Sage Beach and Some Super Street Food

The Party at Sage Beach

Today was the Festival of Music in Berlin. From 4:00 PM into the night, different types of music are being played at various open air and inside locales throughout the city. My favorite kind of music is Renaissance and Baroque (like Purcell, Bach, Handel, Mozart) but my second favorite is Electronic Dance Music (EDM) in the genres goa psy/trance.  I checked the Web site out and the place that seemed to have the kind of music I liked the most was at Sage Beach in Kreuzberg, where some EDM was advertised. They didn't have any goa psy/trance, but techno and house were mentioned. Gernerally, I don't like techno and house - too much rhythm and the vocals aren't so inspiring either - but I decided to give it a try. Even if the music didn't pan out, I was particularly interested in visiting one of Berlin's beaches.

Berlin has a bunch of beaches along the Spree and elsewhere throughout the city. Here's a map showing where Sage Beach is located:

Another is on top of a mall in Preuzlauer Berg. Yet another is actually a swimming pool that is submerged in the Spree. People can get the feeling of being in Italy or Spain for the cost of a U Bahn ticket, and they get to go home and night and sleep in their own bed. During hot summer afternoons, I'm sure its great to hang out on the beach, but today was anything but hot - in the low 60's after yesterday's rain. Nevertheless, I thought I'd give it a try.

After a great bike ride through the city, I arrived at the Sage Beach site. It's an old industrial building along the Spree where the Sage Restaurant is located. This gigantic statue of the Buddha greeted me:

Well, not exactly the best of Asian art but nice for establishing the atmosphere nevertheless.

Inside, I found a bunch of "art cars" scattered about near the entrance, kind of like the art cars at Burning Man. Here's a couple:

And here's an old Mercury Comet mounted on top of the place where they keep the garbage cans:

I climbed up and took the picture.

Further on on the bank of the Spree, you come to the beach part. Here's what it looks like when nobody's at the party yet (I got there at 3:30 and it didn't start until 4):

I climbed up on top of an old barge where I had a great view of the proceedings and listened to the thumping house music the DJs were playing. Berlin is known for its female DJs (though female DJs are mostly absent everywhere else in the EDM scene) and a couple were in evidence here:

From where I sat, I had a great view across the Spree to the East Side Gallery, which I talked about in this post about the Mueggelsee trip:

The beach part was decorated with a kind of South Seas cross German hunting lodge theme. Here, for example, is a sign with directions to various remote locations:

which is kind of in the South Seas style, while here is a set of deer antlers, more in the German hunting lodge style:

There was even a pirate flag from the Hamburg St. Pauli football (soccer) club:

After sitting around for a while, I got up and checked out the grounds and walked over to the stand where you could get food. I had noticed a couple of people walking by with what looked like sweet potato french fries and, sure enough!, they had them (called "suess pommies" in German). First time I've seen sweet potato fries in Berlin. I love sweet potato fries so I stood in line to get some. And stood. And stood.

Turns out one of the deep friers was broken so they could make only one batch of fries at a time and for that they had two kinds, the sweet potato and regular. After about twenty minutes in line. I finally snagged some fries and bratwurst. Both the bratwurst and fries were really delicious, best street food I've had so far in Berlin. The bratwurst was spiced with barbecue spices and the sweet potato fries were thick like steak fries yet crispy.

As for the music, eh. While I was standing in line, I started to get a headache, I think it was from the thumping base line of the music. Thumping base is just about all techno has to it actually. Like I said at the beginning, I'm not particularly fond of house and techno, but I've occasionally heard some that I like. I thought maybe it would develop but no such luck.

I climbed on my bike for a fun and fast ride through the mostly empty streets of Sunday Berlin back home.