uberlin

What does Berlin sound like? Many would nominate the 4/4 thud of the Berghain speaker stacks, the blare of U-Bahn buskers, or squat-party punk. But what about non-music audio?

We’ve set up a SoundCloud group called Berlin Sound, for people to share their sounds from around the city. So far we’ve heard: the hustle and bustle of the Maybachufer market, the eerie calm of Neukölln and Kreuzberg at night, and the seemingly endless announcement from the female “voice” of the U-Bahn when it pulls into Alexanderplatz. Oh yes, and the 4/4 thud of the Berghain speaker stacks!

You can hear the sounds we’ve collected so far using the widget below, or over on the Berlin Sound group page. If you already have some (non-music) audio to share, simply join the group, upload your sound to SoundCloud and click the “Share to group” button on the track player. And why not download SoundCloud’s mobile app, and go out and record something we’ve never heard before?

We’d love to hear your Berlin Sounds!

by Michelle Last

Daily Deutsch Doodles are a series of illustrations based on contributions to the #dailydeutsch Twitter hashtag, aimed at helping people trying to learn German. Art by Michelle Last.

It’s a big year for Bowie, as Dame David has just turned 65 and celebrated the 35th anniversary of his first classic Berlin album, Low. The city is celebrating its favourite adopted son this week with a film screening, walking tour and club night in his honour. Allow us to join in by posting the video for Xu Xu Fang’s cover of “China Girl”, featuring a few of our favourite things – horses, beards, black and white.

If you feel like toasting the Thin White Duke, you should start with Merkezi Movie Club on Monday, which is screening Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, starring Bowie as the eponymous alien. Feeling Gloomy will be going through ch-ch-changes all day Saturday, with a Bowie Tour (sadly booked up) and a Bowie-themed edition of the Feeling Gloomy Clubnacht.

If you’re unlucky enough not to live in Berlin (sadface), or can’t make these awesome events for any other reason, you can at least live vicariously through illustrator Holly Sims’ Bowie-inspired poster series for Feeling Gloomy. Altogether now, “I, I will be king…”

The clear highlight of our recent trip to Copenhagen was the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, which justifiably calls itself “the most beautiful museum in the world”. An hour up the Zealand coast from the Danish capital, the Louisiana combines an excellent collection of postwar art with a sculpture garden that drops down onto a beach with panoramic views of the Oresund. Not only was the museum the best thing we did on our trip to Scandinavia, but it had us eyeing all the nearby houses and vowing to one day live somewhere “just like this”.

The Louisiana’s permanent collection includes big names like Warhol and Henry Moore, but my personal favourites were the greatest cluster of Giacometti’s stick-thin man-maquettes I’ve ever seen, and the precarious Self Passage, a George Traka installation that leads brave explorers down to the ocean. A temporary exhibition by persecuted Chinese artist Ai Weiwei pricked our lazy Western consciences, and a retrospective of Andreas Gursky’s extraordinarily expansive photographic art has changed the way Zoë looks at her craft forever.

But let’s face it, it’s the stunning setting that will keep us going back to the Louisiana more. We’re seriously considering flying back to Copenhagen just to jump on the train up to the museum, and come straight back. If that sounds insane, one look at these photos and you’ll totally understand.

Click here to read all about our trip to Copenhagen and Stockholm.

We’ve *hearted* California Breakfast Slam since it was based near our old Kiez, before it shut down and then magically popped up a few streets away from our new flat! Berlin’s best Mexifornian (?) brunch is currently based on Pflügerstrasse in Neukölln, although according to their hilarious, ranty Facebook Page, they’re looking for a permanent home in the neighbourhood. Our advice: get down there and enjoy the heuvos rancheros or two eggs plate (with turkey sausages and pancakes) before they go all nomadic again!

We’re slowly going stir-crazy in our office/flat/shared cell. We can’t carry on like this, so we’ve started seriously looking at coworking spaces – and the city’s startup blog Venture Village is proving an invaluable resource. Not only have they published a list of the ten best coworking spaces, and are running a competition to find an overall winner, but they’ve also assembled this bumper map of all(?) the shared workspaces that Berlin has to offer. So much choice!

