| Gothic Tourism in Berlin |
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| Written by i j |
| Wednesday, 25 November 2009 13:54 |
Last week I made a fast trip to Berlin making a little bit of tourism in German lands, now I bring to you a small resume of what to see if you go to Berlin, today we talk about…
SPECIAL NOTE: ¡¡¡SEND ME INFORMATION ABOUT OTHER CITYES!!! I’m looking to create articles as this one about as many cities in the world as possible, I don’t care if your city is big or small, please send me information about your local stores/pubs/events and tourism attractions of any interest to the gothic community so we can create a huge databank ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).
Berlin is a big city with lot of places to visit, at first I thought that it was going to be a typical expensive city with lots of big and ugly buildings, some museums, some special places or monuments and little more but I was clearly wrong. First surprise was that Berlin isn’t expensive at all, I could travel from Spain to Berlin hiring a 7 night apartment for only 350€, I think I was lucky to find a cool offer in Internet as I previously checked travel agencies and they always offered more expensive trips. Food is also cheap, you can have breakfast, lunch or dinner really well (quantity and quality wise) for about 10€/person or you can eat fast food (with good quality “fast-food-wise” and big quantity) for about 5€/person.
I found rest of shops and locals to be about the prize I expected to find, not cheap not expensive, specially I found that gothic stores are about same prize that the ones I used to check, that surprised me since I’m quite sure Germans earn pretty much more money than I…
Pubs and music locals have average prices for Europe standards, coming from Spain I felt they were robbing me, but you know Spain is a cool place for drinking at nights, beer was really good and had a nice price although I expected more variety, in deed I could only find about half dozen of different beer types…
Having said this, lets talk about tourism itself: Berlin have a lot of places to visit (Brandemburg gate, Reichtag, Tiergarten, Berlin Dom, Pergamon Museum, Neue Synagogem, Sophienkirche, Tacheles, Fernsethurn, Sony Center, Topography of horrors, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis-Kirche for naming some) , but I wont focus on what you can find in a tourist guide but in what we are really looking for, here are some places you shouldn’t miss:
Friedofe Hallesches Tor:
A small cemetery located South of Mite, It’s really a beautiful place. While we were there we couldn’t find many people walking around but there was plenty of people taking care of their plants or flowers demonstrating a big respect for their death people, there weren’t many elaborated tombs or mausoleums.
Holocaust Mahnmal:
This square it’s a monument for the victims of Nazi Holocaust, it’s really frightening, basically it’s formed by thousands pieces of concrete from 30 Cm height to 4 meters, walking around you feel really small and lineless.
This squat deserve to watch it, its completely full of graffiti inside and outside but it also have 2 different Pubs, and a courtyard with another bar and an scenario, in the squat lives an undetermined number of people and most of them are artist of some kind that sells their art pieces to visitors.
In the Courtyard you’ll be able to find one of the artist exhibitions, it works with oxide iron and makes some really incredible figures with it.
It seems to be possible to visit the interior of the building but when we tried to do it a woman started to yell at us and we thought it wasn’t the correct moment for going in, sadly we didn’t had any other opportunity.
Sachsenhausen:
This place is more adequate for a grief tourism article than a Gothic tourism one but I had to make room for this place… its located at about 40 minutes train, 20 minutes walking from the city centre, its one of the camps that Nazi used to force labour/torture/kill thousands of people during the holocaust, I recommend to visit it with a tourist guide, you’ll be able to find them everyday at 11 A.M. in the starbucks behind Branderburg gate.
Topography of horrors:
Another place to remember what happened in those dark days, here you’ll find a series of images with real photos taking during the Holocaust, when I was there they were fixing an old bunker that I suppose will be possible to visit in the future.
Time to talk about shops, I went there without knowing any of them but I found them just by having my eyes open, I’m sure I missed some stuff.
NoctemWear(Finowstrabe 6 10247 Berlin):
This one is in the east side of the city, pretty far from any other site, if you go to the East Gallery (a place where you’ll find a remaining section of the Berlin wall) you can walk a little more (or take some metro) for getting to this place.
Darkstore (Boxhagener tr 23 10245 Berlin):
This one is in the vicinity of the previous one, my advice is that if you go to either one you make the effort of searching the other.
Mistyca (Budapester Str 44, 10787 berlin, Mini-city en el Europa center 10789 berlin, Grunerstr 20, 10179 Berlin).
Yes, 3 different addresses, that’s because this shop has 3 different locations in Berlin, I went to 2 of them and they had similar stuff so i didn’t walked to the 3rd one, here you’ll find an impressive collection of decoration stuff, gothic faeries, skulls, small decorated cages and even a fountain of blood, if I had a gothic club I would decorate part of it here.
Hautnah Boutique (Uhlandstr 170, 10719 Berlin).
This shop is really spectacular, it has 3 different floors.
Enough shopping, its time to talk about Pubs: you’ll be able to chose from a huge selection of locals to expend the night, in deed I couldn’t visit them all, my recommendation is to go to some of the gothic shops above and look for flyers in witch you’ll find the next important events and parties.
Factory (Slaughterhouse Lehrter Str 35, 10557 Berlin)
Located inside an old slaughterhouse, this is a 15 years old party house that holds one big party the last Saturday of each month.
DarkSide Club (Nostitzstr. 30 Berlin-kreuzberg)
This is a fetish club in Berlin, a place to surrender to our darkest wishes, you’ll find erotism, performances and in some occasions special themed parties, its needed to follow a dress code to enter.
Boheme Noir (Holzmarktstr. 6 10179 Berlin)
This is an alternative club much more bohemian than the previous one but not lacking a piece of erotism, here you will find live music (Goth Rock, Surf Horror, Electro performance…).
Insomnia (Alt-Tempelhof 17-19)
In Insomnia you will find plenty of parties, you’ll have to inform yourself before going there because as far as I know not all of them are gothic themed, also this place is for younger people than the above ones.
KitKat Club (Bruckenstr. 1, 10179 Brlin).
This is a well known place in Berlin because of its long tradition of frequent parties of different themes, all of them are erotic parties in some way or another but much softer than the ones that you Would find in the DarkSide Club, also not all the parties are gothic themed, in deed most of them are cabaret style.
K17 Der Club (Pettenkofestr. 17ª).
This is another party club that I couldn’t visit, it organise parties quite frequently, I’m not sure if all of them are Goth or not.
When you go to this places you have to remember that Berlin style for a Saturday night is to enter one of this places and stay there for the full night, that means that you wont find almost anyone in the streets (as you would in Spain) and that in lot of situations this locals are quite separated and going from one to another could be an issue if you want to visit more than one in the same night.
In almost all of them you have to pay for the entrance fee and in most cases that’s not enough for being allowed inside, you also have to wear an adequate clothing according to the party that its taking place inside, specially if it’s a themed party.
There isn’t much more I can tell you about Goth Berlin but that i want to go back with a little bit more of time for exploring it in more detail, I’m absolutely sure that I missed lot of important Goth stuff so if you know some other places to visit, shops or locals, please let me know so we can update this article.
UPDATING: Keep in mind that locals open and close so in an attempt for keeping this Web site updated, please send me information about new locals recently opened or old ones that get closed.
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| Last Updated on Tuesday, 12 January 2010 08:10 |
It's impossible to get anything Gothic where I'm from... 
We have the haunted Sloss Furnaces, and a number of pubs like The Rogue Tavern and Bottletree. Come to Birmingham and rock out with your goth out!