Travel Writing

The Berlin Diaries – Gonzo Part II

/ Dan Hackett / Leave a comment

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Some more nefarious deeds have been done down in the gloomy frozen backalleys of Berlin, and I’m going to let you in on them. Walk with me a while, let’s talk. But, just like last time around, my cast of characters are real people with real lives who don’t necessarily want me to bounce their stories around the stratosphere. So we’re going to need disguises. We all know who they are really, but let’s play make believe for a few minutes. So, meet Jack and Sal. This time I think the narrator will be, oh I don’t know, Levi. Yeah, Levi is good.

So, as a warning to the reader, I would like to paraphrase and bastardise the title of the Oscar winning Daniel Day Lewis film: There Will Be Drugs.

Further to this, I would like to evoke a young Eazy E: Don’t quote me boy, cause I ain’t said shit. Continue reading →

Missing Havana

/ Dan Hackett / 3 Comments

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Yesterday I was searching for some music to listen to. I was listening to Rodriguez, because I’m slow on the uptake of what’s cool and I’d only just heard the soundtrack to Searching for Sugar Man and loved it. I began poking around in different genres, and I stumbled across Buena Vista Social Club. I threw on their album, and sat still, amazed. Man, those guitars, those soft, complex nylon strings. Those soulful voices, those drums. Chan Chan. I knew that song, or I had once known it, somewhere far away. I’d heard it before, two years ago on the far side of the world. I put my head in my hands and closed my eyes and I was there again. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – The Wizard’s Lair

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Thursday I braved the snow and lashing winds and headed down to the Bürgeramt in Wedding. ‘What is the Bürgeramt, Dan?’ I hear you plead. The Bürgeramt, my friend, is a frightfully dull bureaucratic building, an official government site where you have to sort out all your throat-slittingly boring paperwork, registrations, documentation, whatever. After three months living in the city, I have finally moved into a flat where I am able to register – which is a crucial part of moving here, as it allows me to get a bank account, get health insurance, get paid, you name it. The German word for this kind of registration is Anmeldung, a term which now boils my blood every time I hear it. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – The Mystical Pool of Neukölln

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*It’s a dark, blustery evening. You lie in bed, but you cannot sleep. The only thing that will do, you decide, is a bedtime story from your favourite grandfather. You creep downstairs, your teddy grasped tight in your little palm. You enter my office timidly, and find me an old man, reclined in a rich leather armchair by a roaring fire, spectacles perched on the end of my nose. I am quietly perusing a large, ornate copy of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species. I glance up with a start as you close the door behind you.*

Oh, hello my sweet grandchild! Didn’t hear you come in. It’s that time already, is it? Time for another story, ey? Well, you scamp, come hither and rest your arse upon my knee, and I will thrill you with tales of my youth in Berlin. Today’s story is set way back in 2017, on the 2nd of January. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – New Year’s Eve

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After three weeks at home in Leeds for the Christmas holidays, I flew back to Berlin on the 31st of December at 4.45pm. My lovely grandad gave me a lift to the airport, and thanks to 17 years in the military his punctuality is such that it goes way past being sensible and gets rather ridiculous. Four hours early, then, I checked in and sat drinking Guinness and reading until my flight – the last flight out of the airport that day, as everyone who wasn’t a moron had already got their flights out of the way, not saved them for last thing on New Year’s Eve.

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An Assortment of Photographs Representative of My Time and Travels in That Most Magnificent of Cities, Berlin

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Hello you.

I know, I know, it’s  a sad time here at World Hangover. ‘Tis true, The Berlin Diaries are, for now, over. Dry your tears, sweet reader, and keep your chin up, for there remain many bright days ahead. In the mean time, I have decided I will be writing regular articles on world famous adventurers whom I admire, which should hopefully be of interest to all three people who read this blog (Hi Mum!), but to be honest I just mostly want to write anything because I love writing. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – Homecoming

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I’m in a wonderful mood this morning. I fly home to England tomorrow for the Christmas holidays. I’m finally returning home, and I never expected I’d be doing it on my own terms. I didn’t fail, I didn’t crash and burn like so many others I’ve met along the way here; the French guys I met back at the hostel who spunked all their money in one month; the homesick kids who come in their droves and fly back after a couple of weeks when they miss sleep and sense; the poor buggers who are overwhelmed and turfed out by the ever unspooling red tape. Moving to Berlin is an upstream salmon odyssey,  battling against the current with hungry bears pawing the shallows. It’s a mad dash for safety under sniper fire, friends being picked off seemingly at random. You’re only ever one U Bahn fine or job interview rejection away from complete failure and a disgraced Ryanair home. But despite everything, somehow, I made it, and it feels so good. Continue reading →

The Berlin Diaries – 4th October

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Right, before we begin, shut up. I am well aware that ‘The Berlin Diaries’ is a precocious and self-important title to give to what will more than likely be a brief series of inarticulate drunken ramblings until I drop off the radar into the bass-soaked alcohol-warped wormhole that is Berlin. Nonetheless, I’m going to have a jolly good pop at documenting my time in this most unorthodox of cities. Whether anything in ‘The Berlin Diaries’ will be even remotely un-shit remains to be seen. You’re as much a spectator as I am. Stick around, let’s see what happens.

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