Berlin Part 1 (the first 2 days) July 31st- 30th, 2006

(Margaritte)

We arrived in a fuzzy state: awaking at 2:30 am to catch our 7:30am easy Jet flight into Berlin. I was taken out of my fuzzy state by the sounds of birds chirping loud like insects. The sun was hotter and there was an ad on the metro against homophobia, showing two football players kissing. We took in our new surroundings with the ease of Brazilian music on my disc-man. Elliat was confident in Berlin; we were going to her other home, her other life with all the little secrets to reveal. She pointed at graffiti/street art that she loved, told me the direction we were going to Liebigstrasse. I started to get a taste of the German language. Berlin is spread out in large block buildings creeping with stairways and ally-ways, long Avenues with red brick bike paths.

Elliat's house X-B, a fraunen.lesben.trans (womyn, lesbian, trans) housing project, is where we were headed. Housing projects are gigantic communal apartment buildings where people can live communally for cheap. Since squatting became illegal in Berlin many former squats have been bought and not developed; the occupants pay little rent and live similarly to how they did before. The housing collective is in the process of trying to buy the building so it can be even more collectively run. To find out more info visit http://squat.net/liebig34/. When we got there we were greeted by a phone call from our friends in Leeds, Helena and Bob of the band Gene Jenet. They were considering doing our Travel Queeries theme song! Familiar British voices in a land of new. It’s funny how Britain started to feel like home.

The housing project was set up like a typical apartment building except everything was open. You walked up a flight of stairs to a hallway leading to a kitchen and toilet for that floor as well as 2 living rooms. The people living on that floor shared the communal space. Another hallway led to the bedrooms—generally large rooms with big windows overlooking picturesque European cityscape—with a big coal-burning furnace in the corner. I had already fallen for Berlin. It’s a somewhat quiet city with the rich smell of trees. Its concrete for sure but there is so much public DIY art on the concrete, it’s as if the flowers were painted in.

We headed to Schwartz Canal, a frauen.lesben.trans (womyn, lesbian and trans) wagon platz—the squatted land by the river where people live in caravans. This wagon platz is under threat of eviction. We did an interview with a womyn living at the squat when we came back to Berlin the second time. On that fresh summer day they were having a small secret café. German vegan food is rich and filling. We ate hearty bread with 6 different kinds of spreads ranging from light gray to bright yellow and tasting of curry, garlic, eggplant and beans, chocolate cake and chocolate musslie for dessert and apple juice and tea to drink. We sat down outside with a group of new friends as I was introduced to people I had been hearing about for 6 months. The new friends—happy polite faces all—came into my head with the stories I had listened to many Thursday mornings in Seattle, while waking up to conversations with Elliat.


That night we went to The Mitmoch Drag Show (by Kings of Berlin) at AHA Café in the Gay Museum. Yes, there is a Gay Museum in Berlin. We were greeted by another large building with a grand stone archway. Elliat was performing in the show so I was in charge of shooting. We brought visiting Seattle friends Savvy and Roscoe to see the performance and help with the microphone (thanks you two!). We walked up 2 flights of stairs (everything in Berlin was up a few flights of stairs) to a crowded hole-in-the-wall room of sweaty queers. The room was full of moisture and German. Elliat was whisked to the back room as soon as we walked in. I squeezed myself in-between people, completely forgetting the word for “excuse me” in German, and set up the filming equipment on top of 2 people’s heads. The show began.

There was a trans womyn doing male drag with a fake mustache on a split stage. She stripped in front of a mirror, put on a strap-on and proceeded to gyrate onto the mirror with her dildo. On the other side of the stage a womyn doing male drag with a huge sock cock covered in xmass lights punched a balloon ball sac hanging from the ceiling. There was also a bio gay man doing boy drag to a song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, “Touch me touch me, I want to be dirty.” Then there was Elliat’s shower curtain performance “Exactamente ganow”. It was overall one of the most genderqueer cabarets I have ever seen: only what I would expect from Berlin.

