‘Health & Fitness’ Archives
Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände
The snappily-titled Natur-Park Schöneberger Südgelände is a not-so-well-known 18-hectare urban park at the southern end of Schöneberg. The park has blossomed from the ruins of an old railway hub that was built in the 1890s, and which for 70 years operated as one of the city's busiest (including during WWII). The area was closed and abandoned following the division of the city and nature slowly began to work its magic, reclaiming the old crumbling administrative buildings and rotting [...]
Bamboo Bicycle Club
Jack Orlik talks to bamboo bike creator Dan Vogel-Essex... The workshop stands in a triangle of land carved up by industrial bars of steel: frontiers formed by the S-Bahn and national railway tracks that bring trains thundering past every few minutes. "It's a shame you didn't get to see it in the sun. It can be really quite beautiful", says Dan Vogel-Essex, gesturing over the scrubland that was once a trainyard. The sky has clouded over, and the thick metallic smell of rain begins to [...]
Zen Shiatsu & The Art of Body And Mind Maintenance
Wyndham Wallace visits Kreuzberg’s Shiatsu Loft… It’s 5pm on Kottbusser Damm: the road is busy with cars returning home from work, the market traders are yelling as they try to get rid of the last of their produce, while, down by Hermannplatz, blue lights flash as the siren from another emergency vehicle approaches. But, up on the fourth floor of a hinterhof behind the Banzai Sports school, peace reigns supreme. This is where Katrin Werner launched her Shiatsu Loft at the [...]
Berlin’s community gardens
Berlin's super-sized community gardens (and why they should be exported to the U.S.)... When I’m in a city, I am drawn to the places in-between. Spaces, I mean, that somehow avoided being paved over, or built upon, or that once held buildings that have now collapsed, the rubble mostly hauled away, leaving only the structure’s ghost all filled up with spindly weeds. Sometimes these spaces are just surprising: When vacant lots are selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars just a [...]
Hidden Europe’s Guide to Lichterfelde
Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries, editors of the excellent Berlin-based Hidden Europe magazine, profile their much-neglected suburb... Prosaic places are so often the most interesting spots. And the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde ranks as decidedly prosaic. None of the main English-language guidebooks to Berlin so much as mentions the suburb where we live and work. Tourists do not flock to Lichterfelde to see the great sights of a community that, fifty years ago this summer, awoke on a [...]
Weinstein
Molly Hannon visits Weinstein, one of Prenzlauer Berg's best, yet most understated restaurants... Upon entering Weinschenke Weinstein, you immediately sense that this is not your average German bistro or chi chi Prenzlauer Berg dive. It exudes the air of a restaurant that is fine and feathered with wine barrels and old vintages bottles lining the wall paired with simple wooden tables and furnishings. There is nothing fancy or intimidating about this establishment - in fact, it [...]
Marco Clausen: Berlin’s Urban Gardener
Madeline Maher chats to Marco Clausen, co-founder of Nomadisch Grün and the Prinzessinnengarten... Nomadisch Grün (Nomadic Green) launched Prinzessinnengärten (Princess gardens) as a pilot project in the summer of 2009 at Moritzplatz in Berlin Kreuzberg, a site which had been a wasteland for over half a century. Along with friends, fans, activists and neighbours, the group cleared away rubbish, built transportable organic vegetable plots and reaped the first fruits of their [...]
Bicycles: The Key To Better Cities
Kasey Klimes explains how bicycles encourage a more intimate relationship with our urban environment... We all know the talking points. The benefits of bicycles have been tirelessly elaborated upon; bicycles improve health, ease congestion, save money, use less space, and provide efficient transportation with zero fuel consumption and zero carbon emissions. The culmination of a population on two wheels can have a drastic impact on the overall wellbeing of a city. However, none [...]
Lucky Leek
Ruth Michaelson and Itay Lotem give several thumbs up to Prenzlauer Berg's latest vegan venture... The Vegan’s View by Ruth Before you even get to the food, Lucky Leek presents itself as a vastly different vegan eating experience - just by virtue of the light, airy interior and general lack of wind-chimes, woven hemp furniture or thrashing punk music. The interior blends right in to the other upscale, minimalist establishments on Kollwitzstrasse without seeming pretentious or [...]
Naked in Berlin
Siobhán Dowling disrobes in Berlin and becomes one of the locals... It’s ladies day at the sauna in my local gym in East Berlin and I’m almost mesmerized by the amount of flesh on show. I’ve found myself sharing the small wooden enclosure with three elderly East German ladies all of whom are blessed with ham-like thighs and the most impressively enormous pendulous breasts. The women are nattering away as I slink in and soon draw me into their conversation. They tell me about [...]
