And the award for Berlin’s booziest supper club goes to… Zuhause! From the cocktail we were handed when we first arrived – vodka, homemade ginger tea and mint – to the bottles of delicious wine that kept arriving at our table, this most informal of dinner parties was kept well lubricated. In between serving restaurant-grade dishes, paired with said free-flowing wines, Canadian expat Kristi and her Irish beau, professional chef Dave, were the hosts with the mosts – both in and out of the kitchen.

And man, do they know their way around a kitchen. My menu highlights weren’t the obvious choices, but clearly reflect my English roots. We love a good cheese, and the Bleu de Bresse that made up the sixth and final course was just that. And I was ecstatic not only to find two meat dishes, but that the first was the very same Asian take on a Scotch egg I’d been drooling over on the Zuhause website that afternoon – served with miso butter, spring onion and the ubiquitous white asparagus. The lemon curd that cut through the dessert of strawberry tart and fresh meringue was just like my Grandma used to make, a tasty trip down memory lane.

Zoë’s favourite dish, as ever, was the lamb – a tender cut of Irish fillet – while we both lapped up the shallot and chive tortelloni, and the opening fish course of octopus, fennel, grapefruit and melon. But the food was only half the fun, with the intimate setting of the host’s typische Berliner apartment, the hosts themselves and their solid gold “banter” making for a night to remember… brain cells permitting. Like Zuhause on Facebook to join the party!

Adam Fletcher is the author of a Picnic for Perverts a book neither about picnics or perverts. He is also the creator of Berlin Bingo, an amusing guide to Berlin made up of 64 city challenges.

Let me start by saying, Berlin’s ego is big enough already. It’s like the goofy, nerdy girl from the rom-com who let her hair down and took her glasses off some time back in 2005 and everyone collectively gasped, “Berlin – you’re hot!” Once we found out she was also cheap, that really sealed the deal – and naturally many of us flocked here to try and make lives for ourselves, which makes the idea of being a “real Berliner” a particularly challenging proposition in a city of such constant reinvention.

With all that in mind, I’ve still done my best to collate a list of 11 signs you’ve become a Berliner, which I hope most of us, despite our greatly varying backgrounds, can agree on.

1. You only have two moods, winter (sad) and summer (happy).

It can be challenging navigating the spectrum of all possible human emotions. Quite time consuming even, all that working out how you’re really feeling. True Berliners have simplified down all that emotional complexity to just two basic binary moods – happy and sad. Sad occurs during the horrible, long Berlin winter, in which we all struggle to remember, why did we move here? Happy occurs during summer, when everything is just damn peachy.

 2. You’ve viewed a flat with 60 other people.

I know someone who moved to Berlin seven years ago. He laughed, telling me how easy it was to get an apartment in Neukölln then. He said you went to a real estate agent, who gave you a big set of keys and a map before you took yourself round to look at the apartments. He even slept in some over-night, to check the neighbours and noise levels and all that good stuff. When I moved here with my girlfriend, some three years ago, it was already chaos. We never saw an apartment on our own, rarely with less than 40 other people. Everyone carried this big “please pick me” pack containing credit reports, references, employment contracts, begging letters, an essay they wrote when they were seven about a particularly enjoyable summer holiday – anything they thought might help. We didn’t even really look at the apartments – we fought our way up the stairs, barged through the door and with single-minded determination headed straight for the agent, laid the charm on thick, proclaimed our love for the place, told a joke or two, tried to be memorable, gave him the pack, shook hands, and left. Next Besichtigung. Hustle, hustle.

We viewed more than thirty apartments, said yes to twenty five, got offered one. Accepted it. I don’t even remember viewing it. I thought we were moving into another apartment, and when we arrived I was convinced they gave us the wrong one. Now, three years later, I don’t even want to imagine how bad flat hunting has got. I assume they just give you a piece of paper with an outline of the human body on it and you mark what organs you are willing to trade for a Zweiraumwohnung out in the ass end of nowhere, also known as the Ringbahn.

3. You’ve danced at a U-Bahn station.

I’ve never understood people having sex in toilets. I get that they are there and sort of semi-private. Or at least they have a door even if it doesn’t always reach to the floor. Yeah, I’m showing my age here, I know. But that’s a place in which people defecate and put up stickers promoting their startup. Presumably you have a bed. Go there.

So it’s with the same confusion that I disembark the U1 at Schlesi on my way home some weekend nights, only to be greeted by a popup club blocking all the exits. We have places for that already. With bars, designated dance floors, mood lighting, toilets (for sex)… Maybe I’ve just become too German over the years, but I now humbly suggest we just use for everything for the function it was intended. Oberbaumbrücke you’re no better! Shame on you! I liked you better when you were a bridge I could actually walk across at night, before you became Buskerhain.

4. You’ve whinged at the constant stream of foreigners infiltrating “your” city.

Remember when in Back to the Future Michael J. Fox had to be really careful about changing stuff in the past and causing a rip in the space time continuum? There was a lesson there about the fragile inter-connectivity of all things. Know that every time you stand outside your favourite cafe, angry at not being able to get a seat and bitterly complaining about all these new expats arriving and ruining your Kiez, just two years before, probably in exactly the same spot, someone else was standing there and saying exactly the same thing about you, then, two years before that, someone else about them and so on and so on. That repeats all the way back to the very first ape who climbed down from the trees and decided to walk upright, who was then copied by other apes, much to his annoyance, as everything was much better on the ground in the good old days before they came along. He probably then ran off to start spray painting “Schwabenape raus” everywhere.

