Be Authentic In Berlin
Travelling is a crucial part of my design process, infusing my work with unique experiences to create stunning jewellery pieces. Berlin has been on my list of places to visit and this January I discovered that the soul of the city is unapologetically authentic.
Perhaps it's because it was subjected to strict rules after WW2 or maybe this spirit has always been part of the personality of the city but be prepared for Berlin to shake you out of your comfort zone with unfiltered honesty. January is a great time to go. There are virtually no tourists and the city is stunning, lit up through a mist of rain at night.
Our first introduction to Berlin culture happened in Glasgow. The pilot came out of the cabin before the flight to say to us that he wanted to look everyone in the eyes when he told us what he had to say. That woke everyone up. He explained the usual things about the flight times and told us that Berlin had the same shitty weather as Glasgow. Normal rules don't apply to Berliners and they have fun shocking you.
Swearing is ubiquitous in Berlin. You will see it in coffee shops.
Restaurants.
You'll also find it in artwork.
While you will be unable to avoid the F word in Berlin, you will be shocked by how clean the city is. There wasn't a piece of rubbish or dog poop anywhere. It's the cleanest city I have ever visited. I also felt very safe there. The only moment of potential conflict we experienced was late at night. A man, standing in a doorway with some other men, shouted at us, "Bananas!" holding aloft the piece of fruit he was eating. "Potassium!" Christopher yelled back to a round of giggling and applause. It seems Berliners like it when you play their game.
How We Live
The reason we decided to visit Berlin in January was to see Tracey Snelling's first solo exhibition titled How We Live.
We saw one of her artworks in Verona in September 2024 and immediately connected with what she was creating. She makes huge wooden models of buildings and puts images and videos in the windows. It's like a 3D version of an Avril Paton painting if everyone was doing something illegal, getting undressed or having sex. She uses clips from films in the windows and it is fun to look at them and see which ones you recognise.
The exhibition in Berlin had models of buildings from around the world including Shanghai, America, Berlin, and Scampia in Naples which some people will recognise from the TV series Gomorrah.
The piece that I found most surprising was the Mausebunker. It is a building in Berlin that was used for animal testing. It really looks gruesome. The design appears to reflect the horrors that were happening inside it.
The building was set to be demolished but it is now listed as an historic monument.
Tracey has added video footage of animals in the building windows and at the back of the building there was a video of animal experiments that were juxtaposed with the 1971 horror film Willard.
On the outside of the building Tracey has graffitied "Be nice to mice"
Looking into the windows of these buildings is like peering into the lives of others and the familiarity of the Hollywood films make us feel a connection to them. Combining architecture and film is like studying habitat and culture to give a unique way of looking at how we live right now.
Tracey's exhibition was held at the Haus am Lützowplatz It is on until the 9th of February but follow her on Instagram to see where she is exhibiting next.
Double Feature
At the Fotografiska Museum we discovered Marco Brambilla. He uses also uses film to question how we live. His work highlights that marketing is killing creativity in the world of film. Having worked in Hollywood, he saw first hand that the industry is controlled by people who only create films to sell merchandise.
I had really been looking forward to going to Fotografiska because it is open from 10am to 11pm and they invite you to grab a drink and take it round the gallery with you. They have a bakery and a restaurant within the museum. They do alcoholic and non alcoholic cocktails, a common theme I found in Berlin and instead of a ticket, they give you a sticker to put on your jacket to show you have paid to enter. The staff at the ticket counter told us to have fun after we were given our stickers. I love how many galleries and museums are open late in mainland Europe, giving you the option to see art as an evening activity. What I didn't expect was to leave with the feeling that I had seen the future of cinema.
Marco Brambilla's films are like nothing I have ever seen before. They are called video collages and they show multiple images brought together in a harmonious riot of colour and movement. Imagine Hieronymus Bosch brought to the screen in the 21st century. In fact, Marco's work actually feels more 22nd century.
The exhibition shows two of his films, hence the title Double Feature which is a reference to cinemas showing two films for the price of one.
