You Might Like
My gay Berlin: Adam Groffman on Germany’s hippest city
I moved here in…
I moved to Berlin in 2011, after coming here as a backpacker for the annual CSD (gay pride parade). I spent a week here and then left to continue my Eurotrip to Prague and Vienna. But as I was planning where to go from Vienna, I realized I missed Berlin and just couldn’t imagine myself visiting anywhere but. So I got the next bus to Berlin and haven’t looked back yet!
I stayed because…
If you ask many other Berlin expats, you’ll hear the same kind of story. This city is infectious — there’s an incredible energy and atmosphere here that’s hard to describe. Berlin is a changing city and, unlike many other big cities, it still feels like anyone can do anything here. Remember that just 25 years ago it was divided in two! There is so much happening here just about every day of the week, it’s never boring.
My favorite queer bar has to be…
There are a lot of great gay bars in Berlin and they’re pretty much everywhere. A lot of tourists stick to the Schoneberg area of Berlin which is the historical ‘gayborhood’ but I actually find the best gay and queer bars are elsewhere. I particularly like The Club in Neukolln – it’s not actually a club but a bar and they put on some great events such as poetry nights and TV/movie screenings (RuPaul’s Drag Race, anyone?). It’s a great, little local bar.
For a cheap eat I head to…
In Berlin it’s hard to avoid döner kebab but I prefer the more Lebanese variety: shawarma. In Kreuzberg, I’ve been a long-time fan of the cheap shawarma sandwiches from Maroush at Kottbusser Tor – it’s reliable, cheap and tasty!
My favorite place to people-watch is…
Has to be Görlitzer Park. It’s the Berlin-equivalent to San Francisco’s Dolores Park which means you’ve got a lot of hippies, hipsters, drunks and drug dealers. The park was a former train station and now there’s a decent bar in the middle, Das Edelweiss, where you can play backlight minigolf, catch open-mic jazz sessions or just chill out on the grass for impromptu picnics.
© visitBerlin, Wolfgang Scholvien
LGBTI Berliners always look forward to…
Berlin’s annual gay pride is a big event and while it’s always a lot of fun, I think a lot of locals actually get excited about the annual Berlinale Film Festival which is one of my favorite things to do in Berlin during the winter. Each year in February, celebrities flock to the city but what most people don’t know is that the Berlinale runs a LGBT-themed film festival as part of the greater Berlinale festival – the Teddy Awards.
Berlin’s best building is undoubtedly…
It has to be the TV Tower (the fernsehturm). It’s big and tall and I don’t care how many times I see it, I always take a picture of it.
For culture, you can’t miss…
The weekend flea markets! Berlin’s a very big city (obviously), but it has maintained it’s small town feeling. Just about every little Berlin neighborhood, or kiez, has its own flea markets on the weekend. The flea market at Mauer Park is popular for many tourists, but I’m also a big fan of the Boxhagener Platz market where, on Sundays, you can pick up anything from old Soviet knick-knacks to new t-shirts from local designers.
I’d take a Berlin virgin to…
While normally I like to take visitors around the Kreuzberg area, one of my favorite places to take a first-time visitor to Berlin is the 24-hour bar/club/café ‘Mein Haus am See.’ The atmosphere inside is pretty unique to Berlin – you’ve usually got crowds of people coming and going, those that sit all day on MacBook computers doing whatever freelance work it is that they do, plus at night there are DJs and an underground club in the back. It’s just a bar with a great vibe — something oh-so-Berlin!
I shop at…
One of my favorite shops to window-browse is the Voo Store in Kreuzberg. They have a well-curated collection including stylish fashion brands, books and other odd knick-knacks for my home.
Berlin’s best-kept secret is…
Oh that’s a cheeky question! Tourists flock here for Berlin’s history and it’s nightlife, but the city actually has one of the world’s best art scenes as well. Because of the incredible amount of flexibility and freedom here for artists, new art projects are popping up all the time. Some of them probably never would get approved in other cities, but in Berlin – just about anything’s possible.
Read more about Adam at his blog Travels of Adam by clicking here.
The post My gay Berlin: Adam Groffman on Germany’s hippest city appeared first on Gay Star News.
Jamie Tabberer
www.gaystarnews.com/article/my-gay-berlin-adam-groffman-on-germanys-hippest-city/
You Might Like
