Discovering Berlin From A New Angle: A Scavenger Hunt with Surprises Hosted by glo™

Discovering Berlin From A New Angle: A Scavenger Hunt with Surprises Hosted by glo™

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If you’ve lived in Berlin for a long time and your job is all about knowing everything about the city, I can tell you, to surprise me with something new is a feat you are gonna be destined to fail at. Alas, of course, you are really inventive. And whoever organized that scavenger hunt by glo™ that I was invited to join last week sure was!

The whole experience made me realize, that the city has an infinite amount of surprises left for me to experience. Discovering Berlin from a new angle, seeing places I hadn’t seen before, or seeing familiar places in a new light – this is what keeps me motivated to do this blog and it keeps my enthusiasm for Berlin as fresh as on the first day.

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6 Awesome Calendars from Berlin for 2020

6 Awesome Calendars from Berlin for 2020

Getting yourself an actual, material calendar is surely a bold move in times of ubiquitous digitalization. Going analog can bring structure to your hectic life without any of the screen addiction that productivity apps can cause. Buying an actual calendar is also an important gesture of showing support and appreciation to the artist behind it. And obviously, it’s an appropriate gift for almost anyone – and especially useful in Berlin, the city where people need the occasional reminder of conventional concepts of time.

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Berliner Wiese: CBD & Hemp Products from Berlin

Berliner Wiese: CBD & Hemp Products from Berlin

Turns out that despite our extensive city exploring, there is still one particular green area we’ve never written about. And that is Berliner Wiese – not a meadow in the literal sense, but surely a portal into a more plant-based lifestyle. Keep on reading to find out more about this Berlin-based grower, manufacturer, and distributor of CBD and hemp products. 

Berliner Wiese was founded by two Dennis and Julien – two Ur-Berliners who pride themselves on growing their business locally in an environmentally friendly way. As they explain: ‘’We feel sustainability and regionality are both very important. Almost all our products come from the vicinity of Berlin and are grown on organic farms.’’

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Going In Deep & Hard: This Queer Artist Designs Porcelain Sex Toys

Going In Deep & Hard: This Queer Artist Designs Porcelain Sex Toys

photos: Vismante Ruzgaite. 

We got a chance to meet Jessie Keane who makes ceramic fine arts – for your kitchen, plants and… private parts.

Jessie is laying on the floor of our photo studio. Coming in for a normal interview, spotlights and cameras were probably not what the 27-year-old expected from this otherwise ordinary Thursday night. But we couldn’t resist photographing the charming artist with her kinky creations.

“Oh god, I’m dressed way too casually for this,” she replies when we ask her to step into the spotlight. Keeping things casual, yet a little unusual is exactly what we were looking for. In the end, Jessie is not selling your usual ceramics.

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SchokoKiez – Get your Favorite Berlin Kiez as a Chocolate Bar

SchokoKiez – Get your Favorite Berlin Kiez as a Chocolate Bar

I love chocolate! Everyone knows that eating chocolate that is shaped in a cute way is so much more fun, than just eating a plain chocolate bar. So we are used to pleasurably bite chocolate Santa’s head off and devour yummy easter eggs, but have you heard of someone eating their favorite Berlin Kiez in chocolate? Us neither. That is why we thought this idea is brilliant!

Ray and Lena from SchokoKiez invented a tasty chocolate bar, that has the map of your favorite Kiez engraved! This uniquely shaped artisanal chocolate bar is a treat for all sweet-toothed Berlin fans. Their first SchokoKiez is the much loved Schillerkiez, to be followed by many equally famous and loved Kiez’s, such as Bergmannkiez, Boxhagener Kiez or Kollwitzkiez – just to name a few.

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A Christmas Gift Guide for Berlin Fans

A Christmas Gift Guide for Berlin Fans

Without even realizing it, another year as almost flown by. Once again, Christmas is already upon us and besides the bitterness of not having achieved all the unrealistic goals we have established for us during the year, we have to face “the final year challenge”: searching and buying the perfect Christmas presents. Most of us consider it as a demanding task (because come on, let’s say the truth: most of us do not enjoy spending time searching for the perfect gift to buy in crowded shopping malls). However, we all have that old friend who really cares about receiving Christmas gifts and we all know that our mum is expecting a little present this year as well. Whether we like it or not, we are all going to Christmas shopping.