After returning home, I unearthed his masterpiece showcased at the mesmerizing Sphere in Las Vegas, offering a unique cinematic thrill. The Sphere, a dome projecting images both indoors and out, is an immersive spectacle.
Here's a video that shows how the $2.3 billion Sphere is constructed and how it is uses technology to create a unique experience.
Futurium
Futurium promises to show you the future and it doesn't disappoint. It's an epic adventure where you can lose yourself for a whole day, exploring the potential of tomorrow.
Dive into an educational, fun, and mind-blowing experience with interactive exhibits that captivate both young and old and it is completely free. Humans, nature, and technology unite to improve the world. Strong mushrooms for construction that decompose when done, energy created from bacteria! Futurium provides potential solutions to the problems we are facing, asking the vital question, "How do we want to live?" and inviting you to participate in that discussion.
The focus isn't just on housing and energy. You can discover a wealth of technology, from interacting with robots to immortalize your memories on USB's for future generations and even prosthetics that allow for unique personalisation.
There is a large focus on raw materials. How we use them, extract them and recycle them. It's something I find very interesting as when people were promoting fair trade gold, I wondered why mining new metals was seen as a good alternative when recycling gold was much less harmful. All of the gold and silver in our collections is made from recycled metal, not metal that is newly mined.
In Futurium, they have videos where you can hear first hand testimony of what it is like to be a gold miner. It is chilling to hear about the risk of the tunnels collapsing and the likelihood of catching TB. Risks that are not necessary to extract materials that we don't need.
This is also one of the reasons why we offer lab diamonds in all of our designs. New technology means that there is no need for people to risk their lives extracting these raw materials. Diamonds can now be created using technology. Metals can be recycled.
Futurium urges you to delve deeply into envisioning a future that benefits not only yourself but also others and the planet. Our Promise collection of jewellery is just one way we give back to the Earth by planting a tree for each piece purchased.
Even if you can't visit in person, their website is a gateway to the future.
I left Futurium feeling as if I had been living in the past.
Coffee
Berlin keeps you on your toes so coffee is a must and boy, do they do it well. We found three coffee shops that we thought were exceptional and fun to visit.
At Distrikt, you can experience exceptional coffee, roasted in Berlin, with amazing high quality food. We went for the coffee flight - an espresso, a cortado and a filter coffee and it was hands down the best coffee we have ever tasted.
Sofi produce exceptional bread and you will see other businesses in Berlin proudly saying that their bread comes from Sofi. The bakery is in a pretty little courtyard and you can sit in for coffee and breakfast. The coffee has a cosy, almost beer like flavour which may come from the smell of the freshly baked bread that surrounds you.
Father Carpenter are also located inside a pretty courtyard and their toilet is actually outside the restaurant in a secret door inside the archway. They roast their own coffee and serve delicious, healthy food. The perfect place for breakfast or lunch if you are lucky enough to get a table.
FC really want to push the boundaries of hospitality and they have a free public coffee tasting on a Friday where they unite coffee enthusiasts, encouraging people to even bring their own coffee if they want!
Food
I believe the saying that when you learn about a culture's food you gain a deeper understanding of who they are. Berlin has two restaurants, owned by the same person that are a must when you visit.
"Cookie" Heinz Gindullis came to Germany from London and opened illegal bars because it wasn't possible for him to get a licence to start. He would occupy an empty building until he was forced to move on. His bars were open on a Tuesday and Thursday because he worked in a job on the other days. He knew every customer by name and what they liked to drink. His focus was on creating a fun experience for people and making meaningful connections. When the law stopped this happening, he found a way to do it anyway.
Now he owns two restaurants that carry the same spirit of his early years. Cookies Cream is a one Michelin star restaurant like no other. It was the first vegetarian restaurant in the world to gain a star. The vegetarian ethos is intrinsic but the focus is on fun. There is an exceptionally high level of skill in the cooking and the wine pairings have made us rethink what we thought we knew about German and Austrian wine. Crackers is his other restaurant and both are worth visiting on a trip to Berlin.
