Photo by Paul Sullivan

Hidden away in Prenzlauer Berg’s Winskiez, about halfway along lovely Marienburgerstrasse lies Ben-Uschi und der Pabst.

It’s easy to amble straight past the modest façade, with its yellow-and-white striped awning and discreet collection of cushions and flohmarkt tables and chairs outside.

But step inside and you’ll find yourself in an impressively spacious interior, furnished with an eclectic but considered collection of furnishings: vintage armchairs and sofas to loaf on, kitchen-style chairs and tables to chat at, wonky flea-market coffee tables…even an old school desk.

The tastefully jumbled theme continues along the walls and window shelves, adorned with contemporary artwork, collections of framed photos (and empty frames), antique cabinets, books, chess boards, plants, lamps…

Perhaps the best eye candy though is the luminescent fish tank in the center of the room, which teems with beautiful fish – including the two that give the café its name. Who’d have thought Ben Uschi would turn out to be a nimble perch, and Der Pabst (The Pope) an immense, pouting catfish?

Photo by Paul Sullivan

Given the sun can only access the large space through the front and a couple of side windows, it’s quite poorly illuminated at the back. Hence on warmer days, when the owners open the front doors right up on the street, the best spots are outside, or near the counter where you can enjoy a decent coffee (served in dictinctive hand made crockery) and some prime P-berg people-watching.

In the sunless months, the dimness adds to the cosiness – especially when the (remote control) fireplace is lit.

The food is quite interesting too. Aside from a good selection of teas, coffees and juices (including an imported and delicious Swedish pear juice), there’s a great weekend breakfast menu that includes such lesser-spotted items as banana crème curry and beetroot crème.

The most popular option though is the huge and colourful Ben Uschi im Rausch – a typically diverse assortment of everything on the menu for e6.50.

Ben Uschi & der Pabst
Marienburgerstr. 39
Prenzlauer Berg
10405 Berlin
Tel: 030 417 25465
Mon-Fri 9-19, Sat-Sun 10-19
www.ben-ushi.de
Map

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Theatrical wardrobe touches – say a man wearing a hoody with sequined bunny ears recently spotted skipping the line at waterfront club Bar 25 – open doors in Berlin.

A tanked economy, an influx of artists and Flapper roots converge to make this city one that scoffs at fashion for the sake of a pricey designer label. Dressing up here is all about individualism – precision-scattering of one-off, hand-made, or vintage pieces. Throw in a feather or two, and you are in the game.

Which is why Miss Moss feels right at home. The British costume designer, who moved here in 2007, teaches the art of corset making at Linkle Stitch ‘N’ Bitch Café, a cosy street-front space in Kreuzberg packed with sewing machines serving the DIY set.

The sultry Miss Moss, who greeted me with a pale pink orchid in her flamingo-pink hair, has the natural born goods corsets are meant to showcase. “It’s easier with a C-cup or larger,” she admits. “But as long as you have something to work with.”

Miss Moss’s passion for corsetry began with a part time job as a Victorian-styled chambermaid at an old English castle. A historical costume designer was hired to give staff uniforms a revamp, and, in the process, inspired Miss Moss to study fashion design.

Most of her corsetry skills, however, were gleaned outside of class: “At my university, the professors really didn’t know how to teach the corsetry course, so I started working in a corset factory,” she explains.

Miss Moss is also frequently in Italy, where she interned at a historical costume studio and now peruses fabric shops, or in museums like London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, deconstructing by eye historical fashion once worn by the likes of Marie Antoinette.

What is a Corset?

So what exactly is a corset? “Sometimes I hear people say they are wearing corsets, but it’s actually a bodice,” says Miss Moss.  “A bodice is on the cheaper end of the market, and doesn’t last as long as a corset would. It has plastic boning, which bends and puckers. A corset has metal boning – it holds you up, and can restrict your breathing, depending on how tight you lace.”

There are two types of corset: the underbust and the overbust. The underbust stops under the breasts and sits on the hips. The overbust, on the other hand, starts at the hips and goes over the breasts.

Corsets became common in the middle of the 16th century, with tight lacing peaking in the Victorian age, around the 1840s and 1850s. The trend died out in popularity just after the start of World War I, due to health concerns and an effort to conserve metal for war production.

Now they are popular for period dress, in the fetish scene, or used to treat spinal injuries. Notable medical corset wearers include artist Andy Warhol, who wore a corset after he was shot in 1968 until his death.

What Makes a Good Corset?

Corsets, by their very nature, are custom. “It must fit well in the bust, waist, and hips. If a corset closes, then it is too big,” Miss Moss says. “You need room to lace it in the back — 2 centimeters at least.

“Usually the girls that have less prefer the overbust. For the voluptuous girls, I recommend the underbust, which really accentuates your waist, without making them hang out so much — this can be a bit embarrassing, and can, um, effect men’s behavior. But really, it depends how you want it.”

And fabric is key. Miss Moss orders from Italy or heads to Frau Tulpe in Prenzlauer Berg.

Are They Safe?

In this day in age, safety is only a concern if you go overboard, and start squeezing the organs into inappropriate places. A corset that is too tight constricts the lungs — making it difficult to breathe.