The next day we had to do errands like picking up the tickets to Poland. Elliat made it fun by having us stop at an outdoor B&W photo booth to take pictures, eating dripping fresh nectarines, and later, Gelato when we were really tired. We had the Gelato by a Poseidon sculpture fountain at Alexander platz in Mitte, the city center of Berlin.

On our walk home we went past the Berlin wall. This really affected me; I did not know such strong feelings would come up. I remembered watching it fall with my parents on TV in the 80’s. It meant something to my Czech heritage family and I: watching people liberate themselves; thinking at the time that one of our greatest feats against oppression was being accomplished. I remember learning later that it just paved the way for more capitalism. I still think we need to break down boarders between each other, but I don’t think the story was painted in the most truthful way in the USA, as usual.

I thank the Berlin wall for bringing all this up in me. The wall is now covered in murals: some about the struggle, some just beautiful art pieces and some tag graffiti. There are hole pocks marking the crumbling cement. My favorite Mural is one of the more famous ones of two men kissing. I got into the middle of the street to take a picture of it. I peeked my head out one of the holes, examining the canal beyond. This made me think about oppression and land and property. I started to think of all the times in history when a wall has been erected to keep people away from each other. I thought of Dr. Seuss’s “butter battle book,” a fixture in my young life, about keeping people away from one another and making them believe others are having a better or worse life then them. I thought about Palestine and Israel and how walls are still being built today to separate people.

After puzzling over boarders all afternoon we returned to X-B for a delicious dinner with all our new Berlin friends and old Seattle friends, Katinka, Roscoe and Savvy. We all went to play our second game of Queer footy at a park near the house. The game was fun and more of a close match than last time, with all the good players. I got more confident in my playing and even tried out being goalie, while Elliat kicked butt as usual. It was so nice having a break from talking to people, connecting instead on a purely physical level. Afterward we all got club matte—the drink of Berlin, a non-sweetened carbonated matte tea drink that keeps you buzzing all night—and hung out in front of X-B.

Our first interview in Berlin was scheduled that night with Lotta, a Swedish activist friend who had lived at X-B for the past 2 years. We interviewed her in the room that she was moving out of in a week, that we would inherit when we returned. The interview went smoothly, discussing the history of X-B and how the collective was trying to buy the housing project. We went to sleep that night knowing we would be in Poland the next evening.

Londonia Part 2 July 23rd-30th 2006

(Margaritte)

We left Leeds in a flurry of goodbyes and kisses and headed for Londonia. This was the city’s original Roman name.
Oh scattered chaos of people and bundles of luggage,
Trash and aching shoulders from too much equipment,
Australian/South African friends,
Bethnal green and east London.

We found ourselves in a historic gay neighborhood. East London may not seem like the place, with all the Lezzies in Stoke Newington and Gay boys in Soho but when we discovered Jennette Winterson’s deli within two days of arrival we knew we were in the right place. Our lovely Australian friend Kate, the lesbian librarian, gave me the book tour of her neighborhood taking me to Quilter street the historic street in Sarah Waters book “Tipping the Velvet” the main character in the book is always trying to go back to Quilter street. The modern Quilter Street is lined with typical English row houses, complete with skinny trees surrounded in rot iron. The only distinguishing factors of houses like these were there doors. One was painted bright pink; we deemed it the flat (the girl in the book) was looking for.

Our first interview was planned to be with some Polish queers living in England, 2 on a farm close to London and one in London proper. This was an interesting element of interviewing Poles; most Polish people have to leave Poland to get work. There are tons of Polish people living in London and other major cities across Europe. Goisa and her two roommates lived in a squatted apartment complex. We had a yummy vegan dinner and discussed the political climate in London for squatters.

