...And now I'm reading in Kaffee Burger, on March 25th (...2009)

Well, my first reading in Berlin went so well that I'm going to do another one, dash it. And this time my Berlin friends will get more than a day's notice.

I'll be reading in Kaffee Burger, on Torstrasse (just around the corner from my house! Why, my butler and pantry staff will be able to attend!) on Wednesday March 25th 2009. That's the regular monthly English language reading sponsored by Ex-Berliner, the rather funky English language magazine. The evening will kick off at 9pm...

I love Kaffee Burger, and have been to some great readings there (in both English and German), so I'm delighted to be invited. Kaffee Burger used to be the home of the semi-underground DDR poetry scene, and not all the stains have been cleaned from the ceiling. (Nor have they bothered to remove the old DDR price list, which still quotes you the one, fixed, national price for a cup of coffee across the socialist paradise. Doesn't CHARGE it, sadly, just quotes it.)

Great, great place, and host to some mighty club nights too (it's still home to Wladimir Kaminer's legendary Russian Disco).  And do stop to admire the building itself - a superb example of East Berlin architecture, in which the pre-wall-fall DDR aesthetic (a knackered concrete building made with sand and no cement) has been enhanced by the best of post-wall-fall Western urban street art (illiterate graffiti and some dogshit).

East Berlin architecture at its finest