5. You’ve gotten thoroughly, thoroughly lost.

I don’t mean geographically. That’s a given. I mean lost among the people and the possibilities on offer here. There’s a rather dazzling array of (mostly GDP negative) ways to spend your time. There’s not something here for everyone, there are 67 things. If it’s a Wednesday night and you decide you’re in the mood to perform Reiki on a midget, there’ll be a meetup for that.

Berlin nights begin at around 11pm, when you’ll innocently close your door to head out and see what’s happening, before bumping into some girls in a Hof, decide to join them to go meet this other guy, then that guy’s heard about this party from a dude he met juggling in the park. Which leads you somewhere, which leads somewhere… and before you know it its 4:30am on the following Tuesday and you’re in a club with no name, wearing someone else’s pants, dancing with people you just met, but love dearly, yet couldn’t name, and all-consumed with smug satisfaction at the joyous serendipity of life, or at least Berlin.

6. You’ve heard groups of people meeting in a mutual second language.

As far as I’m concerned the single most compelling reason to live in a city is friction, cultural friction. Cities force you out of your comfort zone. Small towns are great breeding grounds for ignorance and prejudices (hence the term “smalltown mindset”), because you’re not confronted every day by those people, on the metro, in parks, sharing your table in a full cafe. You’re not forced to see how ridiculously similar they are to you.

In a city like Berlin there’s a constant friction of different cultures meeting and trying, sometimes more successfully than others, to find ways to live together. It keeps you young and open minded. So some of my most endearing Berlin memories are eavesdropping on street conversations where a Spaniard, a Swede, a German and an Italian are all trying to have a conversation in beautifully broken, yet endlessly creative, English.

7. You hate the Zollamt.

As a general rule, if it contains the word “Amt”, you probably won’t enjoy going there (Burgeramt excluded). And the Zollamt is THE WORST. It’s a giant building of twisted, sadistic, reverse Santas who instead of giving out toys, steal them all and make you go all the way to Schöneberg to take a number, wait for an hour and beg, plead, cry and then dance like a Russian bear until you look so pathetic they take pity on you and finally let you have that new vinyl you ordered from the US, taxed at only double what you paid for it. Presumably, then, after a hard day’s work annoying the bejesus out of everyone they probably go home and do similarly evil things like leaving the toilet seat up or their dirty socks on the bathroom floor. I mean, I don’t know, I’m just speculating here. Nothing would surprise me.

8. You’ve redefined your expectations of customer service.

In general Berliners don’t have a reputation for being the warmest, softest, cute ickle bunnies. But where they really excel at failing is customer service. You may have heard it referred to as the Berliner Schnauze. In this city customer service is an abstract concept lost in the suggestion box of some Amt somewhere. It’s not that people are unfriendly as such, that implies that they make the effort to be hostile. Here it’s more a complete disinterest. Sometimes when being completely ignored by a heavily tattooed barkeeper at a hip basement bar I’ll actually pinch myself, just to check I have not become, inexplicably, invisible.

9. You’ve witnessed at least one daily act of crazy.

We all have an inner voice. It’s what keeps us company in the lonely hours. Mine likes to distract me by shouting things like “KILL THE DONKEY”, or “VOTE PEDRO” when I’m trying to concentrate on important tasks like eating chocolate or killing a donkey.

The inner voice is where our thoughts first manifest themselves. Think of the brain like a big production line, down which our earliest ideas travel. At the end is a filtering mechanism I imagine to be a big giant crusher ball on a chain, known as sanity. This swings back and forth crushing to a pulp all of our stupid thoughts before they can go anywhere dangerous. The best ideas get to dodge the crusher and come flying out of our mouths. But, should you walk the fine graffiti-strewn streets of Berlin you’ll see that there are a very high population of people here possessing no internal crusher. Anything can come out at any time. You’ll spot them easily; they’re the ones dressed as shabby neon pirates and wandering around muttering to themselves incoherently. Sometimes the muttering becomes loud SHOUTS of nonsense. Berlin has more than its fair share of crazies.

10. You can’t find a job.

I know several people who packed up old lives, moved here, never found work, were forced to pack up their lives again and move somewhere else. People, there are no jobs here! Don’t move here unless you already have a way to sustain yourself, even if you will need vastly less money than in other cities. €1k a month is enough to live reasonably well. So work online. Freelance. Do a startup. Take a year out and write that book. Do “projects”. THERE ARE NO JOBS HERE. At least not real jobs. Let’s just agree on that now, so no-one has the right to be annoyed later when they find that out. That’s part of the reason it’s cheap to live here in the first place. If it had industry, it’d be Munich. Do you want that? Do you?

11. You have regular Berlinergasms.

I don’t know the right word for it, so I’m coining “Berlinergasms”. I was on the tram recently and overheard an English guy turning to his two friends and saying loudly “I fucking love living in Berlin. I just love it. It’s just so fucking great”. What he possibly lacked in eloquence, he more than made up for in enthusiasm. He was having a Berlinergasm.

The reason we developed cities was the same reason we developed towns, was the same reason we developed outposts, was the same reason we developed something a little smaller than outposts but which I’m too lazy to research. Humans are best when we pool our resources. Everything gets more economical when it’s shared. Cities should make your life easier, not harder. Berlin does this very well (at least once you have an apartment). Firstly it’s not too densely populated and has incredible public transport that rarely closes. Because of its unique history as a divided city, I’d argue that Mitte has a far lower importance than most city centres (London, I’m looking at you in particular). So the major travel routes into the centre don’t clog up with people like they do in other cities. Berlin is more like six or seven large interconnected towns. You can bike everywhere with a minimal fear of death! What an arrogant luxury in a major European city.

