Radio Spaetkauf Berlin

Good news if you take the U6: as of today the line is reconnected. However users of the north-south S-Bahn line nearby will be disappointed to learn that the tunnel will be closed for most of the rest of the year due to track work. The recent referendum about de-privatizing the Berlin electricity grid was lost by just 20,000 votes. That means the city won't be forced to buy it back. But the fight...

It's referendum time in Berlin. The city is voting whether to de-privatize the electricity grid, although international residents cannot take part. Another referendum is looming next year, this one about the future of Tempelhof airport park, and whether any building should take place there. A Berlin entrepreneur has come up with a new app that would allow citizens to take photos of badly parked ca...

On this show, we will be playing an interview from a group called, The Truth Booth. Maisie went along to meet them and find out about the project, how it works, the results so far and how it will evolve. See the link for the Truth Booth webpage: www.the-truth-booth.org Our "Short News" this time is regarding a Walter Womacka memorial that's been in Ikea bag storage for the last few weeks but recen...

On this episode of Radio Spaetkauf, how did your district vote in the election? Hear Andrew and Maisie reveal some pretty expected results. We discover a chance to rent Angela Merkel's old flat in Prenzlaurer Berg, without her old furniture sadly. Maisie talks about a new threat to develop on Tempelhofer Feld and what you can do about it and Andrew is surprised to see a last stretch of the origina...

Don't worry, that "Go Home Tourrorists" election poster was only a joke by one of Germany's many satirical parties - although it might have been a viable vote-winner if it were real. The election is over, but one group of Germans wants to reform the voting system by gifting their votes to foreigners. We interview the initiator of the Electoral Rebellion program. Berlin's bumpy bike lanes may get s...

How desperate are Berliners to find an apartment? On this episode of Radio Spätkauf we discuss a new real estate option for those who can't find a flat - a one-room bedsit inside a shipping container on the outskirts of the city, for €349 a month. Elections are coming up, so we talk about some terrible posters by the CDU, and an embarrassment for the FDP which used the same stock footage as the NP...

Görlitzer Park is the feature of this broadcast. One political party, the CDU, think the park has become dangerous and want to close it each night from 11pm to 5am. Another party, the Greens, want to open a Dutch-style marijuana coffee shop in the park. Both plans seem quite different, but have the same goal: to stop drug sales. We discuss how Berlin is turning into a refuge for American political...

It's election time, and Berlin's streets are full of political posters. We visit a meeting of the Pirate Party to learn more about who they are and what they stand for. If you're interested, head along to their weekly English-language meetup at a bar in Neukölln. Police have been conducting raids on Görlitzer Park. One organization, Reach Out Berlin, is protesting against the racial nature of the...

All this hot weather making you feel frisky? Fancy some outdoor lovin'? Might be worth losing your job first. We discuss Germany's strange laws regarding outdoor sex. Also on the show: a life sentence for Berlin's celebrity bears Maxi and Schnute, bye- bye Festsaal Kreuzberg, and the Mayor of London's love letter to Berlin. Building officially begins on the city's next BER, the Stadtschloss, plus:...

On this episode of Radio Spätkauf: Can you imagine an advert-free Berlin? The Amt für Werbefreiheit & Gutes Leben can. We talk to them about their campaign to remove advertising from the city's streets. Plus:the mysterious forces at work behind the aborted auction of the Spreepark in Plänterwald, awkward gig venues, Soviet poster boys, kim.com, no more eateries in the Graefekiez & an interview wit...

For our second summer special, we've taken our own advice and journeyed out to the lakes and woods of South East Brandenburg. But before that, we start off in Berlin, where we talk about a new threat to affordable rent, another endangered East German building, why wearing a bike helmet can save you money, and how former Stasi informants make new careers under capitalism. Then we head out to Klinge...

Radio Spaetkauf is the Berlin podcast, a half-hour discussion of local news, politics, urban development, culture and music, presented by international residents Maisie, Joel and Andrew. This episode is a summer special, with some tips about getting out of the city and visiting the lakes of Brandenburg. We talk about the threat faced by some of the beloved garden allotments on the city's fringes d...

