Well, what really can text on a website convey about what, in my opinion, is the greatest place on the planet. I know this is a slight over exaggeration considering that there also many other places I call the greatest but these have very different settings e.g. the alps, the lake district, probably New Zealand if I had been there. HOWEVER, you might not get such a high density of amazing music, amazing venues, amazing fashion, amazing people and amazing…anything really.

I’m aware that’s quite an introduction for what many might consider just another city and that one of my first notes I made on writing this article was “I need to calm down as I want to move there immediately”. Perhaps this will be useful context for others when reading this, hopefully its more than me and Emil that read this anyways.

Emil’s been banging on about how great the electronic music scene is for maybe ever since I’ve known him, he took a little trip there last year and I joined him on this years adventure. We flew in on the Friday, dropped our bags off and then hot footed it to Neukölln. First stop there was a wicked little bar where we had a few beers with the friends we were meeting, setting the tone for the weekend it was a pretty international group ranging from Czechia, China, Japan and Poland.

A select few of us went for dinner at a Vietnamese, making sure to get our carbohydrates into us before the long night ahead at the main event, Northern Electronics at Tresor. Tresor was an absolute treat, everyone else had been previously but I think we were all giddy with excitement together. The queue was, you know, pretty lengthy and worryingly there were quite a lot of people being turned away at the door. I guess you might be able to tell that we made it through given my love for the city already expressed above. If you are going to visit, make sure you know who’s playing that night and why you wanna see them!

I had heard a lot about how absolutely incredible Tresor is and that there is almost nothing like it, which until one actually experiences is hard to know how much this is a reality or not. I hate to add to that list of people professing just how incredible it is, but let me tell you – Tresor is an incredible place where the music and atmosphere combine to make one of the best clubs going. There is a corridor linking two big areas together which is misty and blasts strobes in a mesmerising way, excellent place to be…drunk in. The music downstairs in the basement was top notch, specifically Peter Van Hoesen’s set trance like (not the genre) inducing techno, I think some of my favourite techno I have heard live. Upstairs in Globus was hosted by Northern Electronics, first of all the sound system up there is very nice; it has the perfect balance between loudness and quality and you still felt every sound in your body. The artists in Globus were a great contrast to the techno below, complimenting each other perfectly. If its not obvious from this that I could live within Tresor for ever then perhaps the fact that we left around 7.30am should.

A taxi home and a visit to Lidl to get something for breakfast and of course more cigarettes having gone through 7,000 in the night previously, because that’s allowed in Berlin!

I think its fair to say that Saturday was a little harder than most days as we were both pretty tired for obvious reasons but Berlin don’t wait for anyone so up and about we went. Got in a lil kebab which is wonderfully cheap compared to UK and infinitely better. Then made our way to the record store 60 Waves which I think is Emil’s place of worship. 60 Waves is a amazing boutique record store that has a great selection of music, they host events and I am confident you will always hear good music being pumped out. Its sacrilege not to visit if one is in Berlin!

After dropping our wedge of records at our friends, we headed over to the next club to fawn over, Club der Visionaere. Just making it to the club after the previous night was an achievement in its own right and it was well worth it, yes that’s right – another club in Berlin is incredible. Who knew?! We ended the night a little earlier this time and instead saved ourselves for the Sunday.

Club der Visionaere is quite different to Tresor, it has a much more chill vibe to it and it is based on the edge of a canal. Very cozy dance floor near the decks but also the outside area has ample space to dance to the music and it’s more relaxed nature makes it a great place to meet people. There seems to people from every corner of the world there! If planning on visiting, I would recommend Sunday nights if possible but more on that later!

Sunday brought another great experience into reality, this time is was in the guise of a park, Mauerpark to be specific. The sun was blazing, we got our beers in, met up our friends and pro yo-yoers then found a spot to enjoy the music and atmosphere. Being well into spring it was nice to enjoy the strongest and most luscious greenery there. There were a few live acts and the most impressive was this hypnotic techno artist, put us all into a silent trance. We all upped after a while, found a shaded spot and I had to buy a lil something from the vintage markets, because whenever I get a whiff of vintage clothes I can’t be held responsible for my actions. There was so much more on offer at Mauerpark too that we didnt get a chance to take in, other live acts, karaoke, so many market stalls with great food and drink. It is well worth a visit when in Berlin because there is guaranteed to be something for you there.

The sun was setting on the greenery which meant it was time for Chinese Hot Pot, veryyyyy nice food but also with hindsight probably not the meal to fill up with before another night on the dance floor. WHEN IN ROME BABAY!

Me and Emil headed back to Club der Visionaere as we were correctly informed that Sundays was the time to go, it is…it is. It wasn’t quite as packed, which is perfect for me, there was amazing house playing and more importantly we met the crew that was coming on around 2am. A group of Japanese DJs calling themselves Snapout, who were all sound and played very nice house sounds. We managed to talk our way through a big part of the globe it seems meeting people from: Spain, Switzerland, Los Angeles, Japan, Germany (obvs). The amount of times I explained that I was going to move out there as soon as I possibly could might be around the 200s. We finally ran out of…steam at 6am but before leaving Emil may have done some tagging with our new pals.

Monday was pretty tough, we woke up in the early afternoon and slowly mobilised ourselves to get ready, pack everything up and headed to town. ‘Heading into town’ is trivialising it a lot in terms of my experience, I was mainly focusing on not feeling sick. We made it though, got to our pals, dropped our stuff and ourselves onto the floor. I fell asleep – naturally I had to get some shut eye in at some point.

Then unfortunately just as quickly as the time came to go out to Berlin, the time to leave was here. We said some emotional good byes and headed out to the Schönefeld airport by train, it was meant to be a simple journey BUTTTT the train operators were on strike and we ended up sharing a taxi with a German family who were off to Italy for a month long holiday, it was hard not to feel jealous about that.

Airport blues and cheeky Polish people skipping the passport queue made for a great good bye to the city.

Ahhh, to be back in the UK :(.