Every year a cool per­son (def­in­itely someone with 3000+ friends on face­book) goes into an unknown, shitty joint with a sparse interior design, blank walls and some vin­tage fur­niture and makes it the place to be. For the next couple of months, every­one and their mother charge into the place, over­crowd it, hype it on their blogs and Ber­lin web­sites and tell every­one that “if you can’t get in, dude, you’re like, not one of us”. A couple of weeks later, as soon as even the cool people struggle to get past the door­man and have to wait at least two hours for a warm drink to be served, the hat­ing and bitch­ing starts: too many tour­ists, they raised the prices, too packed with idi­ots, not the same as before, everything was bet­ter when this bar/club/restaurant was under­ground. It all starts going down­hill from here and the search for a new “this is IT” place of the month begins.

Don’t get me wrong; we love those places. They’re inter­est­ing because they attract all kinds of people. But it’s true: you’ll get sick of the hype and ten­sion that appear for seem­ingly no reason. The food is aver­age and the drinks are expens­ive but people still come in flocks for the true “Ber­lin exper­i­ence”. For a while, this was the most excit­ing thing about Ber­lin to me, but per­cep­tion changes and I think I’m kind of over the hot spots for now. In fact, I love dis­cov­er­ing places that are nowhere near “cool” but abso­lutely cater to my needs. Good cof­fee, good break­fast, good music, good drinks — it’s not the quant­ity of the vis­it­ing people or the super cool min­imal interior design any­more that attracts me. I’ve star­ted lov­ing actu­ally get­ting in touch with people who run their own busi­ness, people who care about each and every one of their vis­it­ors, who make you feel right at home in their shop.

And that’s basic­ally the story of our new series -Favor­ite Places — how we try to only be where we love to be any­way. There’s that café next to Mar­cus’ home across Görl­itzer Park where we meet reg­u­larly for break­fast, or that little bar where we end up after a party, or that one place where we eat our dessert when we’re on the block in Friedrich­shain, called Fact­ory Girl. We love Fact­ory Girl — it’s not “cool” by todays’ kids’ stand­ards, but it’s all we want: good food (the break­fast is def­in­itely under­ap­pre­ci­ated, they make the most amaz­ing sand­wiches), a com­fort­able loc­a­tion and people we can actu­ally talk to about everything we do and what we love about the city.

When Nico and I first entered the shop to check out if they have good cof­fee, we were greeted like reg­u­lars and asked to try their mag­ni­fi­cent Magno­lia, a New York inspired pud­ding type dessert. We instantly fell in love and returned, again and again, look­ing for shel­ter, a nice con­ver­sa­tion and (I can only say it again) fant­astic food and hot beverages.

Long story short: Fact­ory Girl, loc­ated in Krossener Straße, Friedrich­shain, is one of the rare places where we feel com­fort­able whether we are in our train­ers or in a new dress. It’s cool because it’s not try­ing to be cool. It’s nice because the products are not of hype, but of qual­ity, and for now this is all that mat­ters to me. Thanks again to Didem and Hüs­sein for hav­ing us over, you guys rock.