“If you wear a corset everyday, your waist changes,” says Miss Moss. “In the 19th century, the lacing was extreme, as the size of your waist determined the wealth of your husband and your social status. I used to wear my corset tight two hours a day and my waist gradually began to get smaller, and at first I was really proud of it. But I don’t want an odd shape – I want to be natural. It’s the choice of the modern women – in the old days, you didn’t have a choice.”

Miss Moss’s class is 190 euro for six three-hour sessions, and includes a steel bust, bones, inner fabrics, eyelets and lacing, and full use of the Linkle Stitch ‘N’ Bitch Café. Classes hold up to eight, and are usually held on Saturdays, although intensive courses run Monday through Saturday. Private lessons are also available.

Miss Moss sells her custom corsets for around 200 euros, depending on fabric. Dates for her next class will be posted at Linkle Stitch ‘N’ Bitch Café.

Mairi Beautyman is senior editor at TreeHugger.com and
PlanetGreen.com, and a regular contributor to Interior Design magazine
and the Huffington Post. She has written for publications including
Wired, Art News, Architectural Record, The Robb Report, and A
Hedonist’s Guide To Marrakech.

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August is always a slow news cycle, so it’s somehow fitting that this month’s big viral sensation was about a really slow song.

The song in question is Justin Bieber’s “U Smile,” but you’ve never heard it like this before. Using a free audio application called PaulStretch, a musician named Nick Pittsinger has slowed the tune 800%, stretching the 3:16 tween-pop ditty to over half an hour long. (You can, and should, listen to it here.)

The amazing thing is that this low-budget stunt actually sounds, well, amazing. As many commentators have pointed out, the whale-song melodies and tidal flow sound not unlike the ambient epics of Sigur Ros. An even more apt comparison, if more obscure, would be to the great chamber-rock band Stars of the Lid, on Chicago’s Kranky label.

The slowly shifting chords of the PaulStretched Bieber — the glacial pivot through the classic, reassuring steps of tonic, subdominant, dominant and so forth — sounds uncannily like what Stars of the Lid do, both on record and in performance, with electric guitars, violin and cello.

(In fact, I suspect that the members of Stars of the Lid are somewhere grinding their teeth at this very minute, cursing the fact that it took a 16-year-old mop-topped heartthrob to validate their whole aesthetic on a mass-culture scale — or, worse, render it a joke.)

Of course, it is a joke, and a great one. That it’s funny on so many levels is part of the reason for its insane viral success, which you can calculate by the million-plus listens on SoundCloud, the service hosting the song, as well as by the stories that have popped up everywhere from Gawker to Billboard to The Washington Post.

There’s the basic “WTFOMGLOL” factor, sure. (The repeated reference to “800%” only plays that up — in fact, 800% isn’t that big a difference; it’s just eight times.) It’s a water-cooler-friendly topic, since it’s Justin Bieber: even those of us who have never knowingly heard a Bieber song before — or hadn’t until now, anyway — can share the pop-culture reference.

But the project goes deeper than that. PaulStretched Bieber, as I’ve come to call this accidental artwork, belongs to a long tradition of pop-culture readymades, from Duchamp’s urinal to Warhol’s soup can to Christian Marclay’s Up and Out, a video that combines the soundtrack of Brian De Palma’s 1981 thriller Blow Out with the visuals of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up. (That’s another artwork, incidentally, that takes its premise from a joke.)

This kind of appropriative approach to media is only accelerating the more we experience culture online, thanks both to the speed that information circulates and the increasing availability of cheap tools that allow us to manipulate digital objects.

Part of what makes PaulStretched Bieber so great is the fact that it was done with freeware. To protest that anyone can do this is missing the point — part of the point, in fact, is that anyone can do this.

Beyond the media aspect, what I find so fascinating about PaulStretched Bieber is how it ties in with a number of musical trends that stress deceleration. We’ve had Texas’ “chopped & screwed” hip-hop for years, of course — exaggeratedly slowed-down rap music meant to simulate (or complement) the narcotic effects of cough syrup.

Recently, hipster acts like Salem have fused elements of that style with goth and coldwave overtones to create a genre they call “drag,” whose name and sound alike speak to a kind of terminal sluggishness. Just this month, Montreal’s CFCF put his own spin on the concept with a free mixtape, “Slow R&B for Locations Canada-Wide,” that pitches down contemporary R&B as though it were a 7-inch single spun on one of those vintage turntables that goes all the way down to 16 rpm.

Experimental music has been all over that tactic for years: the British artist Philip Jeck makes his electro-acoustic collages by playing vintage LPs on multiple turntables set to 16 rpm and then manipulating the woozy rumble like so much molasses.

And if you’re primarily impressed by PaulStretched Bieber’s 36-minute running time, consider John Cage’s “As Slow As Possible,” an organ performance in Halberstadt, Germany, that began in 2001 and is slated to have a duration of 639 years, ending in 2640.

It’s not just music where slowness is taking hold; the Slow Food movement has spun off similar initiatives in many fields, including Slow Travel, Slow Parenting and even Slow Money.

It’s hard not to see all of these things as reactions to the widespread perception that culture is accelerating at an uncomfortable, possibly unhealthy pace. (I was going to say unsustainable, but Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity devotees would probably argue otherwise.)