Radio Spaetkauf is the Berlin podcast. On this episode we tell you how to get a reduction in your rent if your building is in bad condition: if you've got an illegal brothel operating in your building, you can claim a 30% rent reduction. What's going on at Warschauer Straße S-Bahn station? We'll talk about the new station being constructed, and how the designers forgot to include parking for bicyc...

Have you ever paid attention to the lettering on the station signs on the U-Bahn? We interview typographer Anton Koovit, who has created a font called U8 based on the U-Bahn station signage. As Anton discovered, the original font was created in the 1920s but was promptly forgotten, and the existing signs are rotting away without proper restoration. He spent months creating a digital version of the...

Alexanderplatz is set for a facelift; several new tall buildings are set for development, one measuring 150 meters. Surveys show that a lot of Berliner's don't like the architecture at Alex, but they also don't approve of the plans for new buildings. Maisie presents her interview with the band Jeans Team about the district of Wedding and the monstrous Gesundbrunnen Center, about which they have wr...

Berlin's abandoned theme park, Spreepark at Plänterwald, is to be auctioned off, with a starting price of €1.62 million. The new owners will get all the rides, but will be obliged to keep operating it as an amusement park. For more about the history of Spreepark, listen to Joel's audio report from 2009 here: https://soundcloud.com/joelalas/berlins-abandoned-theme-park Obama is visiting Berlin in J...

Berlin's housing crisis took a tragic turn this week when an elderly old woman died on the streets two days after being evicted from her apartment. Several hundred people marched through Kreuzberg on Sunday to protest the incident, and to voice their anger at the role of the police in enforcing evictions across the city. An increasing number of evictions are taking place across Berlin as landlords...

Have you ever taken the U-Bahn to the end of the line? If not, you're missing out on some great architecture, according to photographer Kate Seabrook. On this short episode of Radio Spätkauf, Maisie interviews Kate about her project Endbahnhof (http://endbahnhof.tumblr.com/), which involved photographing the interiors of every one of Berlin's U-Bahn stations.

On this construction-themed episode, Joel, Maisie and Andrew discuss Berlin buildings of all kinds, from the much maligned GDR variety to the much-loathed Stadtschloss (City Palace). Most people oppose the new Stadschloss, so why is it being built? Andrew talks to a man who is preserving East German architecture by creating miniature cardboard cut-outs of plattenbau and iconic DDR buildings. Plus...

Radio Spätkauf is the Berlin podcast, a half-hour discussion about news, politics and culture from the perspective of the city's international residents. Tonight hosts Maisie and Joel talk about the main topic of the past two weeks; the re-fall of the Berlin wall. Who requested the building of a footbridge, which was the ostensible reason for the wall's partial removal? We play interviews from the...

Should Berlin's international residents feel responsible for the eviction of a Turkish family in Kreuzberg? We talk about what the city's foreign residents should be doing to mitigate the impact of their presence. Our new reporter Andrew visited a demonstration against the eviction and collected interviews from people on the street. We also talk about a petition to prevent development on Tempelhof...

Berlin's transport company, the BVG, doesn't like graffiti, so when two filmmakers decided to make a film about trainwriting (graffiti on trains) in Berlin, the BVG managed to get it banned. After two years, the ban has been lifted and the film is now set for general release. We talk to the the men behind 'Unlike U: Trainwriting in Berlin' about their fight to get the film shown. Also on the show:...

Maisie and Joel discuss the debate over what Berliners call their bread rolls - wecken or schrippen. Joel interviews Tim Edler of Flussbad Berlin, the group who wants to turn a stretch of the river Spree into a public swimming pool. Maisie plays a song from a forgotten East German band that sounds uncannily like the Blade Runner theme. And the pair talk about a ban on new restaurants in trendy str...

The BVG declares that "foreigners can count on goodwill" if caught with the wrong ticket on the U-Bahn. Someone is dropping razorblade-laced meatballs on Berlin footpaths. The airport is out of money and delayed again, and the Staatsoper too; so why does Berlin bother trying to build monumental structures? What changes can you expect in Germany on January 1? A new compulsory TV tax, for starters....

Have you witnessed a police raid in Görlitzer Park that only targets black people? Would you be prepared to tell the police to stop racial profiling? One anti-racism group is asking you to do just that. We talk to a Berliner who accidentally took a flight direct from Schönefeld to Tegel, and Joel explains why he's now a fan of the new airport. Two brown bears living in an odd little enclosure near...