Squealing Trains, Smelly Drains

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 Juni 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 Juni 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 Maj 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 Maj 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 Apr 201324min

Berlin's housing crisis took a tragic turn this week when an elderly old woman died on the streets two days after being evicted from her apartment. Several hundred people marched through Kreuzberg on Sunday to protest the incident, and to voice their anger at the role of the police in enforcing evictions across the city. An increasing number of evictions are taking place across Berlin as landlords seek to take advantage of soaring rental prices. Evictions are routinely undertaken by large numbers of police, who have increased their enforcement measures in response to the growing crowds of blockading protesters. During Sunday's demonstration, marchers shouted angry slogans at the police, blaming them for "murdering" Rosemarie Fliess, an elderly woman who was forced out of her home in the district of Reinickendorf.

14 Apr 20133min

Have you ever taken the U-Bahn to the end of the line? If not, you're missing out on some great architecture, according to photographer Kate Seabrook. On this short episode of Radio Spätkauf, Maisie interviews Kate about her project Endbahnhof (http://endbahnhof.tumblr.com/), which involved photographing the interiors of every one of Berlin's U-Bahn stations.

8 Apr 20135min

On this construction-themed episode, Joel, Maisie and Andrew discuss Berlin buildings of all kinds, from the much maligned GDR variety to the much-loathed Stadtschloss (City Palace). Most people oppose the new Stadschloss, so why is it being built? Andrew talks to a man who is preserving East German architecture by creating miniature cardboard cut-outs of plattenbau and iconic DDR buildings. Plus random anti-smoking legislation, Knut lives on in the courts, the joys of Tegel airport and why development on Tempelhof Field might not be such a bad thing. Music from Kool Thing and legendary GDR composer Reinhard Lakomy. Tune in to Reboot.fm 88.4 Berlin from 11pm to hear the show, or download the podcast.

24 Mars 201324min