And maybe that’s ultimately the most powerful thing about PaulStretched Bieber: the way it takes not only a symbol of pop culture at its most ephemeral, but also a barely adolescent kid in the flush of youth, and makes them seem both sublime and somehow eternal.

With a bit of free software and an Internet connection, Nick Pittsinger has turned Justin Bieber into a kind of cryogenic child, 16 going on Rip Van Winkle, in a way that brings out the mortal in all of us.

This article originally appeared on Rhapsody on the 24th August, 2010. You can read more of Philip’s always-fascinating musical musings here.

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Most passengers passing through Gesundbrunnen S Bahn station don’t think twice about the door at the bottom of the stairs. Why should they? It’s a plain old door, indistinguishable from a normal private entrance or storage area. But if you opened the door you’d be face-to-face with bonafide Nazi history, in the shape of one of Berlin’s best-preserved war bunkers.

Photo by Dietmar Arnold

The door is locked of course, but not inaccessible thanks to the (non-profit) Berliner Unterwelten society, who organise tours through a range of underground historical spaces in the city.

Turn up at the society’s ticket kiosk (just inside the station) on one of their allocated tour days and you’ll soon find yourself on the other side of the mysterious time portal, enclosed in a concrete stairwell and surrounded by original Nazi-era signage bearing strange phrases like “Männer Abort”.

“It means Men’s Toilet,” explains Dominic, our affable, jocular guide, in near-perfect English. “The Nazis were not keen on using the French word toilette, nor the Anglo-American word WC, for obvious reasons. There was no German word, aside from Scheisse-Haus, which would have been too long to put on the walls. So they dug up this strange, archaic word, Abort”.

Discovered in 1999, filled with rubble and untouched since the 60s, this bunker  – built in 1941 – was an extension of the rest-rooms and sleeping quarters built in the 1920s for the train drivers, Gesundbrunnen being the last stop on the line. The entire structure takes up 1,300 square meters and was built to hold 1,200 people – though in reality anywhere between 5-6,000 would be using it during an air raid, a terrifying figure when you consider the potential for panic, lack of air, food and water etc.

In any case, the bunker was mostly an illusion in terms of its ability to protect; real bomb-proof bunkers had walls and ceilings two meters thick – the ones here are less than a meter. Any direct hits would have been catastrophic.

Photo by Frieder Salm

We pass through into the toilet block, a tall, narrow concrete chamber with the lavatories still intact, lined up against one wall. The toilets operated by filling with earth after each use – slave labour was used to empty them, one of the only ways for non-Germans to enter these bunker areas.

In the next room, Dominic turns out the light to demonstrate the ghostly glow of the luminescent paint around the doors, walls and escape exits, used to prevent panic during blackouts. “It’s not as strong as it was in 1941,” he says. “Apparently you could read a newspaper for 45 mins by this light back then” he says.

The rest of the bunker’s rooms contain a fascinating range of wartime paraphernalia. Propaganda posters loom down from the walls and glass cabinets are stacked with grisly curios – gas masks; an Enigma decoding machine; a crumbling brown tie decorated with a shiny Swastika badge.

One room, preserved for women and children, is filled with original bunk beds, the battered suitcases lying on the mattresses lending the space an eerily authentic atmosphere. Not that this embellishment is needed; just being in one of the bare, concrete rooms as the trains rumble ominously overhead is enough to give an impression of the bunker’s horribly claustrophobic conditions.

Photo by Stefan Lehmann

Dominic’s narrative and questions made us dwell further on the lives of the mostly ordinary German civilians that had passed through here. What possessions did people prioritise in those small, crumpled suitcases? (Photos, ID papers, jewellery, food and water for children). How did one test the dwindling air supplies in the air-locked rooms? (Candles positioned at floor, bench and chest levels). Why did people bring newspapers? (Not to read – for when the toilets were inaccessible).

More rooms, more insights: A wall map and up-to-date explanation of Hitler’s bunker (now an anonymous parking lot); smashed plates and papers salvaged from Hitler’s driver’s bunker; an enlarged photo of Speer’s flooded bunker; a series of bizarrely sci-fi-esque Nazi etchings; giant photos of Berlin’s bombed out center taken after the war, and the famous Trümmerfrauen sorting through the rubble.

At the end of the 90 minutes, Dominic showed us remnants of the old pneumatic postal system and the sad demise of Berlin’s breweries. “We don’t want you thinking about the war all day,” he explained. But why not? Wasn’t that why we’d come here? And wasn’t he the one who’d told us how the final days of the Battle of Berlin had been played out near here, with German troops trying to stand their ground against the advancing Russians in nearby Humboldthain park?

It was his fault I could hear gunshots and grenades exploding against the grey sky outside, when in fact it was just another train rumbling by.

For more information on this tour and many others, visit the Berliner Unterwelten website here.

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The Märchenbrunnen (Photo by Paul Sullivan)

Even by Berlin’s high standards, the Volkspark Friedrichshain stands out as one of the city’s special green spaces. Established a century and a half ago to commemorate the centennial of Frederick the Great’s accession to the throne, it gives good history, swathes of Liegewiese (sunbathing areas), an abundance of leisure opportunities and more than its fair share of interesting landmarks.

