First Class U-Bahns

All this hot weather making you feel frisky? Fancy some outdoor lovin'? Might be worth losing your job first. We discuss Germany's strange laws regarding outdoor sex. Also on the show: a life sentence for Berlin's celebrity bears Maxi and Schnute, bye- bye Festsaal Kreuzberg, and the Mayor of London's love letter to Berlin. Building officially begins on the city's next BER, the Stadtschloss, plus: dirty lakes, and why the Jewish Memorial wasn't built to last. We talk to the people behind the Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien's current show - Wir sind hier nicht zum Spaß! - an exhibition revisiting Berlin's nightlife and culture of the 90's http://www.kunstraumkreuzberg.de/start.html and announce a competition for Berlin's ugliest building. This week's song comes from exotic American songstress, Geneva Jacuzzi.

28 Heinä 201329min

On this episode of Radio Spätkauf: Can you imagine an advert-free Berlin? The Amt für Werbefreiheit & Gutes Leben can. We talk to them about their campaign to remove advertising from the city's streets. Plus:the mysterious forces at work behind the aborted auction of the Spreepark in Plänterwald, awkward gig venues, Soviet poster boys, kim.com, no more eateries in the Graefekiez & an interview with the folks trying to set up an alternative to GEMA, Germany's main performance rights organisation. All tonight on reboot.fm 11pm and online.....

14 Heinä 201328min

For our second summer special, we've taken our own advice and journeyed out to the lakes and woods of South East Brandenburg. But before that, we start off in Berlin, where we talk about a new threat to affordable rent, another endangered East German building, why wearing a bike helmet can save you money, and how former Stasi informants make new careers under capitalism. Then we head out to Klingemühle, a former GDR holiday camp in the Naturpark Schlaubetal in Brandenburg. We meet its inhabitants, Buenaventura e.V, who tell us about the camp's history, what they're doing there and making the transition from Berlin to the countryside. Plus a child of the GDR talks to us about holidaying in the East and we have a chat with the organisers of Camp Tipsy, the DIY festival in a forest. Campfire songs come from Nadia Buyse and Dirty Beaches.

1 Heinä 201331min

Radio Spaetkauf is the Berlin podcast, a half-hour discussion of local news, politics, urban development, culture and music, presented by international residents Maisie, Joel and Andrew. This episode is a summer special, with some tips about getting out of the city and visiting the lakes of Brandenburg. We talk about the threat faced by some of the beloved garden allotments on the city's fringes due to housing pressure. In urban development news we discuss the Stadtschloss, a monumental building project that threatens to become a monumental disaster. Despite the enormous cost to the city, the city castle is going ahead. Even revelations that Berlin will have to pay €470M back to the federal government due to a population miscount hasn't deterred the castle's supporters. We interview the initiator of Spree Bluete, a local Berlin currency in development. And there's a special guest monologue by Joshua James Alas of Mobile Kino about the death of 35mm film projection in Berlin cinemas.

16 Kesä 201326min

Radio Spaetkauf is the Berlin podcast. On this episode we tell you how to get a reduction in your rent if your building is in bad condition: if you've got an illegal brothel operating in your building, you can claim a 30% rent reduction. What's going on at Warschauer Straße S-Bahn station? We'll talk about the new station being constructed, and how the designers forgot to include parking for bicycles. Tiergarten may be blocked off with a permanent fence, if the CDU gets its way. They say a full security fence is needed around the park to protect large events held there against terrorists. We're not convinced a fence would do anything, and surely not holding events there is preferable to closing off the park? Plus our interview with a British woman who ran an association to connect with people in the GDR; possibly the only Englishwoman ever to exchange political jokes with East German party officials.

3 Kesä 201326min

Have you ever paid attention to the lettering on the station signs on the U-Bahn? We interview typographer Anton Koovit, who has created a font called U8 based on the U-Bahn station signage. As Anton discovered, the original font was created in the 1920s but was promptly forgotten, and the existing signs are rotting away without proper restoration. He spent months creating a digital version of the U8 font to ensure it does not disappear entirely. During out extended interview, Anton shares some other interesting discoveries about the Berlin underground transport system. You can see his font in action at www.korkork.com.

20 Touko 201322min

Alexanderplatz is set for a facelift; several new tall buildings are set for development, one measuring 150 meters. Surveys show that a lot of Berliner's don't like the architecture at Alex, but they also don't approve of the plans for new buildings. Maisie presents her interview with the band Jeans Team about the district of Wedding and the monstrous Gesundbrunnen Center, about which they have written a song. Joel discusses the freelancers' rights movement, a push to improve the conditions of freelancers everywhere. He will be presenting on the same topic at this week's Re:publica conference in Berlin.

5 Touko 201323min

Berlin's abandoned theme park, Spreepark at Plänterwald, is to be auctioned off, with a starting price of €1.62 million. The new owners will get all the rides, but will be obliged to keep operating it as an amusement park. For more about the history of Spreepark, listen to Joel's audio report from 2009 here: https://soundcloud.com/joelalas/berlins-abandoned-theme-park Obama is visiting Berlin in June for the 50th anniversary of the famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. What witty one-liner will he come up with to outdo JFK?Send us your ideas for the president via Twitter. How much do you pay for your room in a shared flat? The average prices have been released: €292 in Berlin, compared to €493 in Munich. For a cheaper option, an entrepreneur plans to build a village of shipping container apartments near Treptow. A bed in a cargo crate will cost you €220 a month. International language teachers in Berlin are demanding better conditions. They are leading a series of strikes to draw attention to the big differences in pay between Germans and foreigner teachers in schools. Their message: foreigners shouldn't feel frightened about standing up for their rights. What did kids in the DDR play, while the western world played Monopoly? Maisie interviews two members of Nachgemacht, a collective obsessed by the home-made board games created in East Germany.

21 Huhti 201324min