For a week prior to leaving, the words "I'm going on a work trip to Berlin for a week" were a bit of a mystery. While we had some meetings set up and we knew we'd be meeting with a lot of people we have worked with over the last 2-3 years-and I was terrified of having down time. We don't get those opportunities often, so I wanted to make sure every waking second was spent properly.

So, after 800+ emails and close to a week in the USA, I can recap our trip as this is the first downtime I've had since last Saturday. We were there and we've got the pictures to prove it.

Saturday Night: Leave. Chris is stuck in the middle of a 4 row of seats right behind a baby screaming so fucking loud it sounded fake. Like a bad movie sound effect. His vegan meal included an un-vegan Oreo Brownie-so I won there. We flew Swiss Airlines and for the non-edgeman such as myself, there is a math equation/proof and it goes like this:

1 empty seat next to you
+1 melatonin (herbal sleeping remedy)
+2 travel bottles of free red wine
=no jet lag.

Chris, once the baby's shrieking ended WITHOUT a pillow being smashed into its mouth by me, slept about an hour. Sunday: Arrive in Zurich and be surrounded by 100% stereotypical Eurotrashyness. Dudes wearing suitcoats and shants with hiking boots. A guy with an Adolf Hitler moustache wearing an all orange running suit and matching Nikes. Apparently the Swiss, in all their neutrality and hot chocolate manufacturing, didn't get the e-memo that the Hitlerstache is still tacky. It's not just a fashion statement that is back to being okay because enough time has passed. Swiss Hitler should have a conference with people in the South that still wear confederate flag shirts that say "rebel badass." You might not be aware, but everyone in the room thinks you look like a fucking asshole.

We arrived in Berlin around 2:30pm. Vegan sandwich=mayonnaise. Vegan dessert=toblerone. We took a cab that costs 40€ and takes us around what seems like the entire city. Turns out that's what happened. We checked into the hotel to do our best to avoid jetlag and try not to sleep. The hotel was amazing. If you've ever been to Europe, you realize that they relish the frigid cold-from food temperature down to shower water temp. This place had shower water that could've burned the three hairs on my chest right off-and I was pretty stoked. It was located right near a huge train station and in the re-developing part of East Berlin, we were in a great spot-and it was cheaper than a normal American hotel. That night, we went out for a delicious Sri Lankan meal with Stanley and Jan from our publicity company. Stan helped out a lot by getting us a German SIM card AND letting us use his phone-making contacting other Europeans so much easier while we were in Berlin.



Monday: The arrival of Matteo. Matteo Ferrari has been our full-time webmaster for over a year and a freelance worker before that and up until Monday, Chris and I had never met him. It's a wonder of the internet that an Italian living in Brazil can work for Bridge Nine full-time and have proper health coverage for his wife, and then he can move to Ireland and still do the same thing there as here. It's insane. Matteo's a fucking genius, he's still edge and vegan, and he's really, really excited about things like Have Heart and vegan cupcakes.

His train arrived around 11:00 at our hotel and we walked down Warschauerstrasse to go to Core-Tex records and Yellow Sunshine-which is a vegetarian/vegan fastfood restaurant.





Later that day, we meet up with Bauke from Soulfood Distribution and his friend/label business partner Bader. Bader is what we call a bro to know. Bader's girlfriend and he opened up a place called CUPCAKE that has VEGAN CUPCAKES. That means a lot to you if you're vegan and if you're not-whether you're getting the vegan or normal- they're downright fucking amazing. So we met up with them and they had a care package for us. What we didn't tell Bader is that we already had google maps directions from our hotel to their shop, so he saved us time we would've spent already. We decided that since we had the day open free of meetings, we'd go visit some old World War II bunkers and hideouts still remaining in Berlin. Of course, the tour was exclusively in German, so we just nodded, made jokes, pretended to acknowledge what they said made sense, but saw tons of crazy World War II memorabilia. It was like American World War II memorabilia...but their stars and stripes looked different. In the picture with "Ausgang" that was a war room with radioactive paint. Pretty sure I've got cancer now.



Later that evening, we found out that To Kill was playing a show at the Casseopeia which was down the street from our hotel. When Chris was in Rome with his wife, he hung out with those guys and got the run of Rome with them-and Matteo being Italian, sxe and into hardcore-knew those guys well. It was fun showing up and surprising them.

Being jetlagged as fuck, we walked around the Berlin wall along the River spree.

Tuesday:

We met up with Bauke and toured Media Markt (Best Buy in German), Saturn (FYE in German?), and a few other stores in Berlin to get an idea of what exactly happens when we ship them cases of H2O and Have Heart records. The rest seemed cool, we talked about work, and went to eat at Yo-Yo and had vegan Gyros and I couldn't believe how good it was. Tasted just like I remembered a normal Gyro tasting. It was so fucking good.