Casually straddling the boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain, and within walking distance from Mitte, the park takes up an audacious 52 hectares, making it the second largest park in Berlin after the sprawling Tiergarten. It was actually the park that gave the Friedrichshain district its name – the oldest parts were laid out in 1846-1848, a good 70 years before the district came into being, constructed on the space of a former vineyard.

One of its most distinctive features – and a good place to begin an exploration – is the westernmost corner, where Am Friedrichshain collides with Friedenstrasse. From here, a pleasant, narrow lane leads to the park’s splendorous showpiece, the Märchenbrunnen, a neo-baroque fountain built at the turn of the 20^th century.

Memorial to Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascists (Photo by Paul Sullivan

The structure features 106 stone sculptures including a set of limestone figures inspired by Grimm’s fairy tales, created as a gift for lower class children threatened by typhoid fever and rickets. The fountain, though refurbished several years ago, is one of the few elements of the park that survived World War II.

Thanks to the installation of anti-aircraft towers and bunkers in 1941 by the Nazis, the park was a prime target during the war. Afterwards, the rubble from the park and surrounding areas was collected together into two large hills, known today as the Große Bunkerberg (78 meters tall – the highest elevation point of all Berlin’s parks) and the Kleine Bunkerberg (48 meters).

These hills look for all the world like natural features today and they’re popular with joggers who enjoy a bit of an incline, and people looking for a more private spot to have a barbecue or sunbathe.

The new leisure area at the Volkspark Friedrichschain (Photo by Paul Sullivan)

By the end of the war the Volkspark was located in the Soviet Sector of the newly divided city. The GDR reconstructed the park, but many earlier elements remain, the most striking being the city’s first public hospital. The Krankenhaus am Friedrichshain was built between 1868-1874 and takes up a vast area of the park. It still functions today and in fact gained a new building in 2002, complete with elegant brick façade to blend with the original structure.

Keep strolling the leafy pathways and you’ll encounter monuments and memorials galore. Next to the hospital is a garden of remembrance for the people killed during the 1848 German revolutions; a nearby cemetery hosts the graves of 183 revolutionaries shot by the Prussian military.

You’ll find memorials to Frederick the Great; to the German volunteers who died during the Spanish Civil War; to the 1918 Red Sailors’ Revolution; and to the Polish Soldiers and German Anti-Fascist groups of WWII. A Japanese Pavilion, introduced in 1989, features a Peace Bell given to East Berlin from Japan as an anti nuclear war statement.

Cafe Schönbrunn (Photo by Paul Sullivan)

The Karl Friedrich Friesen swimming stadium built here during the GDR era has now gone – replaced during the 1995-2004 overhaul with a 4,000 square meter sports and leisure complex that boasts a 3-meter high climbing rock, skateboarding area with halfpipes, bike riding area and beach volleyball.

Further west you’ll also find three tennis courts, which lie close to the park’s main meeting hub, the Café Schönbrunn. Housed in a former GDR pavilion and located right on the pleasant Schwanenteich (“swan pond”), Schönbrunn is a great place to grab a bratwurst from the outside grill, an ice cream from the kiosk or a proper meal at the stylishly retro indoor restaurant, whose menu is based entirely on organic products.

Even night owls can enjoy the park. Not only is it open 24 hours, but between July and September you can attend the Open Air Cinema, which hosts a range of films from classics, specials and box office hits. Since 2003 they have also been showing the most successful films of the latest Berlinale.

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Badeschiff in Kreuzberg (photo by ARENA Berlin)

Badeschiff – literally “bathing ship” – opened in 2004 as an art project organized by Berlin’s Stadtkunstprojekte (City Art ProjectSociety), the AMP Architectos (Teneriffa), architect Gil Wilk and local artist Susanne Lorenz.The initial aim was to enliven city life along what was then a long-neglected stretch of the Spree, between the former Osthafen (East harbour) and Flutgraben, a small canal.

The pool is part of a complex of old industrial buildings that were slowly redesigned by the organisation Art Kombinat (now ARENA Berlin), from 1995 onwards. The 20,000 square-meter area today hosts an exhibition hall (MAGAZIN) and venue (GLASHAUS) as well as the big concert hall ARENA – a great example of Berlin’s industrial culture during the first half of the 20th century.

Until the German reunion in 1989, this area was only accessible for BVG (Berlin Transportation Company) members in possession of a special permit and DDR Grenzschutz soldiers. It was part of the “Sperrgebiet” (prohibited zone) between East and West Berlin, since the border ran along the Flutgraben and the Spree.

Underwater gate constructions made it impossible to use this area as a point to flee from the eastern district now called Friedrichshain to western Kreuzberg or Treptow. After the wall came down, the area slowly turned into a center for fun, art and entertainment.

The Big Blue

From the buzzing Schlesische Straße in Kreuzberg, I took the pathway that follows the small canal and passes between two of Berlin’s great open air summer spots: The terrace restaurant/bar Freischwimmer and the techno-lovers bar Club der Visionäre.

Already plotting a cooling cocktail for after my dip, I followed the signs to the Badeschiff, walked past the MAGAZIN, with its distinctive shed roof and huge windows, and the GLASHAUS next door (which is partly used for the Badeschiff facilities and as a venue), until reaching the Badeschiff gate, where I could already see the sand – as well as a long queue.

