‘“Meet the Locals”’ Archives
(English) Tee Salon
Grashina Gabelmann grabs a cuppa in Mitte's charming Tee Salon... I love tea. In fact, I'm sipping on my third cup of Jasmine as I write this. Not only is tea a great excuse for procrastination (“I'll get back to writing just as soon as I make another cuppa”) but the ritual of preparing and drinking it is relaxing and quite often I'll even find an idea or inspiration after gazing wistfully into the bottom of my tea cup. Kristine Mager, the owner of Mitte's Tee Import, understands [...]
(English) Q&A: Amit Elan
Hannae Kim talks to 22 year old Israeli artist Amit Elan about painting, faces and photography... Amit Elan is a 22 years old Berlin based Israeli artist. He studied at Hamidrasha Art Academy and has since developed mixed media installations. He exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia and Israel. He writes for the artists' blog Art in Transit published by the international artists' organization I.G.B.K. Spring 2011 he completed an artist residency in the [...]
(English) Haus Schwarzenberg
Grashina Gabelmann explores the story behind Mitte's Haus Schwarzenberg... Most visitors to Berlin find themselves ambling along Mitte’s Rosenthaler Strasse at some point, often to browse well-known commercial landmarks like the Rosen and Hackeschen Höfe. While these places possess their own kind of charm, located between these highly buffed retail magnets, at No. 39, is a more subdued, scruffy building whose brown, pockmarked façade -- conspicuously un-refurbished – is [...]
Bonanza Coffee Roasters
Vanessa Remoquillo chats to Yumi Choi of Bonanza Coffee Roasters... With her business partner Kiduk Reus, Yumi Choi started Bonanza Coffee Heroes in 2007. Hip yet serious, and competitively priced, the coffee outlet at the Mauerpark end of Prenzlauer Berg was quickly embraced by young, trendy, discriminating Berliners. "This is the new Berlin", a patron sweepingly remarks to friends sampling the coffee for the first time. Whatever that means, Bonanza is doing its bit representing this [...]
ZZB: Berlin’s Historical Eye Witnesses
Paul Scraton goes beyond the museums and the history books to look at the importance of eyewitness history and Berlin's ZeitZeugenBörse... http://youtu.be/v3x2EBKn4PM Eyewitness History: An Interview with Jutta Hertlein from the ZeitZeugenBörse Berlin (by Dougal Squires and Ruby Pester). A few years ago I visited the crowded offices of the Falls Road Community Council in Belfast, where they were busy collecting and documenting the testimonies of local people and their memories of [...]
(English) Another Country
Marian Ryan profiles one of Berlin's most characterful bookshops, Kreuzberg's Another Country... In November 2010, one of the world’s best-known travel-guide brands, Lonely Planet, named Berlin’s Another Country among the top ten bookshops in the world. The quirky, thirteen-year-old Kreuzberg institution took its place at number six, alongside legends like Paris’s adored Shakespeare & Company and San Francisco’s iconic City Lights. Not a few jaws dropped among the Berlin [...]
(English) Bamboo Bicycle Club
Jack Orlik discovers there are no disadvantages with bamboo... 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 [...]
(English) Stadt, Land, Fluss
Giulia Pines is impressed by a restaurant that's eschewing 'bio' in favour of the 'local'... Martin Görlitz doesn't like the word 'bio'. True, it has a certain appeal in some ways, but even dedicated bio-product buyers have to admit the original idea has been somewhat obscured in the tsunami of over-priced products, frenzied officialdom and increase in related terminologies like 'organic', 'Demeter' and more. “Bio is a word that the government stamps on products,” he explains, [...]
(English) Readux: Reading in Berlin
Adrian Pasen chats to Amanda DeMarco, founder of German literature portal Readux. For English-speaking literary fiends in Berlin, there’s no denying the growing number of English-language outlets, events, and emerging writers to satisfy even the most particular of tastes. It’s comforting and insular, but precludes full integration into the local German culture, for whom literature has always played such a vibrant and integral role. A wealth of fantastic German and international [...]
(English) Zen Shiatsu & The Art of Body And Mind Maintenance
Wyndham Wallace visits Kreuzberg’s Shiatsu Loft in search of a little peace and quiet… 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 [...]
