Video Projection of Paul van Dyk on a Screen of Water Droplets at Aquanario

 Posted by James

This time, a few quick notes about fun and interesting events in Berlin.

Aquanario

Last Thursday, Renate and I attended the opening night of the Aquanario show at the old Tempelhof airport in southern Berlin. The first performer was Paul van Dyk, who we saw earlier this year at the We Are One festival. This was the first time we've been at Tempelhof, and we had to enter the concert area through the old arrival hall of the airport:

Aquanario uses screens of water shot into the air to modify lasers, in some cases, projecting video of the performers onto the screen as you can see in the photo at the top of the page. This wouldn't work in California at the moment, though, too much water wasting. Here are more photos of the light show:

Here's one of the requisite flame throwers which are part of many trance concerts:

While the light show was spectacular, the music was so-so, not fast or rhythmic enough to dance to, and nobody was dancing. I suppose they needed to keep it slower to allow for latency in the water show.

Gigantic Grill

Practically every weekend when we bike down Strasse des 17 Juni there's a gigantic Weber grill somewhere around Grosser Stern. Here you can see it with the Siegessauele in the background:

During the week, they park it over near Hackischer Markt at the Weber store:

We always look for it and miss it if we don't see it. It's huge, big enough to roast a whole pig!!!!!

Vegan Wagen

Speaking of roast pig, last Sunday we dropped by the Vegan Festival on Alexanderplatz ("Alex" for the cool, hip Berliner). There were booths with vegan food, information about animals, and even one by an organization lobbying for birth control to reduce the population of pigeons in Berlin. Berlin is "vegan central" in Germany. Earlier this spring, I saw a truck ("Wagen" in German) on the Wilmersdorfer Strasse pedestrian mall with a huge pig on it, advertising veganism, and was disappointed not to get a picture. But it was at the vegan festival:

That pig on the top looks like it might be a challenging fit even for a grill the size of the Weber.

El Bocho

El Bocho is a well know Berliner street artist, so well known that his art has become something of an institution. He's created a character, called Littl Lucy:

She's cross-eyed and has an attitude, in particular, she doesn't like cats:

These pictures were taken at the Hackischer Hof. If you want to see more of El Bocho's work, check out his web site.