Crackers
I think Crackers is the better of the two restaurants to visit first. It's like a taster version of Cookies Cream in every sense.
There's a gate on the street that would be easy to miss. Go through that and you are in a concrete corridor of graffiti.
Walk past the photobooth, or take some pictures if you want and open the door. You then go through a set of curtains and are faced with the entrance to what looks like a bathroom with the words "You're fucking free!!!!!" in pink neon lights.
The bathroom turns out to be the kitchen and you walk past that into the elegant dining room that was once a nightclub.
It feels stylish but you don't have to be dressed up, which, travelling Easy jet flight with hand luggage only and sub zero temperatures in January, is a blessing. There was a woman with her mother and her baby at one table and at another, a couple played cards while having dinner. You can choose sharing menus as well as a la carte and they have innovative non alcoholic cocktails as well as fine wines.
Cookies Cream
The entrance to Cookies Cream looks like it might be a illegal club. I had read online that you go down an alleyway and past the bins to get to it. However, when we got to the place Google said it was and walked down the alley, there seemed to be nothing there. We walked back out, feeling slightly unsettled and checked Google. It was definitely the correct place. What hadn't been explained was that not only is there no signage in the street for the restaurant, but you have to traverse a dark, poorly light Z shaped alley to find the faintly illuminated sign in the distance.
Once you enter, there is a small bar and cloakroom and then you climb stairs that feel like you are entering a club rather than a fine dining restaurant.
The restaurant has a bare floor and concrete ceiling with exposed pipes, electrical cables in patterns and glitter balls. The emergency exit sign has a single shoe balanced on top of it. One section of seating goes across a wall, in front of a door that has a stencilled frog with an umbrella. It's Berlin. Why disguise a doorway when you can leave it as it is?
We asked our waiter if the space used to be a club and he said that it used to be French cinema. The space was the projector room.
Despite the brutalist interior design, it feels luxurious and very comfortable. The staff are all very relaxed. It feels more like they are hosting you in their home than working. They are very knowledgeable but they don't come across as forcing an ethos on you. We don't find out where the carrot is grown or how many hours were spent foraging for it and to be honest, the evening is better for it. We have visited a few three star restaurants and it is hard to have a conversation without someone interrupting you, bursting with pride about how amazing they are. The focus of Cookies Cream is ensuring you leave having had a good time.
The food really speaks for itself. The menu is minimalist but that's like a gift wrapped up to give just a peek of what is to come.
If you want to go and don't want to see the food, scroll past this part.
Parsnip
Bell Pepper
Potato
Pointed Cabbage
Celeriac
Beetroot
Apple
We eat a lot of vegetarian and vegan food but the flavours that the chefs at Cookies Cream create would make me happy to never eat meat again. It's mind blowing and I urge anyone who wants to be shocked by vegetarian food to visit.
We were sat opposite a large piece of art and I think you can probably guess what the word FICKEN means in German.
I asked our waiter when we came to pay the bill "I take it you don't accept American Express?"
"Yes. We actually do."
Nothing is what it seems in Berlin.
I looked up the artist when I got home. Igor Paasch creates artwork that explores the everyday myths of our narcissistic consumer culture.
You can go to Cookies Cream for a great evening. You can be inspired by the food and wine. You can be provoked by the artwork. You can also take time to reflect that this experience would not be possible if Cookie had not lived an authentic life, doing what he believed was right, even when others were telling him that it was wrong. His conviction to live by his own rules, rules which do no harm to anyone else, make me think about our laws. There are so many empty unused buildings across the world, owned by people who don't maintain them and who don't find tenants to occupy them. This does more harm to society than people using the buildings in a creative way to bring joy and fun to others. The landlords suffer no consequences for the harm they inflict on towns and cities. Where are the mechanisms to rewrite the laws? Who is questioning if they are appropriate for our lives now? A restaurant that provokes these kinds of questions is truly revolutionary.
These were my most interesting experiences in Berlin but it is a city with so much to explore. If you haven't been yet, there is so much to discover. If you have been, let me know if the comments what was your favourite thing to do in Berlin.
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