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 […]
LOST… WEST-BERLIN / Last Morning of ‘RISIKO’ (86)
LOST… WEST-BERLIN / Last Morning of ‘RISIKO’ (86) is a short film from Uli M Schueppel with Super8 footage of the last hours of the renowned 1980s Berlin nightspot with a cover of Lost in Music by Anita Lane and Alex Harvey as the soundtrack. “Risiko” was a legendary bar/club in WestBerlin. A home & […]
Döner Kebab Pillow – Good Night, Meat Dreams!
Cornershop knew what they were talking about when they sang ‘Everybody needs a Döner for a pillow’* and you can get your own Döner Kebab pillow on Amazon. Foolish enough to forget to eat a kebab after a big night out? You’ll have your Döner pillow to comfort you. Woken up in the middle of […]
Stone Brewing Berlin – A Craft Beer Colossus
Stone Brewing Berlin, the US craft brewer’s first European outpost, is a brewery, restaurant and beer garden on the site of the former Mariendorf gasworks. The red brick colossus of the 3,200 square metre main hall of Stone Brewing Berlin is home to the brewery, main bar, restaurant, merchandise shop and library bar. The brewery […]
Sunday Documentary: Nazi Book Burning
In the short documentary, Nazi Book Burning, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum presents the events of 1933 in Germany and discusses why regimes like the Nazis target culture and in particular books. Shortly after the Nazis’ rise to power, picking up on the government’s desire to ‘purify’ German culture and society, the National Socialist […]