Berlin Vampires

Berlin is a city that has carried its history like multiple scars throughout the centuries. Even in this present day of ramped up technology and flashy, modern architecture, one can still see the shadows of Berlin’s past lurking in the corners. Cobblestone streets, museums riddled with bullet holes, remnants of a great wall, and buildings still crumbling from bombs dropped sixty years ago live side by side with newly paved freeways, shopping mall complexes, and a radio tower that looks like something out of the Jetsons.
Berlin is like a vampire, forever trying to change with the times, but retaining its past with subtle nuances that appear when you least expect it. Which makes Berlin the perfect setting to shoot a music video about vampires. Wilson Gil and Orit Shimoni co-wrote a song called “The Choice“. Wilson sings the first half of the song with deep and haunting lyrics: “It’s too late to pray/For what I just took away/In the morning sunrise/I’ll be closing my eyes”. He narrates the tale of a vampire on the prowl. This vampire meets a girl and narrows in on her as his prey. Little does he know that the girl is also a vampire.
Orit enters on the second half of the song with a voice that sounds like a wounded angel. She is the girl that Wilson has targeted and becomes the ultimate predator as she fanes humanity and then takes her revenge by killing Wilson when his guard is down.
Guitar, violin, mandolin, and acoustic bass give the song an old-time feel. The music builds into crescendos of eerie notes that would send shivers up anyone’s spine.
The video is being shot in Mitte in Kloster Strasse, which is one of Berlin’s oldest U-Bahn stations. Large orbs of light hang from the ceiling like shimmering ghosts. Photos of historic trains adorn the walls, wrought iron accents give the station a graveyard-like vibe, and voices echo off the ceiling like ghouls moaning in a haunted house.
The film director, Karim Rateb, adds suspense and the element of surprise with sweeping views of the station, close ups of bloody mouths, and point of view shots.
As for my part in the video, I get to play Wilson the vampire’s first victim. I’ll be sitting on a bench in the station, innocently waiting for my train. The part should be easy to act, because the Kloster Strasse station already fills me with exciting chills whenever I’m there. Entering that station is like going back through time. I just hope I don’t meet any real vampires along the way.

www.wilsongil.com
www.myspace.com/weelittlebirdie

Busking Permit for Berlin U-BAHN

What a wild goose chase we had with finding where to get a busking permit for the UBAHN (subway) in Berlin! We asked a police officer and he gave us an address of a building, but the person at the building said no, the permit office was at another place. But that place didn’t work out either. So, we pirated for a while until we got busted by the police. I have to say, the police were nice about it and gave us (finally) the correct address for the permit office. However, they gave us the wrong time and days. We trekked out to the permit office (which is located in a most inconvenient location), but discovered that the office was only open on Wednesday.
So, here it is, the official information on where and when to get a permit for busking in Berlin (since the information is not located anywhere else on the web):
U7 to Rathaus Stegliz (the permit office is in the station)
Wednesday 7am-11am
And that is the only time available to get a permit! Permits cost 6.40 euro per day, per person and are good for the following week. Don’t forget to arrive early, or else all the good stations will already be taken! Sheesh.
*no permit needed for playing above ground, unamplified*

Dancing with the Gypsies

Busking in the subway stations has proved to be quite the adventurous endeavour. First, you should be aware that Berlin has a fantastic and immense system of underground and above ground trains. Almost always on time and available to take you anywhere you need to go. This also means that a lot of people use the subway as their primary means of travel- which is to say that certain stations are very busy.
We like the busyness. Lots of potential contributors! There is an art to busking. It turns out that you can’t just stand there and play and make money, no matter how good you are. No, even the best musicians have to work the subway goers the way they would work a crowd at a rock show. Which is what Wilson and I have been doing. He’ll start off with a ballad and then jack it up with a rock song. I’ll dance for a minute to the rock song, and then I’ll dramatically take his cowboy hat from off his head and I’ll shimmy through the crowd with it to earn extra tips.
Passing the hat is key. Apparently, so is almost getting your hand bitten off by a dog. Wilson bent down to pet a dog and almost got quite the bite! I think everyone felt sorry for him, because almost everyone left a tip before they boarded the train.
We’ve been shut down by the cops (but they’ve been very nice about it), had money thrown to us from across the platform in appreciation, saved a dad from the ordeal of his two year old throwing a tantrum (she stopped crying the second she saw Wilson in his cowboy getup), and a few other crazy experiences. My favourite thus far, though, was when a family of gypsies from Bosnia stopped to dance with us. Well, at first they only asked us for money. But they really liked the music and my dancing. One of them was wearing almost the exact same skirt as me. A lot of the moves you see in belly dance originated from traditional gypsy cultures. I’ve always wanted to learn from actual gypsies and thought that I might have my chance while being in Europe.
As I was contemplating on how to ask them what they thought of belly dance and if they could show me a dance step from their culture, one of them piped up and said, “You dance just like…. Shakira! You do Shakira dance!”
Horrified, I tried to explain that belly dance did not originate from Shakira, no matter how well she can shake her hips. But they gypsies insisted. “No, no, you Shakira.” And then they asked, “Teach us how to dance like Shakira!” I didn’t know how to tell them that the dance Shakira does probably originated from their ancestors. Instead, I grabbed one of the children’s hands and we twirled and shimmied and then I grabbed Wilson’s cowboy hat, gladly accepted tips from the bystanders, and then gave the tips to the gypsies.