So you’ll live here, and in the words of that Englishman “you’ll fucking love it.” You’ll be happier than you could ever be in whatever boring, little, stifling town you came from. Sometimes that happiness will feel hard to contain and will just sort of overflow into a wave of temporary euphoria of thanks; thanks that you escaped that town, thanks that here you’re free to reinvent yourself as you always wanted to be, just simple thanks that you get to live here. Berlinergasms.

So, how did you do? Can you think of any traits that all Berliners share? Feel free to share in the comments below. Tschüss!

[PS props to the following people for submitting pictures of Berlin Crazies: M R S P K R and Emma Johnson.]

Adam writes for several websites, if you want to know when follow him on Twitter.

Phew! We’ve finished German classes! Not that we know the language now – far from it. We’ve just finished our eight weeks of 4 x 3 hour lessons (plus homework) and decided to take a breather. While we are relieved (we have our little lives back!) we’re a bit worried that, as shut-ins, we won’t practice and will forget what little Deutsch we managed to learn. That’s why I came up with the idea of combining our love of music with our eagerness to improve our language skills: by listening to songs with German lyrics. Here’s our taster course.

David Bowie – Helden

Obvious choice, but potentially helpful. Knowing the English version forwards and backwards helps make connections, especially with this sync of the original video with the German language recording. Chock full of useful personal pronouns like “ich” and “du” and practical words like “Tag” (“day”), “Zeiten” (“times”), “Mauer” (“wall”; very useful here in Berlin). Although I’m not sure I’ll ever have to tell someone that I wish they could swim as dolphins can swim.

Peaches – Keine Melodien

This version of Berlin band Jeans Team’s “Keine Melodien” by the city’s resident electroshocker is like punk rock Sesame Street. You need to learn numbers right? Well, listen to this earworm just once and you’ll never forget “eins, zwei, drei, vier”. I’ve had a quick search and it doesn’t look like Peaches has done a German version of “now I know my ABCs next time won’t you sing along with me”. Schade.

Nena – 99 Luftballons

Apart from getting into double-digit numbers (“ninety nine” = “neunundneunzig”), Germany’s most famous pop song is of limited use. With good reason, no one really remembers badly-translated English lyrics like “everyone’s a Captain Kirk, with orders to identify”, so hearing the original won’t spark flashes of comprehension. Still, required listening when you’re preparing to board the Hi Flyer, the Die Welt-sponsored Heliumballon that hovers over Berlin.

Lady Gaga – Scheiße

“I don’t speak German but I can if you like”. This song from Gaga’s new album is shocking (not in the way she hopes), but it’s a good guide to the mangled AngloDeutsch that Berlin’s international community speaks. Plus its scatological celebration of freedom is like the Disney version of the crazy shit (LITERALLY) that goes down in the city’s underground dark rooms: “I’ll take you out tonight / Do whatever you like / Scheiße-scheiße be mine, Scheiße be mine”. And, seeing as our German teacher didn’t agree that the first thing you need to learn in a foreign language is the swear words, this’ll have to do for now.

Ellen Allien – Sehnsucht

We grown-up emos need words like “longing”, and it doesn’t take Google Translate to tell you that’s what this song is about.

Peter Gabriel – Schock den Affen

The phrase “(don’t) shock the monkey” could only ever be of use in a zoo, and even then it pretty much goes without saying. Regardless, there’s something infectious about Gabriel’s love of words, English or otherwise, that we find inspiring. This was a labour of love, as Gabriel originally struggled to find a label willing to release an album’s worth of German versions of his songs. And like one of the few YouTube comments not whining about his accent says, “Peter is a genius in any language.”

Moving to Berlin with only the essentials (our cats and my shoes!) meant there was unfortunately no room for really useful things like skull candles, antler shot glasses and dead bovine cushions. With plans to move into one of Berlin’s MANY unfurnished apartments next time around, all my twisted interior design fantasies can finally come true! Sadly for James my tastes lean towards the morbid and macabre but what’s new there?

Moving to Berlin with only the essentials (our cats and my shoes!) meant there was unfortunately no room for really useful things like skull candles, antler shot glasses and dead bovine cushions. With plans to move into one of Berlin’s MANY unfurnished apartments next time around, all my twisted interior design fantasies can finally come true! Sadly for James my tastes lean towards the morbid and macabre but what’s new there?

Composer FM Einheit, an ex-member of the legendary Berlin industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, has launched an artistic experiment that will open the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. WIR SIND HIER draws on user participation, inviting anyone to have their say and submit content via the project’s website, and become an active part of the live multimedia performance.

We’re particularly interested in the Sounds of Destruction action, which aims to explore the sounds of censorship and the destruction of culture. Users can upload recordings of their ideas of cultural destruction to SoundCloud, and FM Einheit will integrate these into the live performance of WIR SIND HIER. So far, so noisy

Other interesting-sounding strands of the project include a massive digital protest choir, Occupy History – in which users “remix” history using Vine – and an ambitious attempt to create a crowdsourced sculpture. To take part in this brilliant Berlin-based project, check out the WIR SIND HIER website now.

As well as concealing countless drug dealers, Hasenheide Park contains many other hidden gems, such as… whatever this is. We suppose that, when temperatures reach positive Celsius, this turns into a fountain, but beyond that, your guess is as good as ours. What is clear though is that, during winter, it takes on an otherworldly aspect which makes for wonderful photos. Enjoy.

