If they are not taking their big butch dogs for a walk, nicht lead, of course, Berliners seemingly take their drink for a stroll. Usually it’s a beer, though often it’s Bionade, the lurid-coloured drink of choice invented by master brewer, and more importantly to him probably, patent holder, Dieter Leipold.

Bio stands for organic, and its brewed organically innit (”Fermentation naturlicher”, as it says on the label). You don’t see Berliners drinking anything else, apart from beer that is. The drink, naturally, fermented Herr Leipold millions.

Try the litschi (lychee), pictured above (OK, most bottles don’t stand up like this, that would defy gravity, but it’s getting late and technology is annoying me, like a Jack Russell, albeit one not shagging my leg).

At least I think it’s lychee. Rather refreshing, and not half as sweet as some of the other flavours. Lets call them orange, pink, green, red and purple.

I’ve heard various descriptions of the toilet: “Viewing platform”, “the lay and display”, “the flush and brush”; or “the continental shelf.” (the word continental applies, I’m sure, to European geography, not the medical condition)

Immediate inspection may hold the key. When I asked mein Deutsche friend, wondering whether the shelf allows immediate assessment as to your state of health, she replied: “Ja, I guess so. Never really thought about it.”

Marcus implied it was down to the lack of splash, and therefore more hygienic. Another chum suggested it was down to the amount of water the flush conserved.

Not every toilet has this shelf life, of course, and it seems das bogs are being slowly replaced with the Anglo pot, but most Deutsche bogs still do. Without going into details, it’s quite irksome, espceially for the senses, albeit sometimes engaging, depending on one’s deposit.

There’s nothing quite like leaving the toilet and thinking, “Well done fellah, still on course for a good innings, you’ve been a good boy.”

The again, there’s nicht worse than leaving thinking, “Easy Tiger!”

For more on this subject, and it may need parental guidance, click here.

I was right to be paranoid about the 240 euro bike. Leaving it outside my Prenzlauer Berg abode, in a bike stand for two weekend nights, I return to find it keeled over. After unlocking it, I find the back wheel has buckled. Bang goes my 150 euros resale.

Not so. The bike man at spezialrad.de bike shop, or fahrradstadt, is ever-so helpful, and immediately pushes it back into shape, studiously twisting and reprogramming the spokes to engineer the perfect turning circle.

He tells me that at weekends, some kids have an excess of “criminal energy”, and it has become a bit of a sport for them to stamp on bikes lying prone, and alone, in stands such as mine. It’s a mild crime compared to the unruly, armed feral youths in London, for whom the vandalism of stamping on a bike wheel is but fare for toddlers.

Unfortunately, and rather embarrassingly, I have cycled through some dog scheisse – an everyday hazard in Berlin, especially given the size of the dogs and the fact they run free, nicht lead. The wheel is turning right before Stefan’s very nose.

He recounts a tale, about how one day he had been biking through puddles, only to get home and smell dog scheisse. He checked his clothes, his boots, but no trace of the evil dirt. Dreizig minuten later,  still somewhat befuddled, he looked in the mirror and spotted a fleck  right under his nose.

“I’d had my mudguards removed and it sprayed up … I always call them scheisseguards now.”

The anecdote was as free as the repair job. He didn’t charge me. “Don’t worry,” he says. “Life’s too short. See you Thursday.”

This man is a God. He can probably walk on water, as well as cycle on it.

* Photo courtesy of artsy Lucy Hull

Jez is certainly Jez. A very friendly Jez. He has invited us to his Neukölln studio, which he shares with five other artists – a painter, an illustrator, graphic designer and two others I can’t be bothered to explain (what am I, their PR!) – all seemingly doing their little bit to gradually turn Berlin into one big artists’ commune.

Jez, an acolyte of the Paris St Germain school of art, works in a Monaco casino for two months of the year, raising enough stakes to spend 10 months working in Berlin.

He has talent. Not that I’m the best judge. I had an ex-girfriend once who was an artist. I thought she was good until authorities assured me she was utter pony!

I can’t let you judge his work, either. I’m not allowed, and don’t want to, take pictures of it, so lets say he has a penchant for painting explosions. Large psychedlic blasts. Natalia says his work would go down well in London, at First Thursdays in the East End. Possibly.