Here is where the trip takes an unexpected turn for the awesome.

We rented bikes so we could visit a few small record shops and 2nd hand stores in East Berlin. Bader proposed we go visit this abandoned amusement park down on the River Spree. The story goes that the owner was involved in crazy drug smuggling and when his ring got busted up, he fled to Argentina. His son was arrested in his place. The park was shut down and if it's ever going to open back up, someone needs to not only pay to repair all of the broken down rides, but pay the taxes and fines on this dudes crimes AND pay the employees their back pay. Not sure how much of it is true, but there's also a rumor that it's been taken back by the parties he fucked over in the drug business.

Either way-the place was really creepy and we decided that the best thing to do in this situation is to jump the fence and see what's inside. What made this okay? It was 5pm. That work day was officially done.

We jumped into some sort of surrealist, Tim Burton' fantasy come to life playground. Trees sprouting up from the riding horses, swans slammed into a corner. Broken railroad ties for a magic mountain ride. Just forgotten and frozen in time and untouched. The pictures speak for themselves. Words can't even describe it.

That night we went out for a delicious Thai meal and got our asses whooped at table soccer. Those Europeans take real soccer almost as serious as they take fooseball. Got to meet Bauke's friend Frauke (bauke, frauke) and some Swedish dude creepily asked Bader and I if we'd travel to Stockholm for a Dickies modeling shoot. Pretty sure German bars are NOT where Swedish model agencies hang out. But it was funny to shrug my shoulders and say "¿Si?" when he started talking to me in German.

Wednesday:

Meetings all day at the actual Popkomm event. Blah blah blah business business business....

Then we met up with Marc and Ute from MAD Tourbooking. MAD has been booking tours for a long time and they currently work with H2O and Death Before Dishonor as well as a long roster of bands like Hatebreed, Agnostic Front, Madball and Ignite. They've been around forever. Up until tonight, I had never met Marc in person-only exchanged emails. We went out to dinner at an incredible italian place and we listened to Marc tell story upon story about the most fascinating shit. He was an anti-facist in Berlin in the 1980s, and for a punk/hardcore kid at the most revolutionary time in Berlin this century, he told some stories that made today's american flag wavers and protesters look like a cupcake party. Crazy shit. Smuggling bands under the wall to play East Germany. it was really fascinating, both in punk and historical/political terms. And to top it off, my impression of him was so far off what he was like as a person. We talked about bands and booking tours for about 10% of the time and the rest was politics, life, and it was really awesome to get to know the people behind the email address.

That night we went to the party hosted by Metal Hammer. This was the popkomm event that everyone was talking about. We recently had a huge article about hardcore/bridge nine bands/interview in Metal Hammer recently, so this tiny little bar was about 30 people full inside and about 100 spilled out onto the sidewalk. The free drink tickets expired and the kiosk across the street supplied the drinks for the night from there on out. An amazing trait of Europe is that once you hit 30, if you're still straight edge, you become brothers. Chris had friends buying him Afri-Cola all night and they were STOKED to do it.

We closed the bar down talking about life, Husker Du, The Weakerthans, how our grandparents all have war stories and it's a little fucked up but cool that we're building a beer-a-mid in East Berlin. Then there was obviously nonsense and business, and as the Beck's and the ceremonial Jager started coming out and finding themselves in a staggering pile against the wall, Chris, who outlasted his SXE brethren (it was probably 2am on a Wednesday night at this point) watched and suvived some pretty amazing core-nerd cornerings and watched as Stan, Dagmar, Moritz (the German Scrod), Thomas from Fuze, Joachim from Ox, and myself did our best to ruin our functionality for the next day. It was a great time. Before we knew it, it was 5AM, and I was unable to fall asleep right away, I walked around, tried calling my wife, and fucked around until 7am (I watched the sun come up near the Spree) and was up and checked out of the hotel at 11am the next morning. Apparently, I beat most of our party that night to bed and that's a sad, sad fact.

Thursday:

More meetings. Nods to everyone we saw the night before as if some sort of Fight Club acknowledgment or a nod that only War Vets give each other that can communicate "I know what you're going through" without words. Thursday night, my stomach falls apart for some reason and I'm asleep by 9pm. Not quite sure why. Related to this, Chris is re-affirmed of his edge.

Friday:

Fly home. 900 emails built up. Realize that I only have about 800 that really need attention.

So there it is. Our trip as I saw it and lived it. This trip wouldn't have been successful or fun if it wasn't for Matteo, Bauke, Bader, Jan, Stan, Dagmar, Moritz, Marc, Ute, Thomas, Joachim or the funny faced European riding his bike like he was in the Maxell tapes commercial.