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Kaninchenfeld – Berlin’s Brass Rabbit Field
The brass rabbits of Karla Sachse’s Kaninchenfeld (Rabbit Field) add a touch of colour and some much needed shine to an otherwise unremarkable stretch of the Chausseestraße in Berlin. The Kaninchenfeld is one of seven artworks selected from a host ...
Sunday Documentary: Gaming Beyond the Iron Curtain: East Germany
Gaming Beyond the Iron Curtain: East Germany is a short documentary about the personal computer and arcade video game industry in the GDR during the Cold War. As the narrator, Super Bunnyhop, summarises at the end of the video: If you ever need an example of the complicated intersection between politics and entertainment, look no […]
Mark Twain – The Awful German Language
The Awful German Language is an essay by the American author Mark Twain in which he humorously outlines the complexity of the language and the difficulties he encountered while learning it. It is a must-read book for students of the often baffling German language. Twain, most famous for his Huckleberry Finn stories, travelled extensively through […]
Sunday Documentary: Berlin – Symphony of a Great City
Berlin – Symphony of a Great City, released in 1927, is a classic of the golden age of silent film and a compelling document of life in Berlin in the interwar years. The film is presented as a day in the life of Berlin but Walter Ruttmann edited together footage recorded over the course of […]
Train Etiquette – The Berlin GIFs Edition
One of the major arse-aches of train travel anywhere in the world is the inability of some people to grasp the basics of train etiquette. Almost every train journey involves some form of idiocy, lack of common sense or plain rudeness. I have lots of bugbears when it comes to train etiquette – feet on […]
Café Achteck – Berlin’s Green Pissoir
If you’ve spent time wandering around Berlin you may have occasionally noticed a small green metal hut that looks a little like a summer house but did you stop to wonder what it was? The structure you noticed, known locally as a Café Achteck (Octagonal Café), is actually a toilet. I saw my first Café […]
Sunday Documentary: Berliner Trance
Berliner Trance is a 1993 documentary that charts the rising popularity of trance music and the MFS record label from its origins in post-wall Berlin. Trance music is a kind of dance music which thousands of young people across Germany and throughout Europe are quite passionate about. It’s a musical movement which is gaining strength. […]
Leaf the Train – An Autumnal Art Intervention by TOY Crew
In the UK, ‘leaves on the tracks’ is a much-ridiculed excuse for late running trains but in Berlin in Autumn 2016 an U-Bahn carriage filled with leaves caused disruption on the city’s U2 line; the seasonal prank was an art intervention by local graffiti and street art collective TOY Crew called Leaf the Train. The […]
Walled in! – The inner German border | DW English
The computer animation Walled in! – The inner German border, which details the fortifications of the former boundary was produced by Deutsche Welle in cooperation with the Berlin Wall Foundation to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Save for a few remaining stretches preserved as memorials, the Berlin Wall is merely […]
Wegbier: Berlin’s Bargain Beer Map
Berlin is pretty cheap when it comes to beer but I’ve noticed that Späti prices can vary wildly so I came up with Wegbier – Berlin’s Bargain Beer Map to keep track of the best value options. One of the reasons I fell in love with Berlin was the freedom to drink a beer as […]
Sunday Documentary: Degenerate Art
Degenerate Art is a documentary by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art based on the exhibition Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany that they put on at the Altes Museum in Berlin in 1992. As with the Nazi book burning of 1933, classifying particular works as degenerate art was part […]