It’s colourful, dramatic, and at times as clever in technique as it is bold in colour (just have a look at his mess – a big colourful mess). I’m not too sure about art, or what to say about it, but I like what i see. He paints explosions and energy well, be it the soft blast of sprouting flowers or fucking huge rocks fucking exploding, all seemingly accompanied by a man, or two, diving into the frame. Hmmm.

“What is he saying, or trying to say” asks Lucy.

“I don’t know,” replies Jez, “I just like painting explosions.”

I’m not a music writer, but I swear I just witnessed the birth of a new genre. Well, it sounded like giving birth, of sorts.  Let’s call it Nu funk neo-trannie psychedelic alien sex techno poetry . (Remember, you read it here first).

Anyone performing  must wear tight luminous green Lycra leggings, preferably with a codpiece, which must be thrust regularly into a member of the audience’s face, a star outfit not so much touched-off but launched with shiny red brogues and a punky zebra skin T-shirt. Hair must be cropped, daaahling, topped in bleached yellow.

Well, I say anyone. But in reality there is perhaps only one person in this genre. And that’s the self-styled Posh the Prince. I hope he is called Posh the Prince, it was one of the few normal phrases in the set that didn’t involved sexual positions with aliens screamed into a mike from just 10ft away. so normal, I can’t remember it! I should have asked him to spell it, but I didn’t want to interrupt. I could hae been chastised. The codpiece loomed large, like a weapon!

To call this early evening ensemble bizarre gives bizarre a weird name. “Wrong?” Perhaps. Mad? Possibly. Completely and utterly random? Yes, maybe. Totally chuffing random.

Nadia called it “good but weird”. Lucy hailed it as “a bad trip”. Will was left speechless. It was as if his very will to live had been taken from behind. Never have I seen two songs claim a soul so quickly.

Posh the Prince basically toasts – well, screams and bleats – alien sex poetry, over a weird, techno psychedelic mishmash of scarred electro breakbeats and trippy hop hips, imploring us in high-pitched, stuccato, erratic bursts of NYC babble to all have sex in our sleep.

It’s easy to josh. At least he is out there doing something. Better bad than normal, I say.

Personally, I’m glad I experienced Posh the Prince, especially when a boat load of blau-rinse tourists having a four-course meal on a nighttime boat cruise motored past, gawping inanely just as Posh reached his alien orgasm by rubbing himself up against a tree. More pork, madame? “Wass?”

The venue helps matters. I’ve just seen him Posh “perform”, at die Terrase, right on the Spree river outside Club Maria, by Schillingbrucke in Friedrichschain. An intimate venue, if intimate can mean the Nu funk trannie psychedelic alien techno-sex poetic wailings rebounding off derelict factory walls all the way down to Mitte.

More Posh the Prince here

She repeats: “Twenty-six.”
Oh, a commune? Ja!

Images of sixties’ free love or 80s crusty new-age squatters mince to the fore. Other senses stir, menacingly: petunia oil, for one, and dogs on string leads, yapping infinitum. Yeesh!

Berlin is fabled for squats and communes. Stroll down the industrial Kopenicker Strasse, parallel to the river in Kreuzberg leading to Mitte, past the swanky post-industrial riverside bar/restaurant/clubs of Spindler and Klatz or Watergate, and brash, near derelict squats abound, bordered by abanded shopping trolleys, rusting bikes, fenced off with makeshift metal fences draped in slogans shouting the latest political cause. “Spreefeu for alles”, “Nein A100”; “Squat the airport.”

Natalia’s commune is different. Way different. And during her guided tour of her less than humble abode, I’m distinctly impressed. For entree, it’s on the long wide boulevard of Potsdamerstrasse, in Schoneberg, the central west Berlin borough bordered to the east by Kreuzberg, and west by upmarket Charlottenberg. And it boasts a recording studio, a gym, some super-large, neat and well-equipped kitchens, and roof gardens.

Natalia has lucked out. Living a bohemian, frugal life for six months, while working “remote” in Berlin for an international fashion and arts magazine, she has ended up in a groovy commune.

How? “I don’t know.”
“Were you invited?” “Yes, but it’s not so simple. You have to pass a interview, with the committee.”