What I hadn’t realised was that the venue holds live concerts in the summer called “Ohne Strom“ (“Unplugged”). Fortunately the queue diminished swiftly and I was soon shuffling my feet through the pleasantly chilled sand. I got changed into my swim gear and made my way, via three boardwalk platforms, down to the pool.

Badeschiff Berlin (photo by ARENA Berlin)

The light, clear-blue water of the Badeschiff – which is an impressive 32 x 8 meters large – shimmered with an appealing, almost supernatural quality – a flourescent lozenge embedded audaciously in the natural river. On the other side of the Spree, old and new buildings – offices, loft houses, old industrial architecture – winked and glinted in the sun.

Unfortunately it was too crowded to swim more than a few laps but that wasn’t my aim this evening anyway. Myself and my friends took a place on the underwater bench that runs all around the pool and had a relaxed after-work chat as the sun made its apathetic descent.

The skyline from this vantage point was filled with the Oberbaumbrücke, the landmark of the two districts Kreuzberg and Friedrichschain, and Alexanderplatz’s Fernsehturm. The gentle strums of the concert made their way to us from the beach area further up, providing a chilled soundtrack to what was becoming a classic Berlin summer evening.

Eating & Stretching

The simple menu at Badeschiff won’t excite gourmets, but the sausages and steaks in Brötchen with classical German sides like potato salad and Krautsalat (cabbage salad) at least mean you don’t have to leave to get dinner elsewhere if you’re enjoying yourself.

Of course the food isn’t the reason to go there. Aside from the music and the general atmosphere, the bar offers a decent range of drinks and cocktails, which you can sip while relaxing on one of the four steel beds or the numerous sun chairs. If you’re lucky – or just damn quick – you can snuggle into the oversize sunbed chair or the double Hollywood swing on the beachy sand area next to the bar.

From there you can also ascend the steps to two other platforms – one right above the stage and the other in the bar building attached to the big ARENA concert hall. From both you get spoiled with pleasant views over the entire beach club, pool and skyline. When it gets dark the whole area is nicely lit, with spotlights brightening the remarkable architecture of the GLASHAUS next door. Don’t forget to take your camera.

Badeschiff at night (photo by ARENA Berlin)

If you don’t like crowds (it’s busy almost every evening in the summer), but want to check out the Badeschiff you can visit in the morning. Yoga fans might be interested in the sessions of dynamic yoga given by Susen Pijur from the Yoga School Berlin, every Friday morning between 9-10am (6 euros). It’s a very nice way to start a summer day with exercise and a dive into the Europe’s most unique city pool.

Badeschiff
Eichenstraße 4
12435 Berlin
Open (summer): From 1st May 2010, 8am – End, daily
Fee: adults 4 Euro, schoolkids/students 3 Euro, kids under 14: 1,50 Euro

The program at Badeschiff changes daily. Check out the website to find more information about concerts, open air cinema and club parties.

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When Melting Point opened on Mitte’s Neue Schönhauser Straße in 1994, it was the only store – of any type, really – in Hackesche Höfe, an area which is now jam-packed with designer boutiques and chain stores. By 2005 the store was feeling the squeeze of increasing rents and decided to move to the (then) more affordable Kastanienallee.

Photo by Lisa Kortenhorst

The new location had, and still has, its advantages, such as providing a healthy passing trade and a wide pavement perfect for hanging out on – an important consideration for the store’s owner mitch, a tall, quietly spoken man whose intense passion for music is rivaled only by his zeal for Barcelona and Freiburg football clubs.

Over its 16-year history, Melting Point has built up a reputation for selling quality electronic music. Starting life as a house music hub, the shop quickly expanded to incorporate second hand disco, boogie and funk, and subsequently became a legendary store among Berlin’s vinyl digging cognoscenti.

mitch (his spelling) arrived in Berlin in 1992, drawn by the explosion of electronic dance music and club culture in the capital. He and two friends conceived the store as an extension of their love for clubbing and DJing, aiming simultaneously to fill the gap for quality house music in a town obsessed with the tauter sound of techno. The store quickly grew popular with those DJs wanting to push the slower, funkier sounds at trailblazing Berlin clubs like Planet E-Werk, WMF and Tresor.

House music remains Melting Point’s main focus, with a room dedicated to European labels like Philpot, Running Back and Rush Hour, as well as imprints like Underground Quality from the New York, and UK’s Rekkids. Techno isn’t completely absent though; a small section caters for the deeper, Detroit-influenced sounds of labels such as Delsin and Dial.

Photo by Lisa Kortenhorst

The store has a light, open feel to it, thanks to the big windows facing onto the street. Head down the steps to find the main room – spacious and minimal – and lots of new releases, while the area around the counter has a more cluttered feel, with boxes of second hand soul, disco and boogie 12’s piled up on the floor.

Much of this stuff, considered cheesy and irrelevant in the giddy, future-obsessed 90s, is now being re-appreciated both on its own merits as well as for being the source and inspiration for house.

Much of this used vinyl is unearthed by mitch on his weekly trips to Berlin’s numerous flea markets, where he also finds the incredible cover art work and images from obscure records that hang on Melting Point’s walls and in the store window.

