Boaty-boaty boat shoes

What is Bonn's fascination with the boat shoe? This is something that has been annoying me from day one here. Well, actually, I didn't notice it right at the start. It was a gradual process.

The first time I saw my uni-student neighbours wearing boat shoes, I thought: "Ooh, how very ironic - nice touch".   Then, our Hausmeister showed up at my door in a pair. Maybe he was a sailor, I thought. THEN I noticed otherwise stylish young women wearing them. I had never seen this anywhere in the industrialised world.

Then I realised that my young neighbours weren't wearing boat shoes to be ironic. They had a number of different pairs of boat shoes - blue, tan, natural, green suede. But then, this took the cake: I caught a down-and-out chef out the back of my local Chinese restaurant wearing a scuffed old pair, smoking a cigarette while sitting on a beer crate.

My conclusion, after two months in Bonn: boat shoes have clearly permeated all levels of society here.

Why is this such a problem for me, you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I used to get beaten up at the age of 14 (ie. way back in the 90s) for wearing boat shoes because they were uncool even then, my concern with boat shoes is that it's a classic case of people trying to be what they are not. Undoubtedly, many people here like to row. But how many of them are really sailors? Not many, I would wager, considering that sailing on the Rhine really isn't that popular, and there's no body of water here for about 70 kilometers.

There are also other concerns, such as:
- wearing them without shoes makes your feet smell,
- wearing them with socks looks ridiculous,
- when they get wet they stay wet (and the leather stains your feet and socks brown),
- they are so mainstream that it is clear you are making no effort,
- they offer no support to your foot arch,
- they are overpriced,
- they are prone to falling apart, and
- they're not actually non-slip (even though that's their only selling point).

Not that I've ever worn them, of course.

Behind closed doors...

There seems to be a disproportionately high number of sensibly-dressed, well-groomed chaps wandering round the streets of Bonn's Südstadt district. Ever since I got here, I have been wondering what it's all about. I haven't seen men dress like this since "Beverly Hills 90210" went off air.

It seems that many of them are residents of the borough's frat houses. In my local area, they are mainly Catholic set-ups for the male university students of Bonn. Some of these fraternities are schlagende, that means that they like to do a spot of fencing. Often people get injured pretty badly on the face during the Mensur bouts, the injury is called a smite. These injuries are traditionally seen as a badge of honour. Not all colleges are like this - increasingly they are in the minority.

The fraternities have been a bit of a target for bad press over the years. Some are accused of having over-zealous nationalistic leanings, others of being misogynistic (anti-female). It's widely thought that members receive favourable treatment in industry and academic circles, after they leave university. Vandalism to the colleges occurs every now and then.

The fraternities say that their traditions teach character - and that they also make positive contributions to the local community. I think they could make a really strong contribution to the community by discontinuing their wearing of boat shoes. Where have you guys been for the last 15 years!?!?!?!

The Beauty Board

This week I was in the bathroom of my local café, when I found myself looking at something quite unique. No, get your mind out of the gutter - it was a Beauty Board for men. To the surprise of other patrons, I quickly took a photo to record the moment.

It's not often these days that - as a man - you go to the bathroom and are confronted with a broad range of grooming equipment. If it is there, you are probably staying at an expensive hotel and it's generally not self-serve. Tips are even sometimes required. So, at first glance I was pretty impressed with this fixture. But, now that I've had the chance think about it, I'm not so sure. It's a nice idea, but it is also a trifle dodgy.

It's the personal nature of some of the items that really has me uncertain. I mean the hair gel and the mousse are fair enough for Berliners (although most of them would be carrying it already). Even the mouthwash may be useful on occasions. But a shaver? A toothbrush? I think this is crossing the line. You really should have to bring your own toothbrush and shaver to a café if you plan to do your full ablutions there. These really are personal items in my opinion.

By the way: first reader to guess the name of the café get's a free German-style toiletries bag. You know, the one with the hook on it, that they always hang up behind the bathroom door when they stay over?

Gentry Fication

This place on the left on Brunnenstraße is just one of many apartment blocks that has been cleared in Berlin recently, to get rid of squatters and make way for something new. On the front of the building is the graffitied message "we are all staying". Although the squatters were kicked out over a year ago - nothing has since happened to the site.

Squatting was back in the Berlin news again this last week with the highly publicised forced eviction of the inhabitants of Liebigstraße in Berlin-Friedrichshain. The tenants - who had previously been squatters - had been told by the landlords to leave ages ago, but they had been fighting in the courts up until the last minute to be able to remain in the building. In the end big business, and the riot police, won out of course. But 2500 police were needed for the operation, 40 of them were injured.

Wandering about on Saturday night in Kreuzberg, I saw the remains of the protesters. They had been fenced in by police because they had been taking part in a non-registered demonstration. That sounds surprisingly like something else in the news recently. Police were seemingly afraid that the demo would turn into something similar to what happened on Friday night, as protesters damaged windows and cars in central Berlin as they passed through.

For me the whole media hullaballoo and the accompanying protests are not just about evicting squatters, but are part of a larger issue. The squatters were just one of the many subcultures that were previously permitted to happily exist in Berlin up until about twenty years ago. But since then the city has started to undergo rapid gentrification. And THAT'S what people are up in arms about.

Putting up with squatters goes hand in hand with tolerating drunk punks and completely untalented musicians on the U-Bahn, so the argument goes. It's what gives Berlin its charm. It's what makes the city cool. To outsiders the argument might seem unrealistic. But, it does have some credence I think. After all no-one wants wealthy people like these two on the right moving in to their area, do they?

Fashion tourists

This week I've discovered a new favourite song . Although it's been doing the rounds for a while now, it really is a must-see. And, it's acted as a bit of an inspiration for this week's entry.

I think the reason this song struck such a chord with me (if you'll pardon the pun) is because living in Berlin full-time, I've started to notice an influx of very confused fashion tourists entering my adopted city over the last few years.

Take a look at the chap above for instance. Now, he's clearly making too much effort. The hi-top shoes and the embroidered jacket are already pushing the envelope. But the shoulder bag just takes the game too far. No genuine Berliner would ever do this. He is either a footballer for Hertha BSC and earns way too much, or he is a "fashion tourist" from out of town. I'm tipping the second option.

The thing about Berlin is: it's fashionable, because it is liberal in it's attitudes. Locals wear crazy combinations of things either because they don't have anything else to wear in their closet or because they have designed the clothes themselves. Most of the time they get into the clubs and bars wearing whatever they want, because people here appreciate a bit of originality. Now, that's cool.

I'm no fashion guru, but buying a full wardrobe of "cutting-edge" stuff in Shoreditch before you come across on your 29 pound Ryanair flight for the weekend is, I think quite clearly, not cool.

Udo's got the look

I've been hanging out on Kurfürstendamm this week in West Berlin, doing a french course (what else?). Despite going to the effort to buy a full Hugo Boss wardrobe on the first day, I've been feeling about as sartorially elegant as a worm wearing a bowtie. It really is a different world over there. Take hairdressers for instance.

In the home of the 7 Euro haircut, Berlin's superstar hairdresser Udo Walz charges a 70 Euro fee for a consultation on Kurfürstendamm. And, yes, you saw right. He really is holding a hair dryer as if it's a firearm in the photo above. As Udo himself puts it on his website: "Udo Walz is a hairdresser - nothing more, nothing less. And he is a phenomenon."

Only on the K-damm can you get away with that.