Here, in this typical Berlin Prussian townhouse block, live 26 untypical people, an array of types you’d never fathom could share life under one roof: a Swiss punk, fabled apparently in the London squatter movement of the 70s and a German air stewardess; a French artist and German communist journalist wit a penchant for DDR furniture; an Italian multimedia artist, an accountant, a carpenter, a Czech musician and a Brazilian illustrator.

Well, it’s not one roof, per se: it’s many roofs, on many levels, skirting ahigh the ubiquitous courtyard, some covered in gardens, some stretches in tiles or concrete, all housing a sprawling, labyrinthine alternative life being lived out in various rooms, mini-flats, kitchens, toilets, stairwells and grass roofs taking in numerous apartments, meandering about on various inter-connected levels, like a maze, albeit with no dead ends.

Accepted by the committee as a temporary guest, Natalia pays 180 euros a month, with minor add-ons for the internet and a charge for “food and non-food” (you know, the stuff you eat and the stuff you don’t eat, like bleach, and toilet paper, and washing-up liquid). Members have allotted roles, depending on skills – the unskilled cook, and clean. Some garden. It works like a dream, says Natalia.

She gives us the full tour. Her room peels off the first floor landing, through an unlocked two-bed “flat” she shares with the Swiss punk. How Swiss is he? “Not very.”

Her quarters are sealed off by a concrete door. “I think his old neighbour had a drinking problem,” she says. So it was divided off, with a mini-Berlin concrete wall slab.

Across the landing stands a sprawling kitchen, large enough for two big sofas and a big breakfast bar. It’s the party area, where the members on this floor, and this side of the building, share cooking and clean-up duties, and partying. Beyond the kitchen lies a back staircase, another room – “this is more private, a couple live here” – and upstairs to more rooms. Before you know it, you are on the roof, covered in grass and soil, boasting plants and vegetables, and other green stuff you smoke. Some commune stereotypes must persist.

The tour throws up a dingey ground-floor recording studio, a room covered in egg cartons, for soundproofing. Next door is a laundry room. There’s a games room, too, and a gym, equipped with treadmill, exercise bike and weights, no less. Upstairs on the fourth floor lies another secret garden, and a boiler room, and another laundry room. The Happy House is massive.

So how does it work? Natalia explains, earnestly. There’s a committee, of all 26 people, who debate goings on, events, difficulties, problems. Apparently the debates can get pretty acrimonious. One night, a drunken householder scrawled some pro-Palestinian graffiti on the living room wall. The committee met to discuss retribution: should he clean it off, leave it, or paint the whole living room? No one could decide, largely because everyone must agree.

“And if someone does not agree?” “Then we leave it.”

The commune is owned by a leftwing-minded man, who treats it much like a housing trust. All the tenants have to do is pay the rent and the bills, and they can do what they like, for as long as they like. Some people have lived here for decades. Children have passed through, too, although when they reach 18 they must pay up the rent or move on.

It seems the only reason why one would leave.

One visit, one Sunday afternoon, afforded views of two friends apparently stomach-pumping their mate, splayed on the floor, seemingly unconscious due to “over-indulgence” the night before. It was 2pm, and the party was still pumping, literally. Those still dancing, and the bar staff, treated the event as if part of normal proceedings.

This Thursday night, the party is in full swing, albeit more bass-thumping than stomach-pumping, and getting busier even as the dawn light threatens yet another encore at 3,30am.

Techno is the music of choice here, as it is all over Berlin, and the wooden shack which hosts the bar is mobbed, with people spilling out onto the jetty.

There’s a fair few disco refugees here, some of whom are going long into the night, not least a small French guy smoking a joint,  rather pissed and chatting up all the girls. Nearby, stands, nay sways, a tall, smartly dressed fellah in a jacket and jeans, with longish hair, who is, how shall we say, twatted.

This man, let’s call him Roger, is on a mission to score some company but his chat-up tactics need, how do we put this diplomatically, some minor modifications. He stands, tilting in the middle of the party, eyeing up “prey”.

When he sees a single girl, he swoops, spraying people and drinks before him until he prangs up to his quarry. He then looks them in the eye, leans in to whisper some sort of sweet nothing and then squeezes their breast.

Lucy, mein freund, double-takes. “Did you see that,” she says, incredulous.