“I’m not as disciplined as I once was,” he admits of his own crate-digging expeditions. “A few years ago I’d go directly to the markets on Sunday morning from the party – after DJing or dancing all night.” Nonetheless he can’t fight the urge to run his fingers through the dusty racks at Mauer Park on a regular basis. “A few years ago I could find 20 copies of Giorgio Moroder’s From Here To Eternity album for 5 Euros – total,” he reminisces. “Now people have more of a clue what they are selling, so it’s harder to find true bargains. If only I had the music knowledge I have now when I was digging 10 or 15 years ago…”

Photo by Lisa Kortenhorst

The mix of new and old appeals to Melting Point’s customer base, which is divided between local DJs and clued up city visitors; the used vinyl, says mitch, is as popular as the new releases in terms of sales. On my last visit, I left with Prince’s Dirty Mind LP, Joyce Sims’s Mantronix-produced “Come In To My Life”, a re-pressed Ron Hardy edit (on transparent red vinyl) and a new Rick Wade 12 on Detroit’s Harmonie Park –a pretty fair reflection of what this store is all about.

Melting Point
Kastanienallee 55, Mitte
Tel: 030 44047131
Map

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Photo by Ralf Rüller (pictured)

The Barn isn’t a difficult place to find if you’re strolling along pretty Grosse Hamburger Strasse. Just look out for the bales of hay outside – a somewhat incongruous sight in this trendy downtown part of Berlin Mitte.

The hay is symbolic as well as ornamental. As befits a place called The Barn located purposefully in the middle of a modern city, this small café – which opened just a few weeks ago – does a fine line in ‘rustic chic’, balancing a savvy urbanity with a genuine commitment to rural ideals.

The diminutive interior is simultaneously soothing, chic and full of exciting, quality promise. The earth-brown walls, gorgeous thick-wood shelving and the fresh herbs (not flowers) that decorate the tables provide a countrified counterpoint to the sleek design of the place – as does the friendly service from owner Ralf Rüller and his crew of international staff.

“I wanted to work in a neighbourhood deli-cafe that offers both great coffee and fresh food,” says Ralf. “I couldn’t find anything that could hold the standards you find in New York or London, for example, so I created my own. Having lived in London for ten years, I saw both the quality of coffee and quick lunches increasing. Also, I lived near Borough Market and appreciated the Slow Food movement in the UK. I’m not following Slow Food by the book but I do pick things that are both important to me and can be applied from a practical viewpoint. I like being regional and being established in my neighbourhood.”

Photo by Ralf Rüller

Look more closely at the products that line those hefty shelves and you’ll discover a mix of local products – coffee from Bremen, jams, apple juice and honey all from the outskirts of Berlin – and imported goods like Gragnano pasta, mostly from family-run businesses in France and Italy who “take good care of their products”.

The blackboard advertises the day’s specials, which are as often as possible sourced locally, mostly a variety of sandwiches, salads, cakes and quiches. The bread is either homemade or comes from a local, organic bakery. The quiches are hand-whipped with vegetables from the local market. The cheese in the salads come from local farmers. Cakes and fresh juices are also home made.

Then there’s the coffee. The Barn are particularly proud of theirs, and so they should be. They work with a medium-sized local roaster who custom makes their blend for the espresso-based drinks. The beans are put through a La Marzocco machine – handmade from Italy – which delivers constant output that can be adjusted throughout the day, and Mazzer Grinders. The state of the beans is checked regularly and the grind, temperature and treatment continually adjusted to get the best results.

Ralf even uses bottomless porterfilters (naked shots) so the coffee goes straight into the cup instead of running through metal spouts. And as a special, they offer single-origin filtered coffee either on Japanese Hario V60 ceramic filters or aeropress – pure papers without any taste to keep the coffee taste close to its origin.

Photo by Ralf Rüller

“There are only a few good coffee shops in Berlin so far,” states Ralf, “and we are doing our best to network with them so that we can push Berlin onto another level that should be equal to other Metropolitan cities that are far ahead of us. Chief baristas Shawn and [former Bonanza Coffee Heroes employee] Olli here are working with me to establish The Barn as one of the main coffee places in Berlin.”

If you’re lucky enough to live in the area, you can also take advantage of The Barn’s delivery service. Every lunchtime, one of the crew hop on The Barn bike and drop off tasty selections – usually salad or sandwiches, supplemented by juice, cake, bread and fruits – to the galleries, shops, media agencies and offices in the area.

If you’re out of the area, you’re out of luck. Ralf plans to stay strictly within a 500 meter radius of the shop in order to comfortably reach his neighbours just before lunch. “I’m not planning to expand this service into larger areas because I’m just the guy in the neighbourhood and I don’t want to start a larger catering or delivery business.”

A rare, refreshingly “slow” attitude to business that surely deserves to be rewarded. You can show your support by dropping in for one of their perfect flat whites and a healthy bite. Being placed right at the end of Auguststrasse, The Barn is perfectly placed for some gallery-hopping before and after too. In fact, you could almost say the place is a work of art itself.

The Barn
Auguststraße 58
10119 Berlin (Mitte)
Tel: 0151 24105136
Map

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I first heard about Berlin’s Shy Chef around a year ago, when a friend enthused about an incredible, intimate dinner party they’d been to, where they met all these lovely people and ate really exquisite food…“all in the chef’s own lounge!”