But what makes this treasure hunt difficult are always the same issues: “I do not know what to buy!”, “I am not feeling inspired”, “last year I bought my girlfriend a pair of secondhand gloves, I need something original this year!”. Don’t panic: we are here for you! We prepared an awesome gift list to help you find the most fantastic presents and souvenirs for your beloved ones, family members or Berlin fans and friends. Have a look, you will surely find something interesting and cool. Why are we sure that you are going to make a good impression? Because our present suggestions all have the cool Berlin style.

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These Berlin Girls are Redefining Waste-Free Design

These Berlin Girls are Redefining Waste-Free Design

photo: Andrej Russkovskij

The fashion industry is believed to be one of the most toxic businesses for our environment. Billions of clothes are produced every year and in the process, lots of chemicals and dirt gets thrown into our rivers and oceans. But the saddest part is: most of it will maybe only last one or two seasons before it gets thrown into the garbage bin, and a large portion of the produced clothes that was never sold will get destroyed without having ever been worn. This is the shocking truth that everybody knows but everybody also wants to ignore when it comes to their personal needs.

This is not the case for Hanna and Julia. The two Berlin-based designers and Yoga lovers saw an important opportunity in clothes waste to make a difference with an amazing idea: Why not use the strong fabric of old jeans to create new bags for your yoga mat?

With this concept, they created the brand Dzaino which is nowadays making more products beyond their signature yoga bags. For their crowdfunding campaign, they asked me and other Berlin-based people why sustainable local design is so important and why it’s worth supporting. I think the most important part of this projects is to show that in cities like Berlin alternative concepts of multinational brands are tested and can become a reality. A reality that we really need to save our planet. Check out their video and pics of the campaign below and support them here.

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City Icons – A Contemporary Souvenir of Berlin

City Icons – A Contemporary Souvenir of Berlin

When you think of Berlin souvenirs you probably think of plastic TV towers and tacky T-shirts. None of these things really capture the spirit of the city as we see it, and I’m sure none of you would be interested in any of those.

The Italian label Palomar came up with a new design souvenir titled City Icons that really took us by surprise. They completely rethought the concept of a city snow globe, creating a series of contemporary objects that highlight an architectural icon of the city that is not your typical tourist sight. The series that was designed by Paolo Dell’Elce and curator by Marco Sammicheli includes sleek black snow globes of cities such as Paris, London, Sydney, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Barcelona and of course also Berlin. But instead of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben or the Sagrada Familia you will see the minimalistic shapes of buildings that are maybe not on mainstream tourist’s itineraries but are nonetheless iconic for the respective cities.

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iHeartBerlin’s Very First In-Real-Life Design Edition: Berlin Stickers

iHeartBerlin’s Very First In-Real-Life Design Edition: Berlin Stickers

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The spirits are even higher than usual among our team today. We are absolutely thrilled to launch a series that is a complete novelty in our over 10 years of blogging. For the first time ever, we’re introducing iHeartBerlin-themed real life products – titled IHB/IRL. The first edition is a colorful sheet of 13 cute stickers created by our talented in-house designer Berk Karaoglu with images you might recall from some of our editorials. The batch is limited, so get ’em while they’re hot!

Over the years, we’ve seen that you heart Berlin just as much as we do, so we’ve tried to figure out an outlet for that love to spread outside of the Internet too. IHB/IRL is a chance for you to have the iHeartBerlin vibe visibly present in your day to day hustle – that’s why we chose to go with stickers for the first edition.

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This Game Let’s you Play Tetris with Plattenbau Blocks

This Game Let’s you Play Tetris with Plattenbau Blocks

For me, as an art and design lover, any visual proposal that allows me to discover new ways to look or to see my environment is always exciting. It’s very inspiring to find different or unusual things that unravel in front of your eyes. When I think about architecture I automatically tend to picture either classic art history examples or really futuristic constructions with large windows, clean lines, and diaphanous spaces filled with carefully designed and placed furniture. But in reality, we can’t escape all the trashy and clumsy examples that frame our sight on our daily way to work or while we walk the streets of Berlin.

In the German language, there is even a word for those concrete blocks that make Berlin look like a grey Tetris game and it’s called: Plattenbau. If you heart Berlin as much as we do, you probably have already found The Hidden Beauty of the Plattenbau architecture, or you might even know the Cuckoo Blocks clocks, a really ingenious reinterpretation of this style of construction.

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