photos: Roger Sabaté.
Back in March, right before the lockdown, I had the opportunity to try out a new retreat concept that brought me to the countryside of Brandenburg to the charming Neuhausen castle.
I haven’t done any retreats so far, so I was curious about this invitation and happy to confirm. One of the key aspects was the digital detox element which meant that for the entire stay all guests had to give up on all of their electronic devices including smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, computers. Considering how attached I usually am to all of these and how I often feel almost enslaved by the connectivity they offer, I felt it was about time for me to try out something like this. It was a test on how strong my addiction to being connected and constantly checking my phone I actually am.
Be Retreats is a project by daughter-mother duo Laura and Kathrin from Berlin who found there to be a great need for stressed-out Berliners to get out of the city and get away from the habit of being glued to their phones. Apparently, we grab the phone on average 200 times and spent 7 hours consuming various types of media per day. That sounds like a lot, but it also sounds pretty realistic.
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by Frank | Travel
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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by Amanda Artiaga | Products
photo: Le Buzz
When you think that you have done it all when you cannot decide what to do, or just want to have some different experiences this selection of Berlin Apps will help you no matter if you’re looking for a vegan restaurant or a ping-pong table. So you can discover yet another side of this kaleidoscopic city and make the most of your Berlin experience. Either if you are an Urberliner, you are studying or you are just here for your vacation. Check this list out and enjoy the city!
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by Amanda Artiaga | Products
In the last two years I have grown a bit tired of always carrying around my heavy SLR camera that I normally use to capture places and events in Berlin. I would still take pictures, but with my smartphone. I felt the quality was quite good and the convenience of it was too tempting. Also you just look less suspicious with a smartphone than with a real one.
But the fact is, I never really put it to the test how good the quality of mobile phone cameras really is compared to the big ones. A few weeks ago I joined a comprehensive workshop with famous photographer Paul Ripke who showed us some basic tricks on how to improve your photos and he also introduced one particularly interesting new development of smartphone photography which is the professional manual mode. We got to play around with the Huawei P9 and brand new Mate 9, both of which have quite remarkable cameras with a double lens by Leica. I took one of these two with me on a photowalk around Berlin and took direct comparison shots with a medium-sized SLR camera. The results will probably surprise you…
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by Frank | Photos
photos: Matthias Piket
Lately, I’ve been totally into workshops. I like the feeling of learning new crafts and perfecting already existing skills. So I was more than happy when Huawei invited me to a mobile photography workshop by Paul Ripke. If you haven’t heard of this man, you should definitely google his name. He rose to fame with his book One Night in Rio where he captured the German soccer team up-close and personal at the World Championship in Rio back in 2014. But he’s not a typical sport and event photographer. With his work he comes so close to the action and the main protagonists that it almost feels like being right there between the athletes celebrating their victory.
With someone so accomplished of course there is a lot to learn, so after he introduced himself to us I was really curious what secrets of his success and profession he would share with us during this workshop. Much to my surprise, in the end the most valuable insight that I got beside a lot of technical stuff, was something quite more personal and inconspicuous…
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by Frank | Photos, Stories
photos: Alejandro Arretureta
Last week I had the pleasure to go on a little trip to beautiful Munich to join the press conference of Huawei who launched their brand new smartphone, the Mate 9. Much to my surprise the event that gathered journalists from all over Europe started with the reveal of a quite prestigious collaboration of the Chinese smartphone giant: They teamed up with none other than German car manufacturer Porsche to create a special edition of the Mate 9 that is as beautiful and fast as the famous car itself.
I was quite impressed with this because Porsche is one of the most respected and most beloved luxury cars in the world and to make a phone in collaboration with them is pretty awesome. Most new phones that come out don’t have anything special to offer other than that they are superior to previous phones which is pretty much a given I think. Even the new iPhone didn’t have anything revolutionary going for it except that it is better than its predecessor. So are collaborations with other iconic brands the way to go from now on? It does make sense and in the case of Huawei and Porsche it certainly looks like a clever move.
We had the chance to play around with the new Mate 9 a bit and we thought what could be a better test object than an actual Porsche. So we took the phone to one of our favorite places for amazing cars in Berlin: The Classic Remise in Moabit. This depot for luxury classic cars is a mecca for car lovers and of course it’s full of Porsches (amongst other prestigious brands of course).
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by Frank | Products
photo: Sascha Kohlmann
A few weeks ago I was spontaneously invited to be part of a video shoot by Huawei for their new #humantouch campaign. The video is all about sending people some positive messages, touch their hearts and give them a smile. It’s a very minimalist concept, yet it’s emotionally loaded.
Seeing the finished video now got me thinking. I like the spirit of it, taking one moment of our busy lives and write something sweet or funny to a stranger to give them a piece of happiness. We need this, especially in the cold and dark season we are in right now, especially here in Berlin were everyone is grumpy and complains. We need a bit of light-heartedness and optimism here right now. So I wondered about what could give the Berliners a smile, even if it’s just a small one, or maybe even a laugh?
After the jump I prepared some positive messages for Berlin. Let them brighten your day a bit 😉
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by Frank | Stories
photo: Michele Ursino
We’ve all seen them, out in the streets of Berlin, in our offices, they’re in the clubs, in all the cafes. They’ve penetrated our circle of friends, maybe we are even becoming one of them ourselves? I’m talking about one of the ugly results of the Social Media Age: Smartphone Zombies. They walk in the streets without checking the traffic, they sit silently across from each other in restaurants, whole hordes of them in the subway, and all of them constantly gazing into the screen of their smartphones as if they were staring through a magical looking glass into another dimension, one that seems to be significantly more exciting than the world that surrounds them.
How often do you use your smartphone? Is it the first thing you grad when you wake up, and the last thing you see before you fall asleep? How often do you check your new likes, your incoming Whatsapp messages or eMails? How often do you upload new photos on Facebook and Instagram? Maybe you are becoming a Smartphone Zombie yourself and you haven’t even realized it yet? Maybe no-one tells you because all your friends are already infected and this behavior has become a state of normalcy for all of you?
If you think the symptoms are recognizable than maybe it’s time you take action before it’s too late. We’ve compiled a list of 7 steps that will help you to avoid becoming a Smartphone Zombie. You can work your way through our list of steps and depending how early you begin to fail our recommendations the more serious your infection seems to be. Here are our 7 steps on how to avoid becoming a Smartphone Zombie…
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by Frank | Stories, Travel
