Last month, I went to Berlin with my friends to live out our Eat Pray Love dreams (despite half of us in eons-long relationships not looking for love, and all of us atheists. Heavy on the eating though). We’d done our research on Berlin nightlife: the industrial warehouses teeming with mind-numbing beats, cigarette smoke clouds and secondhand fits that scream “this effort was effortless.” Berghain, allegedly the wildest club of all, had a cult following on social media, spawning videos like this one:
My friends and I decided we needed to see it, breathe it, feel it for ourselves. We were in the height of our mid-20s, which meant the beginning-of-the-end of our clubbing days, which meant we might as well be dead soon. So it was now or never.
The Berghain Subreddit cautioned, “If you don’t like techno, don’t bother.” The only techno-adjacent ties I had were Charli XCX’s early Myspace demos and Peggy Gou’s set I’d seen at Coachella the month prior. Every weekend, tourists try and fail to get into Berghain. And yet, like Adam Sandler’s everyman character who inexplicably lands the hot girl and makes everyone go, “Woah!”, we believed we would be the exception to the rule.
But the more we researched, the more we realized the odds of getting in on our first try were slim. Someone online said he got in on his 10th try. It was sad yet honorable. What if he’d stopped at 9 and couldn’t live to tell the tale? I thought. What determines a reasonable cutoff, before failure becomes overwhelming, before it’s just wasted effort? We’d planned to try at least once, but we didn’t have the answer beyond that.
Our research prepared us to dress goth and grungy: black, leather, lace… you get it. In our Airbnb, we ran simulations and practiced German. We had read they turned away groups larger than three, so we decided to go in pairs, since there were four of us. “Wie viele (how many)?” we anticipated the bouncer asking, and “zwei (two),” we’d reply. We studied the artists playing that day and memorized their stripper-esque names, like “Soft Crash” and “Knaughty,” in case we got pop-quizzed at the door (you know what they say! You can take the Asian out of the school, but you can’t take the school out of the Asian :D).
Berghain was open from 10 PM Friday to 8 AM Monday. Our first attempt was at 2 AM on Saturday. We braced ourselves for a long wait, having read that people queue for hours. This was a serious matter, and we committed to the broody bit. There would be absolutely no laughing, no playing Charades in line. Just when I started to wonder how the hell I’d make it through, thankfully, it was raining, so there was barely a line. We walked up. The bouncer gave us a once-over and shook his head.
We tried again at 7 AM on Sunday, when Reddit noted the bouncers were in a good mood from their coffee fix. Clad in another goth-grunge getup, we approached the door. This time, there were two bouncers, and we recognized one as Mischa. Mischa is a minor celebrity in the Berlin scene, affectionately dubbed “Lord Mischa” on Internet forums. He’s one of the most tenured bouncers, known for his chill disposition and tendency to let in more people than warranted (much to the dismay of Berghain regulars, tourists looove Mischa). Here’s a description of what Mischa screens for:
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Mischa nodded – his retired, laissez-faire attitude our salvation. I breathed. But then, the other bouncer, who was younger, stopped us. He proceeded to stare for an eternity without saying anything, making eye contact so intense that I swear my pupil sweated. Finally, he said, “Sorry. Not today.”
We went home and dissected the interaction. It occurred to us that the younger bouncer had checked our eyes for a vibe, only to find panic gleaming. Ugh, I thought. We should’ve held our gaze, should’ve better projected that we belong. Contrary to everything I do to avoid eye contact with men in NYC, these were men I unfortunately needed to look at.
Sunday night rolled around, and it was 7 PM. To be honest, I was over the rejection. But my friends, Charles and Varun – call it boldness or a humiliation kink – remained unfazed. They insisted on giving it another shot.
Me: “Guys, there are countless clubs. Why are we subjecting ourselves to this?”
Them: “Because it’s funny.”
Me: “Yeah, funny for the bouncers watching us try for the 20th time.”
Them: “They won’t remember. Even if they do, who cares? What’s the worst that could happen?”
I was so unenthused that I didn’t even wear another grunge-goth-Berghain-baddie variation. Instead, I completely broke dress code, donning cargo green shorts and a gray tank.
When we arrived, there was Mischa again (bless him and his tank-like physique for manning the door 12 hours later) with another young bouncer. I felt Mischa’s gaze on me as I weaved through the line. My eyes glazed over. I don’t even care, I thought. Let’s just get this over with so I can grab a döner kebab on the way home.
The younger bouncer asked, “How old are you?” We replied, “25.” They exchanged glances. Then Mischa said, “Ok, have fun,” and waved us inside. I could’ve sworn there was a hint of a smile too.
When the words left his mouth, it took everything in me to keep from looking astonished, to maintain the apathy on my face. This felt… so random. Perhaps an act of God?
Without compromising the ethos of Berghain (i.e. what happens in Berghain stays in Berghain), it was replete with Brutalist architecture, spacious dance floors, abstract sculptures, and even an ice cream bar. Here, I had the best espresso martini of my life. There was no room for capitalist pretensions, like tables or bottle service, everyone instead free to access whatever they wanted. We were given stickers to put on our phones, prompting us to lose ourselves in the hypnotically-repetitive uns-uns-uns.
In 2021, Berghain was named a “cultural institution” by the German government, and being in the crowd affirmed just that. First off, this was the highest concentration of hot people I’ve ever seen in one place; it may as well have been a Wilhelmina casting call. Second, it had been vetted for brooders, so no one was rowdy, pushy or out-of-line. We were by far the loudest – anyone within a mile radius could hear the insufferable screech of our American accents. Lastly, there was an impressive array of diverse characters that made it fun to people-watch. Standouts include a guy in a neon shirt resembling a live-action Ash from Pokémon, and a man resembling if Santa stormed the Capitol.
There’s something profound about the fact that I got in when I dressed and felt truly me. The takeaway? Perhaps… authenticity is cool? Not wearing our goth-grunge costumes freed us from the expectation of conforming to a certain image, and allowed us to present our best selves (though I still think we rocked the goth-grunge, admittedly, the clothes wore us more than we wore them). Only by shedding the fakeness did we achieve what we wanted (basically, the Berghain bouncers' bullshit detector needs to be studied in law textbooks).
Other takeaways include:
Persistence works. If I hadn’t listened to my friends and had instead given up after 2 tries, I would’ve missed out on this whole experience. I’ve seen a metaphor on TikTok recently about “climbing cringe mountain.” In essence, to reap any reward often requires putting yourself in vulnerable, cringey situations – in this case, to be judged by the bouncers and onlookers in line. But worrying about judgment is a losing battle; so long as you exist and do things, judgment will always follow. Instead, do things for the plot. Do things for your own entertainment. You are cringe, but you are free. Embody the spirit of the guy who tried 10 times – and you might just end up in the Land of Cool.
If persistence doesn’t work, find friends who’ll laugh with you about it. At the end of the day, if Berghain wasn’t meant to be, we would have been fine elsewhere (in fact, the club we visited in between our Berghain attempts had been just as entertaining, because our group in and of itself was entertaining). The people make the place, really.
We stayed until 6 AM, watching the sunrise from the outdoor garden, perched on jagged rock formations. Then, we left behind the lore we’d crafted that weekend at Berghain’s doorstep, like a ship passing in the night, and bade farewell.
Nice entry to read! I live in Berlin for about 7 years now and never tried. Maybe now is the time.
I love this! And I'm happy your persistence allowed you and your friends to experience such a unique place. I'm convinced I would've done the same: had fun in line and inside or had fun elsewhere. When I visited Berlin I was only 13 so hopefully I can go back someday and make my way over the cringe mountain and join you in the land of cool!!!