Take A Look Into The Wohnzimmer Bar
Over the last years we visited a lot of so called ‘Wohnzimmer’ bars. The Wohnzimmer (‘living room’) bar is a unique typology in bars which gained popularity over the last decade, especially throughout East Berlin. The phenomenon grew and became also popular in the rest of Berlin, Hamburg, and, sporadically even abroad in London, Rotterdam and even Moscow (as far as I can oversee). Wohnzimmer bars are furnished with stylish, old, mostly East German-style elements such as couches, canapes and lamps, creating a cosy and unpretentious atmosphere.
This interior combined with an underground setting, experimental music, innovative beer brands and stylish folks, makes these places subcultural living rooms. They are places to hook up for a pre-clubbing beer or a hang-over cup of coffee. Although the Wohnzimmer bars are mostly official places, which means they a license to serve alcohol, they’re pretty informal and relaxed. Wohnzimmer bars could be considered good indicators of upcoming neighborhoods. This last conclusion is definitely not based on a comprehensive research after gentrification, but rather an subjective observation. To find a great Wohnzimmer, you should wander down the streets of some typical German big city neighborhoods such as Friedrichshain, Prenzlauerberg and Neukölln in Berlin, and St. Pauli and Schanzenviertel in Hamburg.
Because of our passion for this type of bars we own what might be one of the most comprehensive collections of Wohnzimmer bar pictures, all taken during late night or early morning visits with a small pocket camera in dark circumstances. Here we’d like to share our collection in a Flickr set, check it out. Of course we’re always interested in receiving images of other Wohnzimmer bars from all over the world to add them to our collection.
