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We heart Milan – Our Visit to Milan Design Week 2017

What can you do when Berlin gives you -2 degrees in April? We decided to give ourself a break from this great city with the ass-cold (free translation of the German term arschkalt) heart and start the season of Spring properly while escaping to Milan and visit the Milan Design Week. Sounds pretty spoiled, huh?

Well to be fair and square, Milan Design Week is a posh event only in certain ways. First of all most exhibitions and events are for free and without any guestlist involved. Secondly, flights from Berlin to Milan are more than affordable even close to Design Week. But mostly I think the event is so enjoyable and down to earth because the whole city with all inhabitants are curious about it and love to spend time visiting it. So you might enjoy the giant cockring designed by Hermes next to the Italian grannies from the neighborhood, or you might be playing in the playground of Toilet Paper Magazine or Marni with toddlers and battle for the best selfie poses with Italian high school kids. And I can promise you, you won’t win that battle.

So we were spoiled with good weather, nice Aperitivos and lots of playful design but were kind enough to come back to Berlin with lots of beautiful photos by Alicia Kassebohm. So after the jump we show you our favorite design highlights and trends we picked up there.

One Night in Slut Paulo

by Claudio | Party, Photos, Travel

photo: Andre Ligeiro

The wild colorful Carnival might be over in Brazil but I want to introduce you to a place where the carnal sins don’t need glitter or costumes to be celebrated during night and day: Sao Paulo. Maybe New York never sleeps but Sao Paulo never stops to fuck. The two times in my life I have been to Sao Paulo I felt every time like falling through Dantes Inferno and seeing devils, demons, witches and pagan gods celebrating love and lust to their fullest. This megalopolis, this biggest city in the whole South American continent is a safe haven for the artists, the crazies, the queers, the rockers and everybody else who does not want to conform to religious rules or a closed minded society.

But wait! What about Berlin you might say? Well, of course the apple of sins in the neighbor’s garden looks always more delicious. While Paulistas and Brazilians in general love the open mindedness and carelessness Berliners tend to have towards sex and sexual relationships I definitely enjoyed the way Paulistas flirted and interacted with each other. Much more warm and friendly, still carnal and maybe even more body-centered then in Berlin.

Last time, three years ago, I danced inside an abandoned skyscrapers turned into a cultural center in the middle of the city. This time around I visited a former brothel turned into a night club called L’Amour. A place that is so small that most part of the party crowd is actually enjoying and celebrating each other on the street in front of it. Fortunately, there were a couple of photographers taking shots of the crowd (that enjoyed their presence while posing to the death).

Have a look on how the wild kids in Sau Paulo enjoy their nights and let’s hope for some good street parties in a much more warmer Berlin soon, too.

Dreams Come True in Hot Air Balloons

by Frank | Photos, Travel

As some of you might have noticed last month I was a bit absent from the blog and those of you who also follow me on Instagram saw that I was traveling through South-East-Asia in February. I normally don’t really share much of my traveling outside of Berlin here because I figure this is not something you are really looking for here on iHeart. But this one story and photo series that I made in Bagan, Myanmar is just too special not to share it…

Forgotten Worlds and Forbidden Places

by Nikos | Art, Photos, Travel

photos: Dietmar Eckell

Continuing our article series on forbidden and forgotten places around the world, whether they are underground or way above ground, all these pictures have one thing in common: they showcase parts of the world we would rarely discover on our own and they demonstrate the love of the respective photographers for their art, that makes them defy any danger or challenge that comes along with such an adventurous endeavor. read more…

A Guide to Enjoying any Festival

by Andy | Stories, Travel

Every year, slowly but steadily, summer finds its way to Berlin. And with it the festivals pop up, seemingly endless. Your Facebook feed is basically exploding and they all appear like your wildest summer dream come to life. But where to start, which to choose, and who should join the perfect festival squad? …Struggles, so in the end you surrender and end up at Volkspark-Friedrichshain, having a barbecue. At least that’s how it feels like to me.

