Berlin’s mid-year months are boom time for the city’s cultural and social life as locals and travellers alike soak up the high temperatures and late sunsets. The summer season did not disappoint this year, writes Liam Heitmann-Ryce-LeMercier.
Perhaps less flamboyantly capitalist – and with a lot more available green space – it is a fair comparison to place Berlin and New York City under the same banner of cities that never sleep.
Of course, speaking for Berlin, the reason why locals never sleep here is due to the constant availability of hard techno and indoor smoking across the metropolis. The well-trodden guidance that you can go out on Thursday night and roll home on a Sunday morning is about as true today as it has always been in Berlin’s post-Wall cultural life.
That said, one of the key learnings since my relocation to the German capital with my fiancé last November is that you really can live in Berlin without going out every two weeks.
Yes, that side of the city is always available but there is so much more to do here outside of bars and clubs. The summer months show Berlin at its very best with endless options for lakes, parks and surrounding forestland to explore when you want to escape the graffiti and assorted crazies on the U-bahn.
As we roll toward the shorter evenings and autumn leaves of early September, the summer here is drawing to a close. In its last shining moments in the sun, here’s a round of the best mid-year activities (that you can enjoy without a jockstrap and a harness…).
Lake days
One of the enduring – albeit quite accurate – stereotypes about Germans is their love of outdoorsy pursuits, such as hiking and freshwater swimming. While not on the level of Julie Andrews swinging her arms through the Alps, Sound of Music-style, the image you’re likely picturing is close enough to the state of play over here.
Berliners, in particular, love their lakes. It definitely helps there are plenty to choose from, many of them accessible by train or just a short drive away (around one hour, so short for Aussie commuters, definitely). For those fresh to German lake experience, it’s worth being aware of a widespread practice here known as FKK (Freikörperkultur, or ‘free body culture’). In short, public nudity.
The idea behind this is to embrace body types of all shapes, age and size, while strengthening the link between people and nature. This is especially refreshing in a large city, and – I’m afraid to say – Berlin can get pretty dirty and grimy, so a cleansing dip in glassy lake water can do a world of good.
There are plenty of options to choose from, so here are the top three of the summer: Teufelsee, Kaulsdorfer Seen and Krumme Lanke.
The first two listed are FKK locations, so be prepared for plenty of public nudity if you’re a little bit uncomfortable with this kind of thing. There is no demand for you to be nude as well, however, so it’s perfectly acceptable to keep your swimmers on.
Teufelsee is the most well-known option among Berlin’s queer community and, of the three, the least impressive. Yes, the walk there through the Grunewald forest is really gorgeous, but the grass banks to set up camp are quite limited – and the water itself isn’t especially clean.
As is the way with many events and destinations upheld by mainstream gay culture, this most popular queer lake is one of the most underwhelming.
The winner of the summer has been Krumme Lanke. Beautiful water, lots of space to lay down your beach towel, and a good mix of young people and families due to its non-FKK status. The nude lakes tend to attract somewhat rowdy crowds, most of them tourists eager to try out the novelty of public nakedness, so these are best avoided when you want to escape into a book or dissolve a hangover.
Berlin’s LGBTQ+ community triumphs
Berlin’s Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade is one of the largest Pride marches in Europe and surely one of the world’s most famous public queer events. This year saw the city’s LGBTQ+ community come under attack when a 21-year-old man deliberately drove a van into a crowd, killing one and leaving 29 injured. The attack has left a scar on the Berlin queer community, and the LGBTQ+ community at large, particularly given the brazenness of the attack at one of the biggest Pride events in the global queer calendar.
A period of public mourning followed, including a candlelit vigil at the Brandenburg Gate, as the city came to terms with what had happened. It was not long, however, until the LGBTQ+ community resurfaced in a powerful show of solidarity and resilience.
