#300: S-bahn on holiday, England fans, BVG ghosts X
Far-right media crackdown
Dear 20 Percent,
Summer school holidays kicked off in Berlin and Brandenburg last Thursday and everyone with kids is making a mad dash for somewhere hotter, cooler or less urban— so travelling by road, rail or air is probably not the best idea right now.
It’s the silly season in the news industry and today’s dumb ‘n’ fun story is the auctioning of 60 tatoo needles that were used on the body of creepy Rammstein frontman Till Lindemann. Tatoo artist Randy Engelhard is selling them in sets of 10 to the highest bidder. Interested? I didn’t think so. But in case you are, here you go.
Real news below.
Maurice
P.S. It’s our 300th issue. A huge shout out and thank you to you, our loyal, loving readers, as well as our fantastic sponsors, such as German insurance ninjas Feather. More on them below.
S-Bahn / Deutsche Bahn disruptions
Another sign it’s summer break: track works! Central portions of the Stadtbahn, the East-West S-Bahn between Alexanderplatz and Zoo, will be closed for maintenance from tomorrow (Wednesday) through at least July 29. Schienenersatzverkehr (buses) will replace the S3, S5, S7, S75 and S9 lines on that stretch. Work on the Friedrichstraße-Hauptbahnhof-Tiergarten segment will last through August 7. If stuffy Schienenersatzverkehr buses aren’t your cup of tea, consider taking the U2 to circumvent the works. Another big track closure to watch for this summer: The regular Berlin-Hamburg train route will be closed for repairs from August 16 to December 14. There will be alternative, hourly service to Hamburg, but the journey will take 45 minutes longer.
BVG dumps X
First Berghain bouncers reject Elon Musk, now this: Public transport operator BVG is abandoning its Twitter/X accounts, reports RBB. After 13 years on the social media platform, after having attracted 400K followers, BVG wrote, in its final tweet, “End of the line: We are leaving X. The communicative environment here no longer matches our values.” In June, 47 German NGOs left X with a joint declaration against growing hate speech and disinformation there. Investionsbank Berlin and the Free University also recently left X.
Far-right mag raided
At 6am, Tuesday morning, cops paid a visit to the HQ of far-right magazine Compact, housed at the private address of publisher Jürgen Elsässer in Falkensee, just beyond the Berlin city limits. The Federal Ministry of the Interior has decided to ban the magazine, which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution accuses of spreading hate against immigrants, POCs and Jews. Via its YouTube and Telegram channels and print magazine with a circulation of 40,000, Compact spread far-right conspiracy theories and pro-Russian disinformation and propaganda, encouraged violence against our “democratic order”, authorities said. Elsässer has openly called himself a “Putin supporter”.
A few tips from events newsletter The Next Day Berlin:
🛹Skatepark by Mette Ingvartsen (Tanz im August)
17.08 8 pm and 18.08 6 pm. Directed by Mette Ingvartsen. Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Schaperstraße 24. Tickets: €18.10 to €41.80.
A theatre stage transformed into a skatepark, where skaters and performers across generations meet for a dance piece: This is the multifaceted setting of a new work by Mette Ingvartsen, investigating the choreographic possibilities of skateboards and roller skates.
🎶Durchlüften (Airing Out)
Thu-Sat, 18.07 - 10.08. Humboldt Forum, Schlossplatz. Free admission.
This open-air music festival at Humboldt Forum features concerts and DJ sets with sounds from Sufi Dub, Tanzanian Bongo Flava, and Balochi Benjo. Over four summer weekends, enjoy music from Lagos to Port-au-Prince, Dar es Salaam to Beirut, London to São Paulo, and Berlin’s dance floors. The programme for this weekend is so good that we’d love to go every day. 🎧 Sessa
🎸34 Years of Schokoladen - Hoffest
Fri-Sat, 19-20.07, from 6 pm. Schokoladen, Ackerstrasse, 169, Mitte. Donation based.
If you like post-punk, punk, noise rock, and psych, this festival is for you. Concerts and DJ sets will take place both indoors and outdoors. Let’s celebrate this resilient space in the middle of Berlin’s gentrification.
Germany-wide news
💸Tax rebates for skilled foreign workers?
🗡️British Rolls-Royce designer murdered in Bavaria
🚀US to deploy long-range Tomahawk missiles in Germany
Factoid
50,000 England fans, almost all of them without stadium tickets, descended upon the Hauptstadt for the Euro 2024 final against Spain. Reditions of 10 German Bombers, a smashed up Trabi, a ransacked Irish pub (paywall) — none of it helped the Three Lions on the pitch. To be fair, most fans were peaceful. A mere 151 English and Spanish supporters were arrested! Weirdly, a Eurowings flight carrying England fans back to Manchester had to land again at BER after take-off due to a weird smell in the cabin.
💶That’s all for now, but please visit our sponsor!💶
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300?! It's a nice milestone 👏
Thanks for the S-Bahn headsup.
Congratulations on 300!
💪