Photo courtesy of Shy Chef website

Even then the idea of ‘underground’ or ‘guerilla’ dining wasn’t so new, nor was there a dearth of it in Berlin. For visitors or incoming residents to the city, these eating events are an excellent way to meet lots of new people in a relaxed environment.

Within a few weeks of moving here I’d attended a few, mostly casual, bring-a-bottle affairs in someone’s apartment or a communal house. Simple, tasty food and a great atmosphere in exchange for a modest donation. What’s not to like?

But the Shy Chef looked different, partly because there’s more mystery to it all – the host’s anonymity (or “shyness”), the address only being revealed 24 hours before the dinner date – but also the food seemed of a more professional standard. A quick look at the sample menu on the website revealed dishes like asparagus cappuccino, scallops with orange sauce, cod with rhubarb salsa, all served in “the intimate setting of her own living room”. Obviously a haute cuisine experience as opposed to a talented amateur night.

So it was that a few weeks ago, on a particularly balmy summer evening, I found myself climbing the stairs of the Shy Chef’s building (a handsome Altbau in the ‘bohemian district of Kreuzberg’), the smell of food growing stronger with each step. Inside the apartment I was handed a small glass of champagne and politely ushered into the main dining room.

Photo courtesy of the Shy Chef website

Minimally decorated with bare white walls, tall ceilings and large windows, the room was dominated by a long table draped with colourful tablecloths. It was set for around 14 guests, and though it all felt tasteful enough, it was obvious this was a rental apartment and not someone’s “intimate home”.

Some of the other guests had already assembled in a smaller lounge area next to the dining room. There followed the usual flurry of greetings – hands were pumped and smiles exchanged, names flew up in the air, dangled temptingly for a second then evaporated. There were Canadians, Americans, Spaniards, one or two Germans.

We all took turns stepping out onto the corner balcony and admiring the picturesque street, whose buildings were daubed a lovely golden colour by the setting sun. “Ah, Berlin…”

Our host, an affable, quiet, shaven-headed man of indeterminate nationality, asked us to take our seats. Some hopeless strategic planning on my part resulted in a seat at the head of the table, the majority of my fellow diners beyond conversational reach without the aid of a megaphone.

Fortunately my immediate neighbours – Evan, an upbeat young lady from Seattle who lived in Berlin, and her equally chatty Aunt and Uncle from New York – provided great company. The conversation flowed easily along with the wine – a perfect crisp white – and the food, which began with an impressive, well-presented rocket, mushroom and cheese salad.

The second dish (another salad) also featured rocket and cheese, albeit a different kind of cheese, and was also tasty – though not for the poor lactose-intolerant guest at the other end of the table, who’d allegedly informed the Shy Chef of their special diet prior to the evening. Her replacement was a basic tomato, rocket and asparagus salad – times two.

The third dish was a sloppy, mediocre fennel risotto (in all fairness I’ve never been the biggest fennel fan), presented quite unattractively in a soup bowl. This was followed by an announcement that the next dish might take a while and would we like coffee (filter only) in the meantime? We’d moved onto a robust but smooth Italian red by now and the 45-minutes we waited for our richly decadent beef goulash zipped by. (The vegetarians were served more of that same salad).

Photo courtesy of the Shy Chef website

Dessert was a flavoursome – but far from overwhelming – Pantespani-style sponge cake. Afterward, we waited excitedly to meet the mysterious Shy Chef. Instead of the Scandinavian lady we’d been expecting, a Greek man ambled out of the kitchen, explaining that the original Shy Chef had gone to London to start a similar enterprise and that he – an experienced and qualified chef, no less – had taken over the business in Berlin.

Vaguely charming as this man was, I felt let down. Sure I’d had a nice evening. I’d met some nice people (though not as many as I would have liked, thanks to the numbers), and the food had been OK. But for 62-euros a head it really should have been better – especially for the vegetarians and lactose intolerant among the group – and the revelation that the apartment had once been rented out by Quentin Tarantino didn’t quite compensate for the lack of ‘intimate atmosphere’ advertised on the website.

Talking to my fellow diners after the event, I know I wasn’t alone in feeling a bit cheated, although some of the older guests (all tourists) had been thoroughly enchanted by the event and had no complaints. Perhaps us residents had higher expectations.

It certainly felt more like a tourist event than an opportunity to “get to know the real Berlin” (a claim also asserted on the website). Perhaps the Shy Chef is going through a transitional phase, but on this night it seemed to symbolize the all-too-common problem of a fantastic idea growing popular and expanding away from its original ethos, and the subsequent lack of quality control. It remains a fantastic idea.  Let’s hope they can rediscover their original magic. Or at least change some of the text on their website.

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One of the great joys of reading books set in the city you’re visiting is the way they can help you understand your surroundings. I like to read novels as if they’re maps – keys to places I’ve not yet unlocked. Some people like guide books…I’d rather read a novel.

Ku'damm - one of Berlin's most famous streets.

I think I’m right in saying that for most non-German speakers, the street names in Berlin can be a bit overwhelming. But even with this in mind, Kurfürstendamm – whose origins stretch all the way back o the 16th Century – is a whole new challenge, a street name even the Germans shorten to Ku’damm.