Following the CSD attacks on Saturday 25 July, the next public event for the city’s queer community rolled around just two weeks later, at the Queeres Parkfest on August 8. A huge open-air event in the enormous, leafy expanse of Volkspark Friedrichshain, a short journey east of Alexanderplatz, Parkfest takes place around a large stage and Freiluftkino (open-air cinema). Offering plenty of beer, wurst and live music, the evening culminates in a film screening of a classic queer film.
Since launching in 1998 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Volkspark, this year saw the Parkfest open its gates for the 27th time – albeit with a marked step-up in security. Beneath the sparkly pink streamers at the park entrance was the incongruous sight of an airport-style bag check, where guards would check your belongings before allowing you in.
That, combined with the numerous police vans parked along the surrounding footpaths, did invite an anxious feeling of unease; the narrow possibility that this event could also be a target. Happily, though, this did not appear to diminish the Parkfest’s surface-level cheerfulness and energy.
The venue was packed with people dressed in bright colours, drinks in-hand, and searching for shade beneath the 30+ degree heat. It was, on all fronts, a fabulous display of queer resilience and a brave return for the community, after a uniquely shocking and destructive attack just two weeks earlier.
Background players
Berlin has long had a lively film scene, with many big-budget productions calling “Action!” in the German capital. The city’s legendary Studio Babelsberg has hosted countless classic shoots from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) to Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009). Many films continue to be shot in Berlin’s atmospheric streets and moody inner-city apartment complexes and so it was that I found myself working as an extra on a short film for an afternoon, in a northeastern neighbourhood of Berlin.
The scene in question was an atmospheric exterior shot in which we were all in the queue for a club and chatting excitedly in the courtyard as we waited to get in. There were three shots in total, one of which involved the film’s lead passing through us to get into the club. So far as I saw from the video playback of the shots, a close-up of my arm in the foreground might have been captured, with the lead framed in-focus at the centre of the frame.
This would be funny, if this particular shot is kept in the final edit, as it means the baby hippo tattoo I have on my left shoulder will be shown in a short film festival somewhere in the world, in the next year or so when this film sees release. Moreover, the lead actor was gorgeous – dark hair, Turkish, a thick gold earring and the dreamiest slate-green eyes – so that would be added bonus, to be captured onscreen alongside him in at least one shot. We shall have to wait and see.
This was my first experience working on a film shoot, outside of a reality TV show I did in Scotland in 2022. It was really enjoyable, all in all, and surprisingly friendly and welcoming. The directive we received was to dress in party clothes, trendy and slightly alternative attire that we would genuinely wear on a night out in Berlin.
As such, many of the other extras were dressed in the kinds of frighteningly stylish threads that one often encounters in central Berlin, the cashed-up Mitte district. I was afraid these other background players, therefore, would be as grumpy and aloof as those other stylish pedestrians I had encountered previously. Yet, everyone was disarmingly inviting and talkative.
The crew themselves were very approachable and accommodating, treating all of us politely and occasionally giving personal directions to any specific players that would be in-frame for a particular shot. Of the many different things I have done in Berlin in the months since moving here last November, this afternoon of filming has been something of a standout – and I hope to see if I made the final cut when the film gets released in the near future.
Autumn around the corner
After an especially hot, dry summer, I am somewhat looking forward to the changing season. We’ve enjoyed a few brief spells of rainfall over the last few months, but it’s been a long, warm summer, all in all. Autumn is a fabulous time of year in Berlin, as the city becomes aglow with blooms of red and orange as the leaves change shade.
There are trees absolutely everywhere in this city and it’s quite a marvellous time of year when it all changes colour. There’s also the added bonus of diving into coat season: Berliners are very serious about this, as it’s a major part of assimilating here to acquire an ankle-length black raincoat. I have several such items and I look forward to the sartorial transition from shorts and a crop-top to some of the more luxurious wool trousers and thick shirts I have collected over the past half-year.
Apart from winter – which can truly go fuck itself – all seasons in Berlin are wonderous. After a long, fun, hot summer, the transition into cooler afternoons and autumn leaves is one that I keenly look forward to.