Trixie Whitley by Guy Kokken

[EDIT: this competition is now closed. Click here to see if we’re running any open competitions]

Trixie Whitley wants to be known as more than just the daughter of Chris Whitley. The good news for her is that I hadn’t even heard of her singer-songwriter dad, until I happened across her music on Spotify. The former child prodigy obviously inherited her father’s passion and talent for music, teaching herself guitar, piano and drums at a young age, and also dabbling in DJing and ballet. Like her father before her, she’s settled into a bluesy place, playing beautifully orchestrated blue-eyed soul with raw, emotional intensity. We’re looking forward to hearing *that voice* live, and some lucky readers will be able to join us. We have 2 x 2 tickets to giveaway – scroll down to find out how to win a pair.

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS TO TRIXIE WHITLEY AT POSTBAHNHOF ON 25TH FEBRUARY:

Leave a comment below, with your full (real) name and tell us – if you could chose a famous person as your dad, who would you pick?

You have until 6pm on Saturday 23rd February to enter. Good luck!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. We will keep a record of each comment in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner.
3. We will announced the winners via our Facebook page on Sunday 24th February.

Trixie Whitley by Guy Kokken

[EDIT: this competition is now closed. Click here to see if we’re running any open competitions]

Trixie Whitley wants to be known as more than just the daughter of Chris Whitley. The good news for her is that I hadn’t even heard of her singer-songwriter dad, until I happened across her music on Spotify. The former child prodigy obviously inherited her father’s passion and talent for music, teaching herself guitar, piano and drums at a young age, and also dabbling in DJing and ballet. Like her father before her, she’s settled into a bluesy place, playing beautifully orchestrated blue-eyed soul with raw, emotional intensity. We’re looking forward to hearing *that voice* live, and some lucky readers will be able to join us. We have 2 x 2 tickets to giveaway – scroll down to find out how to win a pair.

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS TO TRIXIE WHITLEY AT POSTBAHNHOF ON 25TH FEBRUARY:

Leave a comment below, with your full (real) name and tell us – if you could chose a famous person as your dad, who would you pick?

You have until 6pm on Saturday 23rd February to enter. Good luck!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. We will keep a record of each comment in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner.
3. We will announced the winners via our Facebook page on Sunday 24th February.

Trixie Whitley by Guy Kokken

Trixie Whitley wants to be known as more than just the daughter of Chris Whitley. The good news for her is that I hadn’t even heard of her singer-songwriter dad, until I happened across her music on Spotify. The former child prodigy obviously inherited her father’s passion and talent for music, teaching herself guitar, piano and drums at a young age, and also dabbling in DJing and ballet. Like her father before her, she’s settled into a bluesy place, playing beautifully orchestrated blue-eyed soul with raw, emotional intensity. We’re looking forward to hearing *that voice* live, and some lucky readers will be able to join us. We have 2 x 2 tickets to giveaway – scroll down to find out how to win a pair.

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS TO TRIXIE WHITLEY AT POSTBAHNHOF:

Leave a comment below, with your full (real) name and tell us – if you could chose a famous person as your dad, who would you pick?

You have until 6pm on Saturday 23rd February to enter. Good luck!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. We will keep a record of each comment in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner.
3. We will announced the winners via our Facebook page on Sunday 24th February.

[EDIT: this competition is now closed. Click here to see if we’re running any open competitions] 

Oo ‘ello. Now we’ve 2 pairs of tickets to give away for the Poliça gig at Postbahnhof next Wednesday! You need to catch the Minnesota indielectro troupe before they become known as more than those-two-guys-from-Gayngs-and-their-mates and singer Channy Leaneagh’s pretty little face is plastered all over magazine covers worldwide. Here’s your chance to win 2 tickets to their Berlin gig on Wednesday 14th November, and find out why Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon calls them ”the best band I’ve ever heard.” Good luck!

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS TO POLIÇA AT POSTBAHNHOF:

– Follow @uberlinblog on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/uberlinblog)
(If you are already following no need to unfollow and refollow)

– Tweet the message you see highlighted below once!
(There is no advantage to tweeting more than once)

Note: Twitter has changed its policy to no longer allow disabling of link shortening – so if you need to use a different link to get to this page that’s fine. As long as people end up on this page – that’s all that matters. The rest of the tweet must be identical to the one below.

Here is the tweet:

Want to win 2 tickets to see @thisispolica in #Berlin? Find out how to enter here: http://bitly.com/Z6Bw6M Please RT #uberwin

You have until 6pm on Sunday 11th November to enter. Get tweeting!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. You must be following @uberlinblog (http://www.twitter.com/uberlinblog) on Twitter.
3. You must send out the above tweet EXACTLY as it appears. A failure to do so will disqualify you.
4. We will announced the winners via Twitter on Monday 12th November.
5. If users make lots of Twitter accounts in order to enter a contest more than once, they’re liable to get all of their accounts suspended. Anyone found using multiple Twitter accounts to enter will be ineligible.

We will keep a record of each tweet in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner. Good luck!

Stoked. We’re going to see How to Dress Well at Bi Nuu on Monday 29th October, AND we have 2 pairs of tickets to give away. That’s right, you and your boo could be grindin’ to the whitest man in R&B, while saving all your money for… I don’t know, condoms? Fun fact: Tom Krell, the man behind these ephemeral sounds, is a philosophy student who apparently studies and hangs out in Berlin from time to time. Aaaaaanyway, find out below how to win two tickets to the show, but first, peep this:

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS TO HOW TO DRESS WELL AT BI NUU:

– Follow @uberlinblog on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/uberlinblog)
(If you are already following no need to unfollow and refollow)

– Tweet the message you see highlighted below once!
(There is no advantage to tweeting more than once)

Note: Twitter has changed its policy to no longer allow disabling of link shortening – so if you need to use a different link to get to this page that’s fine. As long as people end up on this page – that’s all that matters. The rest of the tweet must be identical to the one below.