So, when Somersby – the fruity Scandinavian Cider – invited us to the Helene Beach Festival, of course, we went – Far to the east, actually, as east as it gets if you weren’t planning a spontaneous trip to Poland. The thought of half naked bodies, sun screen and apple cider, convinced us to pack our things and leave Berlin for the weekend. A summer beach festival located directly at a beautiful lake, with a wide variety of artists was waiting for us. Summer – music – chill – Let’s do this!

Aussie Lifestyle in Berlin

by Frank | Art, Cafés, Fashion, Music, Travel

Silo

Berlin has always been a kaleidoscope of cultures. People from all over the world come here to spend some time or start a new life. Each and every one of them brings a little piece of their home country with them, may it be a recipe, a local tradition, an idea, or a project they started there and continue here. All of these things enrich Berlin is creativity and diversity. It gives its inhabitants the feeling they are not just living in one city, but they are living in the entire world in one place.

In our series about foreign lifestyles in Berlin we have already introduced you to the contributions to our city that came from Turkish and from Polish people. For our third edition we are looking at a country that is much further away than that: It’s also known as Down Under!

For our Australian edition we are also introducing a novelty to our series: We teamed up with the beloved international hair care brand Aussie to give you the chance to not only experience the Australian lifestyle here in Berlin, but also to win a travel budget of 2500 EUR to fly all the way down under yourself and get a taste of the Aussie life! More about that after the jump. read more…

A Hotspot for Music and Culture: The Montreux Jazz Festival

by Keith | Music, Photos, Travel

I’m standing in front of the tallest, most powerful water fountain I have ever seen. Water shoots into the sky like some sort of glorious tower of refreshment. I’m in Geneva, Switzerland – Germany’s neighbor to the south – at the southwestern tip of Lake Geneva. This is practically France, but more expensive. Some Italian friends drive up from nearby Milan and Turin, pick me up and we drive along the northern side of this lake through Lausanne to a lovely little town on the lake’s eastern end. A historic week of music happens here every year: the Montreux Jazz Festival. Invited by Jeep, I had the chance to get out of Berlin for a bit and explore this beautiful hotspot for music. Follow the jump for more about this unique escape from Berlin.

Confessions of a Genital-Jet-Setter

by Alix | Stories, Travel

photo: Eylül Aslan

Berlin might be a disaster when it comes to airports but at least we have an overabundance of low-cost-airlines to choose from. And while hundreds of people come to Berlin to get their rocks off every weekend, I prefer to travel and, as some of you might remember my column on the terrible truth about the German man, I have reason enough.

Two Berliners having a Design Adventure in Milan

by Claudio | Design, Travel

photos: Alicia Kassebohm

Exploring new cities has always been a pleasure for us. We come back with a bag full of new inspiration, ideas and urban concepts that we might want to see also in our beloved hometown. Last week Alicia Kassebohm and I had the great pleasure to travel to Milan to visit the prominent Milan Design Week invited by the Belgium Design initiative: Belgium is Design. Like last year we visited The Salone del Mobile which is the biggest fair for contemporary design products and the Fuorisalone (outside Salone) the uncountable mass of side-events happening all around the city. In over 5 districts of Milan the complete neighborhood is transformed into a walkable showroom where young and upcoming designers and small manufactures present their products. This brings not only a lot of creativity to the neighborhoods but also involves the inhabitants in what is usually a very elitist topic: design. This kind of urban participation is something I really miss in all the fairs and big events happening in Berlin. So this would be something I could really imagine in a Berlin of the future. After the jump you find our favorite impressions sorted out by districts, a little art museum adventure we had and the best pieces from the exhibition of our partners from the Belgium Design Initiative.

Discover Mexico – Right here in Berlin

by Keith | Travel

photos: Keith Telfeyan

On the scenic Spree riverbank at Hauptbahnhof’s Washingtonplatz once set a pavilion by the tourism board of Mexico. The installation highlighted the many wonders of this country – its cuisine, its heritage and its natural beauty. The pavilion’s dome featured the latest in flashy, interactive technology – I wore an Occulus Rift VR headset for the first time.

Mexico is indeed an awesome travel destination. I visited in December – it was the perfect warm getaway from the Berlin cold. I went to the Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea, home to Playa del Carmen and Tulum of the Riviera Maya.

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