Johanna is a young artist and tex­tile designer from Straß­bourg / France. She arrived in Ber­lin with the night­train from Zürich /Switzerland in May 2011. “It was fuck­ing cold on that first morn­ing in the city” she says.

You could have moved any­where in the world. Why Berlin?

I vis­ited Ber­lin a couple of times in my hol­i­days and I always liked the atmo­sphere. Time passing, I real­ized that I didn’t want to be a vis­itor any­more but really like to live here, and I also liked the idea of being a tour­ist in France! Ber­lin is also close to my nat­ive coun­try, so I can still visit my fam­ily and friends back there when I feel like doing it! Besides that I speak Ger­man which helps me alot.

So what are you doing here?

First of all I am work­ing as a freel­ance tex­tile designer and illus­trator, selling my work in my online shop Super­mar­ket as well as in places you can step in around the world. I spend a lot of my time draw­ing, paint­ing, read­ing, stick­ing, sew­ing, weav­ing, tak­ing pho­to­graphs, walk­ing though the city with friends. I’m also post­ing daily about things that caught my interest and share my pho­to­graphs on my Blog Bon­jour Johanna. I’m also learn­ing Japan­ese and con­sider going back to stud­ies, the Visual Art of Africa pro­gram offered by the FU looks pretty inter­est­ing to me. And last but not least, two days a week I work in the lovely café Mar­ketta in Mitte!

What do you like most about Berlin?

Ber­lin is full of space, I rarely bump into someone, you can’t say that about Paris! For me a very nice point is also that it is still afford­able. If you work cre­at­ivly you need a lot of space and I can find that here. I could never afford this in France. But for me afford­able also means to have the pos­sib­il­ity to go out and have a hot chocol­ate and a slice of cake some­where without pay­ing 10 Euros. The city is really green which means a lot to me, the people are often more open minded than in France.… well you got it a lot of good points!

What is your favor­ite neighborhood?

I just moved to the Schillerkiez in Neuk­ölln. I love that the Tem­pel­hof field is right around the corner. It feels like you are in a hol­i­day some­how. I also like that it’s such mixed neigh­bor­hood. There are not just Ger­man or European, but people from all over the world that live together in this area.

Do you think that Ber­lin is a multicultural city?

Of course! In France, I met a lot of people who just arrived from over­sea coun­tries when I was a Fine Art School Stu­dent, but it was almost the only place where I met them. Here I have so friends from all over the world, and I enjoy hear­ing and learn­ing about so many dif­fer­ent cul­tures, some­times I feel like trav­el­ing while just stay­ing in Berlin.

Thanks Johanna.

http://​www​.bon​jour​jo​hanna​.com/