Here is the tweet:

Want to win 2 tickets to see How to Dress Well in #Berlin? Find out how to enter here: http://bit.ly/VPVtjf Please RT #uberwin

You have until 6pm on Friday 26th October to enter. Get tweeting!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. You must be following @uberlinblog (http://www.twitter.com/uberlinblog) on Twitter.
3. You must send out the above tweet EXACTLY as it appears. A failure to do so will disqualify you.
4. We will announced the winners via Twitter on Saturday 27th October.
5. If users make lots of Twitter accounts in order to enter a contest more than once, they’re liable to get all of their accounts suspended. Anyone found using multiple Twitter accounts to enter will be ineligible.

We will keep a record of each tweet in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner. Good luck!

[EDIT: this competition is now closed. Click here to see if we’re running any open competitions] 

“IS TROPICAL – 17.11.2011 #6″ by rockzoom_de under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Why did I think Is Tropical were French? Maybe because they are signed to über-hip Parisian label Kitsuné, and their amazing video for “The Greeks” features French kids performing acts of cartoon ultraviolence on each other. Anyway, they’re actually from London – home of whatever we’re calling the second wave of new rave, the indie-electro bands that have followed Klaxons into the mainstream. But to add to the geographical confusion, Is Tropical have produced one of our favourite songs about the city we love, featured below. If you’d like to see the band’s storming live set, we’re giving away two pairs of tickets – scroll down for deets!

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS FOR IS TROPICAL AT COMET CLUB ON 31ST MAY:

Want to see Is Tropical play “Berlin” IN BERLIN??? Just answer this question in the comments below:

What is your favourite song about Berlin?

You have until 6pm on Thursday 30th May. Good luck!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON!
3. We will keep a record of each comment in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner.
4. Remember to include your full (real) name or we won’t be able to put you on the guestlist!
5. We will announced the winners via our Facebook page on Friday 31st May.

WHAT’S UP M’NERDS?

We’re pretty excited that Berlin is playing host to this year’s edition of Campus Party and that, as partners of the week-long geek fest, we have 20 tickets to give away. Enter our raffle and you could be among the 10,000 talented minds descending on the former Tempelhof airport this August for six days of non-stop ideas exchange.

The star of Campus Party 2012 is set to be keynote speaker Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and with 600 hours of talks and workshops there’s going to plenty of other awesome to choose from. For more about the party, check out the blurb and video below, and to be in with a chance to win tickets, click here. You have until July 1st to enter.

Good luck – maybe we’ll see you there!

Campus Party is the largest global technology festival where innovation, creativity, science and digital entertainment come together 24 hours a day for an entire week. We strive to create the largest geek community on earth, and encourage these campuseros to use their talent and expertise build a better world through technology.

Since 1997, Campus Party has brought together the best young technical talent across Europe and Latin America to innovate, learn and engage with some of the biggest names in technology and science.

Join us August 21 to August 26 at Berlin’s historic Tempelhof Airport to re-type Europe’s source code and immerse yourself in a unique environment where workshops, hackathons, competitions and talks take place simultaneously.

By Mike T. West.

Quicksand, one of the most influential post-hardcore bands of all time, re-enters Germany this month for some stinking festival appearances. But the real good news is that they are back in Berlin next week special like and we have a pair of tickets to give away to a lucky überliner! Find out how after these messages #tease

Formed in 1990 as a New Yoik underground supergroup and featuring one of the founding fathers of hardcore (and former Berliner) Walter Schreifels, Quicksand took the first decade of this century off to form great bands (Rival Schools) and join even greater ones (Deftones).

Here is the band covering (and nailing) a song originally recorded by some band called The Smiths:

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS FOR QUICKSAND AT SO36 ON TUESDAY 10TH JUNE:

Quicksand are playing the historic SO36 on Oranienstrasse next Tuesday, and the wonderful people at Trinity Music are giving a pair of tickets to a couple of lucky humans! Just leave us a comment below with the answer to this easy question:

What is your favourite punk cover of a not-so-punk-song? And why?

You have until 6pm on Saturday 7th June to enter. ROCK ON m/

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON!
3. Our favourite track win. Simple as.
4. Remember to include your full (real) name and email address, so we can contact you if you win.
5. We will announced the winners via our Facebook page on Sunday 8th June.

By Mike T. West.

Quicksand, one of the most influential post-hardcore bands of all time, re-enters Germany this month for some stinking festival appearances. But the real good news is that they are back in Berlin next week special like and we have a pair of tickets to give away to a lucky überliner! Find out how after these messages #tease

Formed in 1990 as a New Yoik underground supergroup and featuring one of the founding fathers of hardcore (and former Berliner) Walter Schreifels, Quicksand took the first decade of this century off to form great bands (Rival Schools) and join even greater ones (Deftones).

Here is the band covering (and nailing) a song originally recorded by some band called The Smiths:

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS FOR QUICKSAND AT SO36 ON TUESDAY 10TH JUNE:

Quicksand are playing the historic SO36 on Oranienstrasse next Tuesday, and the wonderful people at Trinity Music are giving a pair of tickets to a couple of lucky humans! Just leave us a comment below with the answer to this easy question:

What is your favourite punk cover of a not-so-punk-song? And why?