Do any of you have experience of coworking in general, or these places in particular? Feel free to leave your tips in the comments below – we’d love to hear from you.

View Venture Village Berlin Co-Working Map in a larger map

Last weekend I was invited to the opening party of Dolce & Gabbana’s new flagship store in Berlin, along with guests like Bonnie Strange, The Lives Of Others star Martina Gedeck and Bang Bang Berlin Clubs editor Jackee Word. I was even asked to cover the event for the official Dolce & Gabbana blog! You can see all the photos and read my highlights on Swide Magazine, but here are a few shots to whet your appetite. Enjoy!

Part two of our Excellent Scandinavian Adventure! (Zoë’s busy cutting-and-pasting our heads onto Bill and Ted’s bodies as I write this.) After Stockholm (read our highlights here), Copenhagen was colder and even more expensive! Case in point: brunch for two at Café Europa, recommended by the chic @Lilies_Diary, came to €70. Despite this, the Danes were warm and welcoming, and we had loads of fun: here are the best bits of our three days in the CPH.

We stumbled across a couple of early highlights on our first walk through the historical waterfront Nyhavn district into town. First, we picked up the best brews of our trip in the Coffee Factory, and then we spotted an actor from Forbydelsen! (For the nerds: Nicolas Bro, who plays Thomas Buch. If he wasn’t deep in conversation, you’d now be looking at a picture of him, me, and my two thumbs.) We celebrated by hitting the shops, killing (geddit?) time in Wood Wood and the city’s countless independent boutiques – naturally, I bought some Clarks.

Shamefully, we only followed one tip on our friend Ed’s excellent Foursquare list, but we picked well. The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, rightly called “the most beautiful museum in the world”, is one of the best things we’ve ever seen. Situated an hour away on the north Zealand coast, the museum combines an excellent collection – of sculpture in particular – with panoramic views across the Øresund that had us vowing to one day live somewhere like that. Back in town, we went from the transcendent to the touristy, popping into the Ice Bar to warm up (its -5°C was a few degrees balmier than the street outside) and grabbing the best hotdog in town at the nearby Andersen Bakery. Muscular, sexy versions of those limp dogs you get in Ikea, these are like the Brigitte Nielsens of meaty treats. I’ve said too much…

Check out our Stockholm highlights, and stay tuned for more stunning photos of the Louisiana Museum.

It’s been over a year since I shopped on eBay, so I’m not quite sure why I decided to trawl its pages last month. I’m glad I did though, as I spotted this amazing vintage (“second hand”, my mam would say) cape buried among all the rubbish. Since winter has finally arrived in Berlin, I’m finding capes a godsend with so much space to add layer upon layer underneath – particularly important when you go for a stroll ON a frozen canal, as I did for this shoot.

Buying this was a bit of a gamble, as the seller’s photos were terrible (surprise, surprise) but the gorgeous white fur foxtail details, reminiscent of Alexander Wang, made this a risk worth taking. The seller wouldn’t post to Germany because so many customers had complained about customs hold-ups, so I had to get the cape shipped to my parents in the UK and THEN posted to me…yeah I know, I’m a fashion slave but I’m a warm one at least!

On this Valentine’s Eve, we give you the most heartbreaking thing we’ve heard in some time: the Lucky Paul rework of “I’d Rather Go Blind”, by the recently deceased Etta James. “I would rather go blind, boy, than to see you walk away from me…”

Lucky Paul’s Elephant Island EP, out today, isn’t romantic in the traditional sense, but then neither is the producer’s sometime home of Berlin (at least, according to our own Mr Sexpat). The lyrics of Maori singer Mara TK may be about Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica, but there’s enough of the epic and universal in his words and his fellow New Zealander’s emotive backing to foster thoughts of life, love and loss. It would perhaps be too pretentious to call “Elephant Island” electronica’s answer to Moby Dick or the lost love song penned by Superman in his Fortress of Solitude… so I won’t. Skip to the Midland remix for maximum swoon.

For more on Lucky Paul, his previous EP and his awesome remix of Amelie’s “One Thing”, check out this Music Montag post I wrote for Bang Bang Berlin.