How To F#€k Up An Airport – Episode 3: Money for Nothing


BER has been built twice – the first time incorrectly, the second time incompletely. We hear from Marco, an engineer who worked on site. Employees were busy stealing copper instead of fixing the fire system. Some managers got rich taking bribes. Informers had their coffee poisoned.

Joel and Jöran drive out to the unfinished BER terminal to inspect the too-short escalators that end with stairs. They were just one of 150,000 mistakes discovered in an audit after the 2012 cancellation. Cables were stuffed together in overloaded enclosures – a fire risk. The sprinkler pipes were too small to carry the required water. More than 600 fire walls had to be reconstructed. And the builders forgot to install lightning rods.

Even when it’s fixed, BER will need another overhaul: “As soon as they open it they have to modernize it,” Marco says. “The technology is old standards. New airports are already building in a different way. This is going to be from the beginning an old airport.”

But finally, heads are starting to roll… the wrong heads. The BER supervisory board fires the only people who know what’s going on, creating new chaos. Then they fire the CEO Rainer Schwarz, but bungle the paperwork. Will any politician ever take responsibility?

How To Fuck Up An Airport is presented by Radio Spaetkauf and RadioEins.
Producer: Joel Dullroy
Presenters: Joel Dullroy, Maisie Hitchcock, Jöran Mandik and Daniel Stern
Music: Ducks!
Artwork: Jim Avignon

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How To Fuck Up An Airport – Episode 2: Double The Recipe


Days away from the planned 2012 opening party, nothing seemed wrong at BER. What was really going on? On this episode, we look at how the airport managers and politicians were messing with the plans, even as construction was underway.

They demanded a 70% increase in terminal space to add hundreds of extra shops, and requested special double story boarding gates for the supersized Airbus A380, even though no airline requested it. Instead of a working fire safety system, they planned to hire up to 800 people to act as human fire alarms.

Despite multiple warnings, the airport board pushed ahead with opening party plans right up until May 8, 2012, when the first major delay was announced. We meet the man who put a stop to it all – Stephan Loge, the administrator of the Brandenburg building department.

Also on this episode, Joel and Jöran visit the Schönefeld S-Bahn station in search of the empty train that runs nightly to the unfinished airport to keep air moving through the tunnels.

How To Fuck Up An Airport is presented by Radio Spaetkauf and RadioEins.
Producer: Joel Dullroy
Presenters: Joel Dullroy, Maisie Hitchcock, Jöran Mandik and Daniel Stern
Music: Ducks!
Artwork: Jim Avignon

Subscribe to Radio Spaetkauf on iTunes.

Support us with a monthly donation!

How To Fuck Up An Airport – Episode 1: Without A Plan


Every Berliner knows the new airport is late. Few know exactly why. We’re here to explain. BER is the international airport code for Berlin Brandenburg Airport, nickname Willy Brandt. It has also become a signifier of failure, incompetence, corruption and Berlin’s general inability to get its act together.

If you’ve flown to Berlin Schönefeld Airport in the last few years, you’ll have seen BER as your plane taxied along the runway. But despite outward appearances, BER is far from finished. It has been under construction for 11 years, blown through six opening dates, three general managers and two state leaders. Costs have ballooned from around €1 billion to at least €5.4 billion.

Across this series, you’ll learn why the escalators are too short, why the lights are always on, and why the rooms seemed to be numbered by bingo. We’ll interview insiders and disgruntled workers, chase ghost trains running to the terminal, and go inside the unfinished airport.

On this episode we’ll go way back to before any plans had been drawn, before even the Berlin wall had come down, to discover the foundational flaws that continue to haunt the unfinished airport.

How To Fuck Up An Airport is presented by Radio Spaetkauf and RadioEins.
Producer: Joel Dullroy
Presenters: Joel Dullroy, Maisie Hitchcock, Jöran Mandik and Daniel Stern
Music: Ducks!
Artwork: Jim Avignon

Subscribe to Radio Spaetkauf on iTunes.

Support us with a monthly donation!

RS Live: A Supermarket for Trash

Germans throw out one truck’s worth of good food each minute. SirPlus is a supermarket that sells groceries that are past their best-before date but are still edible. Founder Raphael Fellmer joins us with a basket of typical products from his shelves. You can visit the shop at Wilmersdorfer Staße 59, or you can order a home delivery box at: http://www.sirplus.de

Konrad Werner explains why Germans are terrified of fresh elections. The country still doesn’t have a governing coalition and might need to go back to the polls. Joel suggests a policy to add to coalition negotiations: abolishing the racist term “Schwarzer Peter” (Black Peter) to refer to a trouble-maker. Newspapers often use the shameful term to refer to the FDP, which walked out of coalition negotiations. Listen to Konrad’s podcast here: http://bit.ly/2zsamzo

You might have heard of Berlin’s top league football team Hertha BSC. But the city is also home to numerous neighbourhood clubs across seven different football leagues. Bloody Hell Magazine is an English-language blog that celebrates local football teams. Writers Ben, Dave and Alex join us to share their passion. Read more at: http://bloodyhellmagazine.com

Iconic Berlin illustrator and musician Jim Avignon joins us to perform live and talk about his new art book, Business As Unusual. He tells us how he managed to rediscover his love for Berlin despite how much it has changed during his 30 years here. Find his book here: http://bit.ly/2hW0jLC

This is our last live recording for 2017. Stay tuned for our upcoming spin-off podcast focusing exclusively on the debacle at Berlin Brandenburg Airport BER.

Recorded at Comedy Cafe Berlin on Sunday November 26. Your hosts: Jöran Mandik, Maisie Hitchcock, Joel Dullroy and Daniel Stern.

Full transcript available here.

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Watery Grave for Shared Bikes

The number of public bikes in Berlin increased to 6200 this week when Chinese company Mobike placed 700 of their orange and silver bicycles on the streets. They’re not to be confused with O-Bike, the Singaporean company that introduced 500 yellow-framed bikes just a few weeks earlier. In other cities, Mobike gives users credits for reporting broken bikes, and takes away credits for poor parking and “abandoning the bike when intercepted by police.”

The Berlin transport department says another three bike sharing companies have expressed interest in operating here. Radio Spaetkauf co-host Jöran Mandik discovered a watery graveyard of Lidl Bikes in the Landwehrkanal near Admiralsbrücke where some hater has been throwing them.

Police in Berlin recovered over 100 stolen items formerly belonging to John Lennon. A man has been arrested for allegedly selling the objects, worth an estimated €3 million, via an online auction website. They items were stolen from Yoko Ono by her former chauffeur, and passed on to a fence in Berlin. The auction website’s former managers says it didn’t know the items were stolen.

This Sunday is our very last live show of the year. Jim Avignon, an iconic Berlin illustrator and musician, is our special musical guest. The whole team will be on stage at the Comedy Cafe Berlin in Neukölln. Doors open at 3.30pm, show starts at 4pm, entry is free.

This episode was presented by Joel Dullroy and Maisie Hitchcock, and brought to you by Radio Eins.

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