You have until 6pm on Saturday 7th June to enter. ROCK ON m/

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON!
3. Our favourite track win. Simple as.
4. Remember to include your full (real) name and email address, so we can contact you if you win.
5. We will announced the winners via our Facebook page on Sunday 8th June.

[EDIT: This competition is now closed. Congratulations to imaginary_lines, who suggested we travel to Dubrovnik, Croatia, and won themselves a €75 voucher to redeem against their next Wimdu booking. You can browse all of the competition entries on our Pinterest page.]

Wimdu, a website for booking private accommodation all over the world, have given us a voucher worth €75 to redeem against your next booking with them. All you have to do  is tell us where to go!

With Wimdu, you can find the perfect place to stay in one of over 50,000 properties worldwide, or you can earn money by renting out your own property. This makes it a great place to find holiday apartments in Berlin, or in other destinations, if – like us – you’re trying to get out of the city!

One of our New Year’s resolutions was to “get out of Berlin more”. We kicked off the year with a trip to Stockholm and Copenhagen, but we’re looking for ideas about where to visit next. To be in with a chance to win, just tell us where to go!

Some additional requirements to make your job a little harder:

• We love cities, but only if they offer something special. Because we live in what we think is the best city in Europe, if not the world, we are no longer impressed by expensive, boring, capital cities. Required: awesomeness!
• We like beaches, but we get bored easily. Beautiful white sands are great, but our perfect destination would offer more to do than just lying on a beach towel. And, unlike other Brits abroad, we don’t count drinking as an activity!
• We don’t want to revisit anywhere we’ve been to recently. Check out the new Travel section of our blog to find out where we’ve been, and suggest somewhere else, bitte!

Enter the competition by leaving a comment below, with your suggestion of where we should visit next, and your reasons why. The deadline for the competition is March 31st 2012, when we’ll pick our favourite entry and inform the winner.

Good luck!

[EDIT: this competition is now closed. Click here to see if we’re running any open competitions]

For us, this year’s coffee discovery was Silo, a beautiful Friedrichshain cafe run by Aussie expats with exceptional taste in the black stuff. We’re pleased to announce that Silo are now sharing their obsession with all things caffeinated beyond the Berlin borders with a curated coffee subscription service – AND that they’ve given us three months’ worth of coffee to giveaway! Introducing your prize:

The Silo Curated Coffee Subscription is a guided tour through what we, the owners and operators of Silo, a specialty coffee shop in Berlin, think is the best coffee available.

We will be sending out the best coffees that we can get our hands on. Subscribers can expect to receive coffee from renowned German roasters such as The Barn, Bonanza and Five Elephant on a regular basis, as well as some fantastic roasters from overseas including Drop Coffee, Coffee Collective, and Workshop. We are always looking for the finest coffees of the season and we will be sending out the best we can find. When we are able to, we will reach further afield and bring some coffees back from other renowned coffee roasting countries like Australia and the US.

At the start of every month we select and send one 250g (or 1/2lb) bag of freshly roasted coffee to you. We select one filter and one espresso every month, and you can subscribe to either. If required, we can also grind your coffee to suit your equipment. We select your coffee with the aim of sending out a diverse and interesting range of coffee from a wide range of origins, roasters and profiles.

We have a three month coffee subscription to give away, worth €35! To find out how to win, scroll down…

HOW TO WIN A THREE MONTH SILO CURATED COFFEE SUBSCRIPTION.

Just answer this question in the comments below:

Silo’s first coffee selections were Gichithaini AA (blackcurrant, raspberry with wonderful mouthfeel) and La Divina Providencia (muted maraschino cherry balanced acidity with a syrupy body of fudge/caramel).

If you had to produce a coffee inspired by Berlin, what would it be called and what would it taste like?

You have until 6pm on Friday 27th December. Good luck!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be at least 18 years old to enter.
2. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON!
3. Our favourite comment wins. It’s that simple.
4. We will announced the winners via our Facebook page on Saturday 28th December.

Heads up Bodi Bill fans: we have a signed, limited edition copy of their new “MERK:WHAT” book to give away. Scroll down to see how you can get an intimate look at the guys behind beautiful Berlin music like this:

The “MERK:WHAT” project existed in the minds of Bodi Bill for a long time. Berlin photographer and good friend Rosa Merk joined the band on tour last year, and took a series of intimate pictures of them both on- and backstage. She was there to capture the joy, the tears, the ecstasy… and the rain! The result is a 96-page, limited edition, hot pink book – and we have a signed copy to give away! If your German’s up to it, you can read about the book and the glamorous Berlin launch party on the Disaronno blog.

Reading “MERK:WHAT” is so much like actually being there, that we thought you’d need some extra goodies while you’re fantasising that you’re on tour with the band. We’re throwing in a luxurious Traveler’s Notebook to record your memories (“Fabian just winked at me – swoon”), and a suitably sophisticated DVD to watch on the tour bus – (in your head) the guys *will* be impressed!

The complete GRAND PRIZE:

1 x Bodi Bill “MERK:WHAT” book, signed by all three band members and the photographer. Limited edition (32/500).

1 x Midori Traveler’s Notebook, passport size, in handcut leather complete with set of inserts (ruled, grid and plain paper; zipper and cardfile; alphabet stencils; and a limited edition Traveler’s Passport). Worth over €60 in total.

1 x  Billie Ray Martin DVD, “Five Takes (A Song About Andy)” in 8 panel deluxe silver metallic packaging.

