The Zeitguide to the Berlinale Film Festival

By on January 29, 2012 in Berlin & Brandenburg

The Festival

Every February, in the midst of Berlin’s icy winter doldrums, the city’s most prestigious cultural event sends another kind of shiver through its streets. The star-studded Berlinale International Film Festival (www.berlinale.de, February 9-19) serves up a smorgasbord of  world premieres (10 this year) and lots of opportunities for celeb sightings. Established in 1951, shortly after Berlin was split into East and West, the festival is enmeshed in the city’s tumultuous history.

Today, industry and avant-garde types from all corners of the globe jet into Berlin for two weeks of frantic hobnobbing in and around Potsdamer Platz, and morning-to-night screenings throughout the city. (Here’s a list of the venues.) Their goal is to sell or buy the next sleeper hit at the European Film Market (closed to the general public)–or at private meetings on the sidelines.

To kick-start this wheeling and dealing, long-time Berlinale director and local celebrity, the bespeckeled Deiter Kosslick, selects films that offer daring political themes that don’t shy away from controversial issues.  He also appeals to the more glamorous aspects of the industry by selecting films starring Hollywood A-listers like George Clooney, Kate Winslet, and Brangelina.

Unlike Berlin’s French (Cannes) and Italian (Venice) counterparts, the Berlinale doesn’t shun the average movie-goer. Though there are plenty of events and screenings that are off limits to non-industry festivel-goers, the public is free to attend most Berlinale screenings–as long as they shell out between 8-12€ for a ticket.

Will you be there? The Zeitguide to the Berlinale Film Festival tells you everything you need to know about ticket-buying, star-gazing and eating between screenings.

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Berlin’s Top Five Tourist Traps & Top Five Guilty Pleasures

By on January 5, 2012 in Berlin & Brandenburg

Berlin is Europe’s third most-visited city. So it is inevitable that there are tourist traps lurking among the its dozens upon dozens of  sights. Our list of the city’s top five tourist traps helps you to avoid the biggest turkeys.  But don’t avoid all of the city’s tacky attractions. Our list of top five guilty pleasures points to sights that we love despite their heavy flirtation with tourist trap status.

Berlin’s Top Five Tourist Traps

Currywurst Museum

Sorry Wallpaper magazine. We know you named this museum one of Germany’s Fab 40. But we think that the information conveyed in the exhibits is as empty as the calories in the street food it chronicles. A visit to one of the city’s famed Currywurst slingers—Konnopke’s Imbiß or Curry36—should sufficiently quench any curiosity you have about this cult-like snack.

East Side Gallery

This 1.3-kilometer stretch of the original Berlin Wall adorned with paintings by more than 100 artists was an exciting symbol of the fall of the Wall. But the paintings, which had fallen victim to the weather and graffiti, were recently restored or re-painted.  In the process, the magic of this open-air gallery was somehow lost.

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Trier Christmas Market - Photo by Dimitry-B.

Germany’s Low-Key Christmas Markets

By on December 11, 2011 in Dresden & Greater Saxony, Germany, Rhineland Palatinate & Saarland

Germany’s Christkindlmarkt season is on. Glittering with thousands of lights and lined with tented food and gift stalls, the country’s open-air Christmas markets that open in late November and close the day after Christmas attract millions of revelers each year.

The biggest and most-visited markets are in Nuremberg (famed for its Lebkuchen, spiced cake, and Nürnberger Rostbratwürste, or small sausages) and Dresden (known for its Stollen, a bread-shaped cake). Munich, Berlin and Hamburg also host well-trodden markets. With their parades, ice-skating rinks and other festive bells and whistles, these big city markets are often packed tight. (Like U.S. shopping malls during the holiday season, they are best visited on a weekday—not the weekend or after work.)

Avoid the Christmas market sardine effect altogether by heading to one of the smaller, cozier markets highlighted after the jump.

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The Zeitguide to East German Architecture

By on October 23, 2011 in Baltic Sea Coast, Berlin & Brandenburg, Dresden & Greater Saxony

One of the most enduring reminders of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), a.k.a. East Germany, is its distinctive architecture. Composed of notoriously unattractive materials—from thick concrete to flimsy cardboard—these monuments to the Communist aesthetic were designed to impress (at least from a distance) and still do.

From Prestige Projects to Plattenbauten

In the 1950s, after the GDR was founded, a construction boom transformed the country’s cities into modern metropolises. Buildings and squares inspired by the Stalinist (neoclassical) architectural style emerged from World War II rubble, symbolizing the country’s ‘brand-newness’ and emphasizing its sharp contrast with ‘old’ West Germany.  During this time, the Communist Party propaganda machine used construction (and labor) as a metaphor for the emergence of a new country with a radically new economic and social system. East German films of the time, including the excellent Spur der Steine (Traces of Stone, available on Netflix), emphasized these themes. Likewise public artwork including murals and statues in the preferred Eastern bloc style—Socialist Realist—glorified the common worker with bold images of triumphant farmers, factory workers, and builders. It is easy to imagine that these images of re-building and starting afresh must have been inspiring to everyday East Germans still living among World War II destruction.

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Ein Bier, Bitte: A Guide to German Beer

By on September 11, 2011 in Germany

According to an old German saying, Das Bier ist gesund, zu jeder Stund (Beer is healthy at any hour).  Take an early morning stroll through a beer-loving city like Dresden, Munich, Bamberg or Berlin and you’ll catch sight of residents sipping beer instead of coffee to prepare themselves for the day. Indeed, a classic Bavarian breakfast consists of Weisswurst (veal sausage), a Bretzel (soft pretzel) and a foamy Hefeweizen beer. Germany accounts for the vast majority of European beer production, but the state of the industry in the country has German beer brewers very worried. Healthier habits, the appeal of more exotic drinks, and a shrinking population means that Germans are consuming less beer every year. Since reunification in 1990, beer sales have been showing a gradual downward trend. In 2010, German breweries sold only 98.3 million hectoliters of beer, down 1.7 percent from 2009. The same year, Germans only consumed 83.4 million hectolitres of beer, down 2.9 percent from the last year. (For more information, read this Deutsche Welle article.)

Pure History
Invented in Persia and refined in Egypt, the art and craft of beer brewing had already made its way to Europe by the 1st century, when the tribes that occupied present-day Germany drank beer, in contrast to their wine-drinking contemporaries south of the Alps. Brewing eventually became the domain of monks, who perfected beer-making in the monasteries that studded the German countryside. They used only the purest ingredients–water and yeast, as well as hops, barley or wheat–to produce the beverage that was consumed on a daily basis instead of water, which was unsafe to drink. (more…)

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