In 2010 the Olympics will be held in London. Because of this fact city councils in all the neighborhoods are currently looking at land to develop to make way for the money that will be coming into the city. The first places they are targeting are squats, the only sustainable form of low income housing in London. This is a classic battle of the rich verses the poor the only new twist is these homes are facing being torn down for luxury hotels and condos to house people for the games. This is all about sports! Goisa and her roommates are not the only ones looking at eviction; a similar experience was happening at the Clifton mansions where we stayed in Brixton the first time in London. Squatting is becoming harder and harder but people are not going down without a fight. Since squatting is legal still in England they can take there cases to court and a lot of people are choosing that. Goisa and her roommates are trying to save their homes and be a voice for the illegal immigrants that cannot speak up for their rights to housing.

After are big talk we did not feel like interviewing so we set up an interview with Goisa to talk more later in the week. The next day we got more acquainted with the city and prepared for Elliat’s first performance in England at Bar Wotever. The bar was a gay mans bar in a cute older part of town, it looked like an old brick pub. I filmed while Elliat prepared and friends we had made trickled in to watch. After a lovely show there was an open DJ booth and some hot queer dancing to good good music.

The following day we did an interview with Paisley an ex-pat Drag queen from NYC who just moved to London from Berlin. Elliat knew him from performing in Berlin and the organization he started there called the “Black Girls Coalition.” We conducted our interview in a club that he was performing at under a light that changed from blue to red throughout the interview creating a new cinema graphic shot for the film.

After this it was time for my first game of London queer football. Sometimes called “ Queer Footy.” I had forgotten how much I liked group sports with people who keep the competition light and are flex about the rules. At first I sat out and used filming as the excuse to watch the players and see how competitive they were. I gathered that with this crew I could join in even though I did not really know any of the rules. There were many gay injuries in this game, including an Italian bloody knee, an almost dead 10 year old boy with a hurt leg and head injury, and a limping lesbo named Nemo, but we were able to enjoy ourselves with tons of laughing from excessive bad moves and too much running down hill to get the ball. In the end we all “Won” and celebrated by rolling around in the grass and getting bug bites (namely Elliat getting another especially scary spider bite in almost the same spot as the week prior)… and exchanging contact info and chatting on the bus ride back to our respective homes.

On Thursday evening we had an interview with Scratch our queer footy buddy, who was djing this night called Qrush. I met up with Elliat and Scratch and we did our interview in the Qrush basement space before the evening began. Scratch told us about trans-culture in London, growing up in the city and watching it change, Djing and doing art projects with youth for his work. On Friday we went to the queer squat Dolston lane. After taking two buses we found ourselves at an old storefront that looked closed down. Luca one of the two French people living in London that we planned to interview greeted us in the doorway. He offered us French cheek kisses, everyone in London seem to kiss on the lips, and brought us up the stairs to a cozy and hot kitchen. Cueva was making breakfast in the summer heat with a cigarette and black nightie on. We helped clear the back yard table for breaky. We had potatoes, cheese, bread, juice, coffee, and veggies. The interview was done in the pink living room where Cueva dressed as a French cancan girl complete with little cardboard fan and Luca played a USA football star. The interview was long and covered all aspects of their lives, queer identity, and performance, being a femme, being a fag and healing work. We all got closer and uncomfortably hot so we made our way to the back yard again after the interview. Elliat, Cueva, a friend PG and I discussed femme and butch dynamics in London verses the US and the ever-present drama of our community until the sun had scorched us enough.


Our final day before going to Berlin had arrived. We did our interview with Gosia as planned in a park in Bethnal green. Goisa talked about growing up in Poland and being queer, moving to London and the conservative political force running her home country right now. She also gave us some good contacts for our trip to Warsaw in a few days. After the interview we walked her to work and went home to grab Kate and visit one of London’s info. shops. Kate had been at home starting the design for the comic she wants to do of us for Travel Queeries! We took the long bus journey to the borough Elephant and Castle. I love the names of the boroughs. After our outing we went home and prepared for our 7am flight to Berlin the next morning. This included us getting up at 2:30am to catch a taxi to a bus to the airport, where we caught a flight and two trains to our final destination, X-B the queer/trans/womyn housing project in East Berlin.