photos: Roger Sabaté.
For me, Kreuzberg has always been a bit of a mixed bag. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand that a lot of people especially love this district, and I certainly have an appreciation for it, too. But to answer what’s exactly the appeal of Kreuzberg, this requires a bit of elaborating.
For a quite long time, Kreuzberg was anything but popular for the regular Berliner. In fact, in the time of the division of Berlin, the district was not exactly coveted. This might have been related to the proximity to the Berlin Wall. The small district had three sides of the wall towards Mitte, Friedrichshain, and Treptow. As history has taught us, the areas towards the wall were considered dangerous – there were cases of border patrol shooting at people on the Western side by accident thinking it was people from the East fleeing. I’m not sure if this is actually an urban myth, but it did come up several times.
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by Frank | Stories
With the imminent closing of beloved Neukölln nightclub Griessmuehle coming up soon, the oldest cinema of Berlin, Moviemento, fighting for its survival and the iconic Clärchens Ballhaus already shut down the current mood of the city is pretty much set. Is the Berlin that we know and love gradually going to shut down now? Did the commercial powers that be finally win and swallow the alternative, untamable, free-spirited Berlin? I’m not gonna blame you if this is how you feel.
As someone who has been observing Berlin for 20 years now, I have seen many cherished clubs and cultural places go, some are even dearly missed today. The division of the city, the unwanted and abandoned places, relics of the industrialization, they all offered so much space for the underground and nightlife scenes to develop and thrive, especially since the wall came down. It created an ever thirsty and unflinching spirit to re-invent, re-purpose and experiment with spaces, objects, ideas. It created a city that turned its lack of pompous sights into a virtue and made its lifestyle into the magnetic quality that brought countless people here over the past couple of decades.
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by Frank | Stories
We updated our story to include the latest developments.
Neukölln’s Griessmuehle hosts many of our favorite events. Apart from the iconic parties such as the famous CockTail d’Amore, it’s also the stage for many screenings of Mobile Kino and other community-fostering events like various markets. That’s why we’re all concerned with their recent SOS video message, in which they urge Berlin to ”respect the clubs as they are”.
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by Michalina | Party, Stories
Gentrification in Berlin is a subject that we are all to a degree affected by but many remain helpless in the face of it. The new visualization by the artist collective oddviz around Serkan Kaptan, Cagri Taskin and Erdal Inci deals with the subject of gentrification in Kreuzberg – in a seemingly simple, yet truly moving way.
Kreuzberg has long remained a stronghold of alternative lifestyles and social diversity, yet the recent developments make one wonder how long will it still resemble the free-spirited, laid-back hood many of us have fallen in love with.
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by Michalina | Art, Videos
Our city is changing. As long as we’re loud enough, it can change for the better.
My body is still sobering up from excessive new years celebrations when I leave my apartment on Karl-Marx-Allee on this frosty Thursday morning. I might feel like trash, but stepping through the elegant row of columns guarding the gates to the monumental ‘Stalin-palaces’, I live in, just gives me something grand each time.
I’m on my – semi-thought-through – mission to keep it that way: I’m buying my apartment! – I’m 25, I just finished my studies, and my savings got me as far as a new MacBook… Turning around the corner to Ostbahnhof, nervously fiddling with the pile of signed documents in my right hand, I ask myself: Have I gone mad?
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by Andy | People, Stories
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Renting an apartment in Berlin has become outrageously expensive and doesn’t fit the anti-capitalist flair that many residents are here for. In fact, rents in Berlin have almost doubled in the last 5 years. The more often I talk to friends about the situation, the more I get used to it. And that’s even scarier. The other day, a friend who recently moved to Berlin told me that, she pays a staggering 920€ for 35m2 in Sonnenallee. That’s over 25€ per sqm! Allegedly luxuriously renovated and provided with a plush fitted kitchen.
We think that’s the new normal – but it’s still illegal. Indeed, even a rent of 10€ per sqm is often already illegal. To prevent rents from rising any further, the government passed a rent control law – the so-called Mietpreisbremse. That law has been in place for more than three years. So why has hardly anyone used it so far? Why do rents continue to rise?
We did some research on this and want to show you three different options for how you can actually and effectively lower your rent. We will start with the online service of wenigermiete.de, than compare it with going it through lawyer or a tenants rights association.
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by Franziska | Stories
The recent sale of dozens of iconic buildings inhabiting thousands of people along Berlin’s grand boulevard Karl-Marx-Allee by a private real estate company is symbolizing the sinister developments in the city’s housing market. But is it all just sell, sell, sell, cringe and carry on, or who has the final say here?
700 apartments in Berlin’s famous, postwar, palace-like apartment blocks along what was formerly known as GDR’s prestigious ‘Stalinallee’ change ownership. The buildings were acquired by ‘Deutsche Wohnen’ – the largest private real estate firm in the capital region, often criticized for its rigorous rental increase politics. – Oh my. I live there myself. What now?
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by Andy | People, Stories
Berlin has been accused of being many things: shabby yet magical, fairly open dirty-minded, pretentiously unpretentious and being that scene whore while it doesn’t ever truly let you in on where that “scene” actually happens. They say Berlin lets everyone be who they feel they should be, resulting in an open hearted city, that rarely lets people out of its loving but smelly embrace. But what really moves you about Berlin?
Yes, you!
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by Franziska | People
photo: Christian Schirrmacher / CC
Since the early 90s, after the Wall in Berlin fell, the city has seen slow growth in tourism, still not compared to that of London or Paris, but which in the last few years rocketed to the sky. And that of course hasn’t left the ready-to-complain Berliners without something to say about it: Locals nag about the city having become too busy, too noisy, and of course overpriced. The Berliners’ sentiment for foreigners has gone so far that there are even anti-tourists movements who hold real protests, against the city’s enemy: you. But how serious are Berliners in their detest of visitors?
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by Stella | Stories
photo: Denis Bocquet / CC
There is a ghost in town that will probably not get busted or disappear into thin air. Every day gentrification becomes more and more a real issue transforming neighborhoods, streets, and buildings from affordable, multicultural and diverse to posh, homogenous and boring.
But the issue of gentrification is not as simple as that. It’s a complex sociological and economic challenge Berlin is facing right now and solutions from politicians and urban planners alike are more than urgent.
To understand the phenomenon from a different perspective we spoke to Itay Friedman who is not only researching and writing about urban development and architecture but also working here in Berlin as an architect.
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by Claudio | Stories
