illustration: Berk Karaoglu.
With this cursed year coming to a close, Berlin descends into one of the most magical times of the year: the holidays. Normally complete with Glühwein, freezing cold, and Christmas markets, this winter is going to feel far from normal (except the freezing cold). Although the holidays may be a bit different this year, it’s still the season to give back to the people you love and the city we all love. We’ve compiled this gifting guide featuring small businesses from Berlin if you’re looking for an alternative to Amazon. All the businesses listed in the following guides are small, ethical, locally owned, and sure to make your loved ones (and their owners) smile.
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by Adri | Christmas Present
Last Wednesday, we had a grand old time with you over at Hallesches Haus! With a generous supply of ice-cold beer sponsored by Pilsner Urquell, we’ve celebrated both the new look of our website and the launch of our very first sassy little book. It was an unforgettable night for so many reasons – even nature acknowledged it by sprinkling this winter’s first snow down on us. But don’t despair in case you couldn’t make it – now you can check out our impressions from the party!
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by Michalina | Books, Events, Photos
photos: Markus Abele
I totally get that Yoga is not for everybody. Sometimes when I am sitting there, in one of those hardcore Jivamukti classes where they sing all together and talk about important life lessons I try to imagine the face of my grandmother when the yoga teacher says: “You are a beautiful flower. And now please spread your legs and hips wide to let the deep emotions in. Like the sunshine is entering with its beams into your inner flower”.
My secret method to enjoy these kinds of situations is taking it with a sense of humor. It’s like a free live episode of one of your favorite comedy shows and you build muscles and flexibility while watching it. I call it a win-win! But that does not mean that I don’t take yoga seriously. Actually, it’s one of the few things in my weekly routine that helped me in many situations of life for the past 8 years.
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by Claudio | Books, Wellness
illustrations: Johanna Dumet
It all started one fateful Tuesday morning as I stood in my bathroom. The previous night I’d submitted the manuscript of How to be German 2 to my publisher and I considered my German Integration project finished. I was integrated. Standing in the bathroom, I looked below the mirror to a shelf where I saw the toothpaste tubes Elmex and Aronal. They knew, that I knew, that it is wrong to use the same toothpaste for both morning and night. This is not the German way, for it is obvious that your teeth have different cleaning needs depending on the time of day. Logisch. Right? You wouldn’t use the same shampoo when showering at night, as when showering in the morning, would you? Exactly.
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by Guest Author | Stories
Spiegelsaal, Clärchens Ballhaus
We love Clärchens Ballhaus! It’s one of the only remaining old houses on Auguststraße in Mitte and it radiates history like very few other buildings.
Here you can enjoy easy-going and yummy traditional German food and pizza along with a beer in the garden in a charming atmosphere between the old walls and you can feel the many years that this place has already existed. In the nights you can dine or listen to concerts in the famous “Spiegelsaal” ball room, a beautiful old hall of over 100 years – decorated, as the name suggests, with many mirrors. But the heart of Clärchens is its main ball room – day by day there are dancing events and you can also be active in courses like standard, salsa or tango.
Established in 1913 by the family Bühler the house is one of the last ball houses of Berlin. We wanted to learn more about it and found a wonderful book: Berlin tanzt in Clärchens Ballhaus: 100 Jahre Vergnügen – eine Kulturgeschichte. Learn more about it after the jump.
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by Olga | Books, Mitte, Restaurants, Videos
photo: Georg Schober
A tattoo is an irreversible act bound to a body and a life, and who better to remind us of this than Berlin-based tattoo artist Valentin Hirsch? It’s not easy to establish yourself as a tattoo artist these days, especially with the new wave of styles, technique and talent the past few years have brought us. Hirsch found his niche in the form of haunting animal motifs, geometry and avant-garde collages, all brought to life with beautifully refined dot work and clean lines. 2010 marked the transition from illustrations on paper to skin, and this change in medium acted as the distinctive turning point in the artistic development of Hirsch’s work, which resulted in tattoos drawn with disturbing symmetry and abstraction. His first monographic book SYMMETRIES highlights the transition from drawing to tattooing as an inevitable next step in his evolution as an artist, which is defined by consistency and reinvention in equal measure, with an essay by Gunter Damisch and an interview with the artist by Uta Grosenick. Click on to see more of his designs and find out how you can get a copy. On Saturday, June 27, 2015 Valentin is celebrating the release of the book together with iGnant.
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by Skylar | Art, Books
Berlin has a new paradise for magazine lovers: Soda Books. Perfectly located right at Rosenthaler Platz at Weinbergsweg the elegant and minimalistic store opened earlier this year with an exquisite selection of the best magazines and books in the genres of design, fashion, lifestyle, art, travel, interior, food and so much more. You’ll find international classics such as The Gentlewoman, Dazed & Confused, Metal, Purple Fashion and Another Magazine, but also new and more rare titles such as the travel and lifestyle magazine Cereal, Le Petite Voyeur, Toilet Paper and Das Wetter, and of course also local publications such as OE Magazines, Sleek and 032c. You can tell that the people behind this place have an admiration for magazines already by the store design as the titles are presented like pieces of art in a gallery. Some impressions and the details after the jump.
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by Frank | Books, Mitte, Shops
photos: Philipp J. Bösel & Burkhard Maus
In 1984 the photographers Philipp J. Bösel and Burkhard Maus had a funny idea: Let’s go to West Berlin and photograph the entire 18 km of the Berlin Wall as seen from the West! The result was a stunning series of 1144 black and white photos that would make up a huge panorama if you would line them up next to each other. This is probably the most detailed documentation of the exterior of the Berlin Wall that was taken before it got torn down in 1989. In these photos you see a lot of funny graffitis my favorite one being the one above that reads “What the fuck are you looking at, never seen a damn wall before?” in dry German words.
25 years later this photo series was turned into a beautiful photobook published by Verlag Kettler. It’s an amazing documentation of one of the most significant periods of Berlin’s history and now one of the must-have Berlin books for every Berlin lover. There are only 1144 copies available of this limited edition, so you better hurry up to get yours. Some previews after the jump.
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by Frank | Books, Photos
photos: Thomas Knights
If you haven’t heard of it, red is the new black. Well, in the world of men admiration at least it seems. For the longest time redheads have had a tough time but now it seems they have become objects of desire for many people and I think that’s great. We live in a time where more and more people seem to appreciate and enjoy the diversity of human kind. I hope this development continues and than we can finally put things like discrimination against people who are different into the history books. Everyone is different in the end.
The British photographer Thomas Knights belongs to one of the many admirers and supporters of red heads and he is hugely successful with it. His portrait series RED HOT has been celebrated in many exhibitions and is widely covered in the media. Berlin-based publisher Bruno Gmünder has turned the series into a book titled Red Hot 100 that has sold out its first couple of editions as quick as bananas in East Germany. There is also a second book that came out in 2016 that features also some celebrities and girls.
To promote the ongoing project they release calendars every year as well as exhibitions, here in Berlin (back in 2015), but also in London (coming up in January 2017). Of course some of the sexy models are also from Berlin. Enjoy some excerpts from the book after the jump.
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by Frank | Books, People, Photos
Those of you who were guests of our 7 Year Anniversary party back in September already had a chance to see the cute brand new book Beardicted by our guest contributor Alicia Kassebohm and also put on some of her sparkely beards in our barber shop photo box. Now the book is officially available for purchase and we have a huge preview for you with some of our favorite beards from the book and of course those of the iHeartBerlin team including Devid, Claudio and me. Enjoy the beard parade after the jump.
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by Frank | Art, Books, Photos
