Just over 20 years ago, this part of Berlin echoed to the wail of alarm sirens and the howls of attack dogs guarding the Wall that split the German capital, the uneasy front line in the Cold War.
Now, the “Wall Park,” a strip once divided by the hated barrier, hums to the sound of people butchering Michael Jackson and Britney Spears hits as thousands of Berliners turn up every Sunday to enjoy a huge open-air karaoke show.
One spring Sunday last year, Joe Hatchiban, a 36-year-old Irish courier living in Berlin, fired up his laptop and a microphone and held an impromptu karaoke competition with just a scattering of people sitting in the park.
“I live here around the corner, so one Sunday I just came round here and set up the sound system. I just started singing a few songs with just five or six people,” he said.
The five or six participants on that first Sunday quickly became hundreds, then thousands, and more than a year later, what was impromptu has become an institution, a “must-do” event among Berlin’s young bohemians.
One recent Sunday, two skinny teenage girls gripped their microphones tightly and fought — unsuccessfully — to make their rendition of YMCA heard above the enthusiastic crowd.
“It’s fun to stay at the YMCA,” screams the colorful crowd, the women in flowery mini-skirts, the men with their oiled torsos swaying to the Village People dance.
The scene could hardly provide more of a contrast to the seven-hectare no-man’s-land that from 1961 to 1989 separated the West Berlin district of Wedding from Prenzlauer Berg in the East.
The barbed wire and watchtowers have been replaced by barbecues and trendy buggies.
As for the Irish organizer, he occasionally passes round an old tin for contributions, but the point was not to make money, he said.
“I didn’t put any thought at all into what would happen in the future ... I maybe just had the idea that something funny could happen out of it,” he said.
Axel Puell, head of the Friends of the Mauerpark association welcomed the attention the Irishman has brought to the area.
“With his karaoke, Joe has shown that you can succeed without any commercial logic behind you whatsoever,” Puell said. “There’s nothing to win, it’s free to take part and there’s no advertising for it.”
However, Puell worried that the success might have a limited shelf-life.
“One day, Joe might want to do something else and then it’s very likely that some commercial venture will come in its place,” he said.
For now, the murdering of classic hits continues unabated in the place where border guards once had shoot-to-kill orders.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of