Ten minutes later and Roger swoops again. “Look, he’s at it again, to that other girl, that’s so wrong … it’s, well, it’s just wrong.”

Lucy’s not wrong. This time Roger has chosen a girl wo has just broken off from snogging her boyfriend. Roger needs a slap, but somewhat bizzarely, in this famously laid-back, anything goes, liberal city, none of the girls, or boyfriends, seem to get angry. Vergiss es (”forget it”) is as strong as it gets. Mind you, that could be verpiss dich (piss off). It definitely wasn’t ich liebe dich.

If this was England, either the bouncers would have thrown him out, or a people’s committee of outraged women would dunk him in the canal. At the very least, Roger would be slapped or kneed in the groin. Worse, glassed! Here, at Fleischwimmer, it’s taken in das stride.

There’s no bouncers in Berlin bars. No one seems to cause trouble. the Germans are a civilised lot. The first stage in a minor altercatio is not a fist in the face or a quick windmll through the dancefloor.

Helga, who, somewhat bizarrely given the name, is Irish, appeas to be his next victim. She talks to Roger and is then “squeezed”. She shimmies back, as if to say, “Sachte [easy tiger].” He tries it again, and she pushes him away, albeit still courteously.

Helga is a tad ripe herself, imbibing no doubt on the seriously loaded cocktails (such as the Hemingway, which tastes like a sour cherry bomb, so don’t try it), and sits down, explaining that she knows Roger and that he is essentially harmless. “He’s just a bit too German, they can all get a bit like that, German men. You know, a bit forward … You know, a bit touchy-feely.”

Touchy-feely? More like gropey-gropey.

Helga came here for a month last summer, partied herself rigid, and is back for a further three months indiscipline this time round. She’s a lecturer from Dublin and gets all summer off.

Roger, the letcherer from Berlin, plonks himself down and tries yet again. Helga, a little more embarrassed, slaps him on the shoulder and he moves away, smiling. “He’s harmless, really. He’s quite famous in Berlin, actually.”(Oh, well that’s OK then. Here, have a handful of my man breast Rodge!)

Famous for what, Lucy inquires, groping? “No, partying,” retorts Helga, earnestly.

Ten minutes later, after performin a circt of the club, Roger plonks himself down yet again, shaking his head as if at a Bon Jovi gig. He moves in to try again but Helga is one step ahead this time, and cuts him off.

“Roger … WILL … YOU … FUCK … OFF…!”

Roger takes the hint, and stumbles away.

“My God,” exclaims Helga, head in hands. “I can’t believe I slept with that remedial.”

The only time of day the cafes seem slack is before 10am, largely because no one is up before that time, and the cafes are closed. Trying to find a pleasant functioning cafe befor 10am is like trying to find the northwest passage, armed only with a U-Bahn map and dressed in nada but a pair of slippers.

does anyone work in Berlin? There’s a palpable feeling that no one actually does. Most peopleweI have met are “freelance” or “on holiday”, or between jobs. By Freelance, we do not mean self-employed, a zealous slave to their productive bent, but casually going about their creative calling, on an ad hoc, ambling basis.

In one month, we have only met two people with a full-time job. Everuone it seems is either a stage or textile designer, freelance film director or multimedia artist, lighting engineer or DJ, party organiser or screenplay writer, freelance journalist or illustrator etc; all working from laptops in the crowded cafes which lap every street. Think London’s Hackney, writ large; a creative smorgasbord.

Berliners complain that Berlin has little or no work to offer, save for casual bar or cafe work, paid gigs that are jealously guarded, if you have one. Non-Berliners would love to work in Berlin, too, but reasonably paid opportunities are rare, they say. Unemployment, particularly in the suburbs is rife. Twenty-five percent, some claim, more if you include under-employment and illegal immigrants not covered by the statistics.

It’s why, perhaps, Berliners are so thrifty. Every pfennig counts here. People cycle everywhere, like Amsterdam, or walk. The U-Bahn is expensive, comparatively speaking, and often bunked. Annoyingly, if there are six of you, restaurant bills and bar tabs are totted up separately. Which can make for  a painful exprience: “No, I only had one sausage, Nena, honest!”

After that, they fill, with souls