At the start of July, I had the opportunity to go to Europe for the first time to attend this season’s Bread & Butter Berlin tradeshow. It was an experience to look forward to as I had heard many good things about Europe and especially the city of Berlin. First and foremost, I think Berlin is set-up in a way that is much like many cultural hubs throughout the world. Let’s put it this way, if you can ride a bike throughout the city and witness non cookie-cutter architecture, it creates a promising environment. Interaction is abundant, inspiration can be derived from your surroundings and ideas can be disseminated quickly thanks to the closeness of the city.
Anybody who’s done even a bit of traveling, the benefit of a local is priceless. I don’t necessarily think that it’s a waste of time per se to get lost in a new place but having even a bit of guidance is helpful when you only have a finite amount of time. Anyways Petar from our sister-site Hypetrak had the honors of showing us around. In general, from conversations with him and from other locals, Berlin is unlike the rest of Germany (hence the title of this feature). While I had always had these pre-conceived notions of Germany, a land of astute approaches to execution, efficiency and general regimentation, Berlin is non-symbolic of these characteristics. Many seemed to describe Berlin as simply being “laid back”, a place where artists can ply their trade and at a more reasonable cost than the rest of Germany and Europe.
As I sort of hinted at in the initial paragraph, riding a bike through a city as a method of discovery has really taken much of the edge off of traveling and visiting new places. In the past, and in the foreseeable future, many of the new places I hit up were done with only a small amount of free time due to work commitments. But knowing you can really extend your reach and range of new surroundings on a good ol’ bicycle is something that makes you feel as though you’re taking in a good amount of the culture without missing out. A lot of images were shot while riding and it was a pretty cool challenge attempting to compose while riding. Luckily it was a bright day with ample lighting. There are quite a few shots of the Berlin Wall which is probably not as scary as I had previously thought. You could probably attempt to scale it with a little bit of athleticism and overall it’s not very thick.
That’s all I have to say about Berlin, I would love the opportunity to go back. Thanks to Michal and the Bread & Butter crew, the High Snobiety/SOTO/MADE crew, you guys have a great set-up… but your currywurst is over-rated haha.
-Eugene