At 3.5 kilometres long, walking the entirety of Ku’damm is not a job for the faint-hearted or the stiletto-heeled. Today the avenue is known for its large department stores, high-end fashion houses and luxurious jewellery shops, as well as its restaurants, theatres and cinemas – and of course its rows of graceful plane trees.

In the days of the Wall, Ku’damm was the centre of commercial activity for West Berlin. People shopped, protested and met for coffee here. For West Berliners at that time, Ku’damm was the place to be. With the fall of the Wall, people and businesses began to explore the East, and suddenly shoppers had several commercial centres to choose from: Friedrichstrasse, Alexanderplatz and Potsdamer Platz, for example, all of which still hold their own appeal.

Sven Regner "Berlin Blues"

Sven Regner’s novel ‘Berlin Blues’ gives a pre-Wall perspective of the street. The book is set in 1989, just before the fall of the Wall and tells the story of Frank Lehmann, an aimless 30-something bartender. Lehmann’s view of the city and its people is deadpan and sarcastic, but his description of a stressful journey down Berlin’s most famous boulevard gives an insight into the Ku’damm of years past.

Lehmann is on his way to meet his parents, and is struggling to make the appointment on time. “He broke out in a sweat and swore under his breath as he skipped to and fro between his fellow mortals, evaded obstructive groups of strolling, rubbernecking, chattering tourists who always walked seven abreast at least, swerved around old ladies in fur coats, and blundered into huge, unpredictable gaggles of youngsters who abruptly altered or changed direction just as he endeavoured to overtake them.”

After an unsuccessful attempt to make part of the journey by bus, Lehmann is back on the pavement and determined to stay calm. “Herr Lehmann crossed Joachimsthaler Strasse, firmly resolved not to allow his better mood to be spoiled by the site of the Cafe Kranzler, which to him symbolised all that made the Kurfürstendamm so intolerable. He strode swiftly along the extreme outer edge of the pavement, where dogshit proliferated and no one else cared to tread, and made for his destination past hotels and motor-show rooms, steak houses and cafes, souvenir stalls and kitsch shops, thimbleriggers and three-card tricksters.”

While Ku’damm remains a main shopping thoroughfare, it feels relatively calm in comparison to such feverish descriptions. Anna

Anna Winger "This Must Be The Place"

Winger’s book ‘This Must be the Place’, published in 2008 and set in 2001, gives a more up-to-date description. It tells the story of two strangers who live in separate apartments in a once-grand Charlottenburg building. Walter is an actor who’s star is fading as he approaches 40. Hope is an American who travelled to Berlin to accommodate her husband’s career. They are both lonely and, inevitably, a friendship develops between them.

“When he’d (Walter) first moved to Charlottenburg sixteen years earlier, the streets he walked now had been busy with nightlife. But since the inclusion of its eastern half, the city had completely shifted its topography, pushing Charlottenburg to the western fringe, so that he might as well have moved to the suburbs…Gone were the bars and crowds of his youth, and in their place only hair salons and jewelry stores, women of a certain age who wore tent dresses and dyed their hair bright red, and yuppie families with children.”

Hope, through the fresh eyes of the newly-arrived, holds a more romantic view. “On Ku’damm white Christmas lights decorated the trees in the middle of the avenue and the sidewalks, brightening the grand buildings on either side. In the right light, this street reminded her of the Champs-Élysées. She waited for a light to change in a crowd of pedestrians packed together at the corner of an otherwise unoccupied stretch of the sidewalk thirty feet wide. No cars were coming up the side street, but not a single person stepped off the curb.”

Even more revealing are Hope’s thoughts when they turn to World War II: “Walter had explained that these buildings were completely flattened in the Allied bombings in World War II and had been rebuilt afterwards. Staring up through the scrim of her eyelashes, Hope tried to imagine the fancy facades ripped off to reveal furniture and wallpapered rooms, fires burning, people screaming.

Truemmerfrauen after WWII

“Walter had told her that it took years to clear the rubble. Since most of the men had been killed or imprisoned, or had to walk home from war fronts in Russia or France, the women had cleared Ku’damm themselves. Truemmerfrauen, they were called. They passed the chunks of stone and concrete, wood and tiles, one to the next, all the way down the avenue and another mile or so through Grunewald, where they made a massive pile. The pile was apparently a proper mountain now, grown over with grass. People liked to hike and picnic there.”

The mountain in question is well known to many Berliners – it’s called ‘Teufelsberg’ or ‘Devil’s Mountain’. Not only is it a great place for hiking and picnicking, in winter it provides a toboggan run and a nursery slope for skiiers. It also hosts the mysterious former listening station.

There are many other landmarks around Ku’damm mentioned in ‘This Must be the Place’ – from the Fasanenstrasse Synagogue burned during Kristallnacht to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which lost its steeple to a bomb during the war, and was never replaced.

Both these novels are fine reads in their own right, but also serve as unique guides to the city, both past and present. Not many conventional guide books, after all, are going to discuss dog poo on Ku’damm or the street-crossing habits of Berliners. Reading novels are a wonderful way of getting under the skin of a city.

Packabook is a project dedicated to exploring place and history through fiction. See their website for more details.

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