UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA STUDY ABROAD IN BERLIN 2005

Homeless Musician
Life on the street is tough for Jan Hiltbrunner

 

 
   

Towing his bass around the busy construction-filled streets of Berlin can be challenging, but after weeks of doing it, Jan manages to multi-task on an afternoon of playing music.  (1/10)
 

     
   

Text and photos by Andrea Morales
 

     
   

         Before getting into bed, he ties tightens one end of the rope around the waist of his bass and fixes the other into a loose noose around his neck.
         "You don't know what kind of people come in and out of here," he says.
         Jan Hiltbrunner, 22, is afraid that someone will sneak into his free room at the Open University of Berlin and steal his large standing bass, his baby. His instrument has been the only reliable company he has had in the month he has lived homeless in Berlin.
         After leaving behind a career in chemical engineering in his hometown of Basel, Switzerland, in July 2004, Jan had been living with his girlfriend and out of his parents' wallet, but that support suddenly came to an end in April 2005.
         Since losing his housing and monetary support, he has been living what he considers the tail end of his partying streak funded by the money he earns and relationships formed playing music in train stations, restaurants and sidewalks.
         Jan sleeps in parks, at the Open University and at other similar squatter posts throughout the city. Berlin has offered him so many ways to keep his lifestyle afloat. Not to mention the countless other people that either share in or support that culture.
         Jan's frequent partner in music, Dimitri, 33, moved to Berlin nine years ago from Kazakhstan and has been following similar routines. Since they met a few months ago, Dimitri has acted as a sort of mentor to Hiltbrunner, teaching him how to live off the change they collect as street performers.
         Jan now knows which "Doner Kapab" fast-food stands have sympathy towards struggling musicians, where he can buy cigarettes individually, how many songs he needs to play for another beer and how to talk his way out of a citation for playing on the street.
         The Open University has also facilitated things for him. It is a former seminar room for Humboldt University that has been converted into a place meant for intellectual discussion of alternative policies. There, Jan finds free food, free showers, a place to play music with other people and occasionally a free bed.
         "The atmosphere is something special here, so many different people," he said, referring to the crowd the place draws. "Everyone lives a little bit in different lifestyles, but everyone has the same fundamental things: sleep, water, oxygen, eating, love, sunshine."
         
Like the gray-haired, classically-trained pianist who sat in the auditorium all night debating why German classics were flawed or the red-faced guitar player with three teeth and crumbs in his beard who stole everyone's cigarettes or the dreadlocked college students or the traveling mother and child who carried an inflatable pool and playground set everywhere.
         Despite enjoying the freedom he's found in the city to live off the basics, he does have his reservations about its longevity.
         
"I know if I keep living like this, I won't live another 10 years," he said.
         He has dreams of being an at-home father and playing his music all day. Since he got to Berlin though, his life has been in constant change and circumstances have not been so accommodating, he said.
         One morning after he snuck onto a bus without paying fare and with only phone numbers for job opportunities in his pocket, he said he realized that with his ex-girlfriend pregnant, he needed to find an income soon. But with Berlin's unemployment so high, the outcome of his dreams remains unclear.