finding berlin

Gentri­fic­a­tion is like cli­mate change. Its so obvi­ous that every­body talks about it all the time but noth­ing hap­pens. That leads to people get­ting annoyed by the topic, so they even­tu­ally start to ignore it. Gentri­fic­a­tion is in the media, in polit­ics, in rap-songs and on house-walls but most of the time the debates exclude

In order to take a weekend off from bustling Berlin, we decided to allow ourselves a calm holiday at the Baltic Sea. We hoped to find some rest in a small hamlet on the island of Usedom, but little did I know that I would also find the staid and sedate model of a typical German village: our lovely retreat turned out to be the stage of a peculiar play.

As if the Kit­chen­surf­ing concept wasn’t excit­ing enough, the makers of the culin­ary net­work­ing web­site have thought about a new idea on how to con­nect food­ies with their local cre­at­ive chefs. The Kiez Eats is a weekly pro­gram hos­ted by dif­fer­ent cooks that invites inter­ested people into a night of superb food. With a bit of

Our man Jan Herd­licka con­tin­ues his charm­ing pro­ject “Sam­melkarten”. I think you know the pro­ced­ure by now: you can get a pack­age of beau­ti­ful hand­made mini-prints of Jans pho­to­graphs. If you are lucky you even find a “print”-card in your pack­age, that gets you a nice print! All you have to do is like his page and write him!

Dur­ing the last weeks I spent long nights view­ing and order­ing my messed up photo archive to pick out proper shots for my new web­site. In that pro­cess I found quite a lot of old and inter­est­ing pho­tos I almost for­got about. Like this series about graf­fiti mes­sages I star­ted to shoot in early 2007. Back then, my atten­tion got from

This week is all in the motto of the ITB, the inter­na­tional travel trade show of Ber­lin. Ben, who helped me out with a study for uni­ver­sity, has been much into the sub­ject of trav­el­ling him­self. He cre­ated the Big Blog Map that dis­plays blogs from all over the world. He’s been liv­ing in Ber­lin quite

After 300 demonstrators gathered at Eastside Gallery earlier today to disturb the demolition of parts of the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall, the building contractor and police decided to delay further construction. One piece of wall was removed, protestors are afraid that demolition will be continued later today or at night.

Like most European cities, Berlin has a historical center. And I don't mean that newish stuff around Unter den Linden, I'm talking about the medieval village of today's Nikolaiviertel. I am sure that any tourist can tell more about it than most Berliners, but how many people know about the quiet and shady atmosphere that sets after nightfall?

Dur­ing the winter time of the year, Tier­garten resembles a mys­ter­i­ous, enchanted forest. It’s vast and so empty. With the occa­sional run­ner passing our way, we were basic­ally alone when strolling through the snow-covered grounds. I remem­ber how packed and crowded the park is in the sum­mer­time. I don’t like it then, people leave their shit

Haus der Kulturen der Welt. This name is not just weirdly uncomfortable to foreigners, but to German speakers too. Haus der Kulturen der Welt. You'd think that Germans, who like to put words together, would call it "Weltkulturenhaus". It's remote area is pretty exceptional, too. To me, it seems just SO out of the way of anything that you'd have to be really dedicated to go to an event or exhibition. I know I used to pass it on one of my many trips with the designated tourist bus line "100", and keep thinking: man, what the hell, why would they place such a gorgeous object right into the middle of nowhere (and yes, Tiergarten is right in the middle of nowhere to me, because IF IT'S NOT IN KREUZBERG THEN HOW CAN IT EXIST?!). All joking aside, this is an exceptionally important place in Berlin. The Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of the Cultures of the World - seriously, can we just call it Bert or something from now on? It just feels so cold and impersonal) is an institution full of cultural insights, from concerts to exhibitions to readings to films to conferences and whatever else can be visually exhibited in the "world cultures" context. Remember how everybody went crazy about the Transmediale partys a couple of days ago? Well, if you were so inclined to actually participate rather than just get wasted, you'd have known that the Haus der Kulturen der Welt plays a central role in enabling the exchange of cultural practices, even in music and popculture. Besides, it's one of the last institutions that is still completely funded and commissioned by the state, a growing rarity in Berlin.

What if Ber­lin was like New York? What if all we did was breed high rising monu­ments, cov­er­ing the sky with amaz­ing archi­tec­ture, giv­ing Ber­lin the look and feel of a met­ro­polis? A con­ven­tional met­ro­polis, that is. Most people tend to appre­ci­ate that Ber­lin is not like New York, and yet it seems like an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment: what

After spend­ing half a year in Malmö, sweden our friend Jan Herd­licka is back in town. He starts the year with the third edi­tion of his Sam­melkarten. If you dont know about them, here is the deal. Jan prints a selec­tion of his pho­to­graphs in 6×4 cm and glues them on paper­board. He does it with really simple