Plus Billie Ray Martin DVDs for 2 lucky runners-up

To be in with a chance of winning these sweet prizes, just leave us a comment below. You have until the end of Sunday 9th September, when we’ll pick our winner and two runners-up. Good luck!

Heads up Bodi Bill fans: we have a signed, limited edition copy of their new “MERK:WHAT” book to give away. Scroll down to see how you can get an intimate look at the guys behind beautiful Berlin music like this:

The “MERK:WHAT” project existed in the minds of Bodi Bill for a long time. Berlin photographer and good friend Rosa Merk joined the band on tour last year, and took a series of intimate pictures of them both on- and backstage. She was there to capture the joy, the tears, the ecstasy… and the rain! The result is a 96-page, limited edition, hot pink book – and we have a signed copy to give away! If your German’s up to it, you can read about the book and the glamorous Berlin launch party on the Disaronno blog.

Reading “MERK:WHAT” is so much like actually being there, that we thought you’d need some extra goodies while you’re fantasising that you’re on tour with the band. We’re throwing in a luxurious Traveler’s Notebook to record your memories (“Fabian just winked at me – swoon”), and a suitably sophisticated DVD to watch on the tour bus – (in your head) the guys *will* be impressed!

The complete GRAND PRIZE:

1 x Bodi Bill “MERK:WHAT” book, signed by all three band members and the photographer. Limited edition (32/500).

1 x Midori Traveler’s Notebook, passport size, in handcut leather complete with set of inserts (ruled, grid and plain paper; zipper and cardfile; alphabet stencils; and a limited edition Traveler’s Passport). Worth over €60 in total.

1 x  Billie Ray Martin DVD, “Five Takes (A Song About Andy)” in 8 panel deluxe silver metallic packaging.

Plus Billie Ray Martin DVDs for 2 lucky runners-up

To be in with a chance of winning these sweet prizes, just leave us a comment below. You have until the end of Sunday 9th September, when we’ll pick our winner and two runners-up. Good luck!

Heads up Bodi Bill fans: we have a signed, limited edition copy of their new “MERK:WHAT” book to give away. Scroll down to see how you can get an intimate look at the guys behind beautiful Berlin music like this:

The “MERK:WHAT” project existed in the minds of Bodi Bill for a long time. Berlin photographer and good friend Rosa Merk joined the band on tour last year, and took a series of intimate pictures of them both on- and backstage. She was there to capture the joy, the tears, the ecstasy… and the rain! The result is a 96-page, limited edition, hot pink book – and we have a signed copy to give away! If your German’s up to it, you can read about the book and the glamorous Berlin launch party on the Disaronno blog.

Reading “MERK:WHAT” is so much like actually being there, that we thought you’d need some extra goodies while you’re fantasising that you’re on tour with the band. We’re throwing in a luxurious Traveler’s Notebook to record your memories (“Fabian just winked at me – swoon”), and a suitably sophisticated DVD to watch on the tour bus – (in your head) the guys *will* be impressed!

The complete GRAND PRIZE:

1 x Bodi Bill “MERK:WHAT” book, signed by all three band members and the photographer. Limited edition (32/500).

1 x Midori Traveler’s Notebook, passport size, in handcut leather complete with set of inserts (ruled, grid and plain paper; zipper and cardfile; alphabet stencils; and a limited edition Traveler’s Passport). Worth over €60 in total.

1 x  Billie Ray Martin DVD, “Five Takes (A Song About Andy)” in 8 panel deluxe silver metallic packaging.

Plus Billie Ray Martin DVDs for 2 lucky runners-up

To be in with a chance of winning these sweet prizes, just leave us a comment below. You have until the end of Sunday 9th September, when we’ll pick our winner and two runners-up. Good luck!

[EDIT: this competition is now closed. Click here to see if we’re running any open competitions]

Walk Idiot, Walk! We’re stoked to be finally seeing The Hives live, at this year’s Greenville Music Festival. They’re no spring chickens, but then neither are the Rolling Stones – and we reckon singer Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist can give Mike a run for his money. IT’S A JAGGER-OFF! It’s a Jagger-off.

Want to see The Hives, or other awesome live acts like Turbowolf and Maximo Park in the countryside just outside Berlin? Or do you want to catch exclusive sets from Snoop Dogg AKA Snoop Lion, Method Man and Redman, Hurts, Stromae and EDM megalith Avicii? Or maybe you want to see if Babyshambles will actually show up?

Well we have 2 tickets to Greenville Music Festival 2014 to give away! You’ll get three day’s access to “Germany’s dopest festival”, including parking. All you have to do is check out the epic line-up below, and tell us which artist you’re most looking to seeing. Easy!

HOW TO WIN 2 X TICKETS FOR GREENVILLE MUSIC FESTIVAL:

Just leave us a comment below with the answer to this easy question:

Which artist are you most looking forward to seeing at this year’s Greenville?

You have until 6pm on Monday 30th June to enter. GOOD LUCK!

The Boring Bit (yawn, RULES):

1. You must be 18 years or older to enter.
2. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON!
3. We will keep a record of each comment in a database and then a random number generator picks the winner.
4. Note: the tickets include parking but *not* camping. You’ll have to drive to the festival like an adult! (ticket details)
5. Remember to include your full (real) name and email address, so we can contact you if you win.
6. We will notify the winner via email on Tuesday 1st July.

Lauren Oyler responds to an Exberliner rant about the lack of German fluency among Berlin’s expat community.

