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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.
What does it take to be surprised? How do you make a visit to a famous cafe, a popular street food restaurant, and an ordinary Späti exciting again? Well, let me take you on a little recap from the aforementioned scavenger hunt by glo™.
The tour started at a Späti in Neukölln where we were equipped with fanny packs filled with the new glo™ Heater and other goodies, a rain poncho, and an eBike. There we got the first of three cards with hints about the following spots. It started easy, with the first one being quite obvious, but the other two I only found by overhearing other partakers talking about the answer, in the case of one I even went to the wrong place first. So it sure wasn’t easy – even for a Berlin aficionado like me.
Coffee & Cake with Granny
A staple of German culture is the traditional afternoon treat of ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’ – coffee and cake. I can confirm that, as I am German and my parents still have this extra meal of the day almost every day. Little did I know that my first spot that leads me to the iconic Princess Cheesecake cafe in Mitte would turn into this.
I expected a coffee and cake in the normal cafe but arriving there me and my fellow hunters were lured into the backyard were a cute set-up with a traditional coffee table and a Hollywood swing awaited us. The set-up was perfected with an IRL German granny who would humor us with stories from the past days of good old Berlin.
I sure did not see that coming! But I loved this surprise – certainly not had this experience before here in Berlin.
Just Do Your Own Thing
The Next Stop was the really colorful and quirky District Môt, a popular Saigon street food joint in Mitte. If you haven’t been there, the place itself is already worth a visit. Super colorful with lots of decoration that would be tacky on its own, but in this setting, it’s just cute and fun.
So was our visit there: We got to mix our own house cocktails deciding ourselves how much soaked chia seeds, ginger strips, berries, and alcohol we wanna have in our drink. Not your average cocktail mixing session, this was more a feast for the eyes as well.
You could also get a Henna Tattoo on your hand professionally done by an Indian lady. It might not have made a lot of sense at a normal restaurant visit – but in this case, everything was possible.
A 24/7h Späti Reloaded
The last stop was something that I have secretly always wanted to do myself in one of my events: Completely rebrand an entire store with specially designed products. We’ve all seen that big fashion show in Paris with the completely rebranded supermarket. That’s the one!
In the case of our scavenger hunt glo™ really got out of their way to replace all the products in the Späti on Kastanienallee with products in their own style including candy, popcorn, snacks, chocolate, cereals, drinks, ice cream and so much more. Of course, the glo™ Heater that we got to try out here and the colorful packages perfectly fit into this whole scenario. If I wanted to present a snazzy new product I would certainly want to do it like that!
The Späti culture is such a big thing in Berlin – glad to see it incorporated here with so much love for the details. And it was for sure a great ending for the scavenger hunt. I certainly felt inspired to keep on discovering Berlin in new and different ways. I hope you do, too!