I moved to Berlin for myriad reasons, all of which are, seven months later, still difficult to articulate. I had spent two weeks here in May 2011, and while I was certainly technically aware that the city is the capital of Germany, the things I associated it with were tangentially German at best. Instead of sausage and Spätzle, I remembered picnics at an abandoned airport; the first bicycle that didn’t give me flashbacks to the traumatic handlebar accident at age eight; a laid back, noncompetitive atmosphere in which you can live happily on little income and people are generally accepting of whatever weird artsy soul-searching you’re there to do. Obviously not everyone in Berlin does these things, but not everyone in New York wants to be an actor, either. Both are massive cities with many different realities.

I came back in August of last year, and before I did, countless sources — and the existence of several English-language newspapers, blogs and other publications — told me my lack of German skills would be no big deal. This is true and, apparently, infuriating, particularly so for the people who landed here before me.

Julie Colthorpe, who wrote “Sorry, no German!” in this month’s Exberliner, came to Berlin 12 years ago and longs for the days when expats would get kicked out of supermarkets for confusing their datives and accusatives. Calling out an unnamed but obvious brunch-serving Australian restaurant in Neukölln, she argues that all-English businesses and expats with no German skills have no place in the city. Although her complaints weren’t directed towards me — I dutifully brave the umlaut to save myself from accidentally ordering anything pickled — I feel attacked nevertheless. I’m American, I live in Neukölln, and German fluency is almost as fathomable to me as paying more than 1.30€ for a beer. I’ve been to Melbourne Canteen and breathed a sigh of relief when I realized I didn’t have to furrow my eyebrows in despair at the thought of trying to convey a dropped fork.

By contrast, Colthorpe’s clearly proud of her German, so it’s likely she’s unaware that getting a blunt “WIE, BITTE?” in response to a valiant attempt at communication is a cultural tradition alive and well here in the capital city. Add to this the sense that your best accent only comes out when you’re drunk or transforming into your parodic German alter ego, Frau Schadenfreude, and you understand why expats everywhere struggle to learn the languages of the countries they live in. It’s scary and hard. Here, you can avoid that if you want to, but people — usually non-native German speakers — will scold you for it.

Should English speakers take the bait, be ashamed? As Colthorpe says, a German-only restaurant would fail in Melbourne (or New York, or Vancouver)… but not because English speakers are too stupid to grapple with café-level German — or even because they would be unwilling to do so in a reasonable circumstance. But knowing German in Australia will do you about as much good as a first-edition copy of Jane Eyre — nice if you’re into that kind of thing, but otherwise kind of useless. It’s a paradox, sure, that being constantly abused for speaking little to no German can make a potential Berliner less willing to stick around and learn it, but the harsh economic reality is this: it’s just not necessary.

by Josh Bauman

English, on the other hand, kind of is. A series of historical events — uncontrolled by the well-meaning people at Melbourne Canteen, überlin and any given Sameheads party — has made English the lingua franca among the people in Berlin who are here because it’s Berlin, not because it’s Germany. Colthorpe says she spent her New Year’s Eve with a group of people from Italy, France, Spain, Russia, America, and Germany, and instead of appreciating the cosmopolitanism, cooperation and progress that has allowed them to share any common language, she cries “HIPSTER BULLSHIT!” in the face of more than a half-century of diplomacy. If only we could have shown her piece to someone living in 1941. The irony that it’s published in an English-language magazine that caters to the exact audience she risks alienating is apparently completely lost on her; even funnier is that Exberliner suggested going to the Melbourne Canteen in its January 2013 issue (“Where to go in Neukölln,” pg. 50).

The exclusively-English-speaking expat population may indeed be “missing out” on one kind of Berlin experience, but anyone who can read a Wikipedia entry and memorize some definite articles is not some kind of Culture Crusader making the world a better place, one well-pronounced “CH”-sound at a time. The idea that culture consists of an immutable combination of foods, sayings, and historical anecdotes is a perfect definition for those who want to assimilate for the chance to say they have. Expat culture is a part of Berlin’s culture. You can’t praise the city’s international draw in one breath and condemn expatriates as tourist scum the next. If you’re disturbed by the Melbourne Canteen, you’ll have to get over it.

I don’t think learning German is pointless, and as I improve, however slowly, I feel better about whatever it is I’m doing here. More than once I’ve been embarrassed when an American or British friend forgoes even the barest minimum of effort, skipping the regretful-but-polite, “Sprechen Sie Englisch, bitte?” in favor of an unfathomably lazy, “Can I get a Berliner?” That sucks. It’s rude to go into a German restaurant, bar, café or terrifying governmental bureau and speak English to the people there because, despite the way Colthorpe writes about it, the vast majority of cafes, bars, restaurants, and performance/coworking/women’s-only gym spaces in Berlin function fully in Deutsch.

No one’s forcing anyone to go to The Bird, and we all know too well how interchangeable the bars in Neukölln are; if you find one unpleasantly Anglophonic, go to the one next door. Enclaves of English — and French, and German and etc. — exist in any semi-significant city; that’s called globalisation. It’s not going away, and a misguided rant about one of its fairly harmless symptoms accomplishes nothing but animosity. Explicitly English businesses hurt no one, and Colthorpe’s piece is as unthinking, boring, and selfish as an American who lives in Germany for six months without bothering to learn how to order a multi-grain roll. You’d think the constipation would eventually drive her to Google Translate, but that’s her Kreuz to Berg.

For more from Lauren, check out her website laurenoyler.com or follow her on Twitter: @laurenoyler. For tips on learning German, read “Ask überlin – Do I need to learn German?”