A few weeks ago we were invited by smart for a two day trip to Berlin. The reason for the trip was the launch of smart’s platform Bettery Magazine, which presents people, places and ideas for the city of the future. smart believes that people are already taking charge in trying to improve city life. In order to promote these new movements Bettery Magazine will cover and share different projects that originated across the world and that have made a positive, sustainable change to life in the city, ranging from urban farming and pop-up restaurants to sustainable design. The editors/bloggers who were invited got to have a little taste of the action; visiting new exciting projects and writing a guest blog for Bettery Magazine.

The trip started with a meeting in our hotel; the Weinmeister. Really cool place, the entrance door as well as the glass elevator shafts give an outlook on the different graffiti’s in the staircases on every floor done by local artists, like this one from 44 Flavours. After the meeting we explored the city using a new smart project: the smart eBike.

Cycling on it reminded me of being a lazy kid being pushed around my mom whenever I pretended to get tired. There’s nothing like a good push! Needless to say we were flying through town.

On our bike tour we visited hospital-turned art space/music school Bethanien; project space the Wye, which hosts a gallery, atelier spaces and offices and a showroom; one of the iconic black and white Photobooths that can be found all over Berlin, vintage bus-turned-convenience store Kjosk and an amazing concept store named XXX. The latter, pictured above, carries clothing from unknown to semi established labels, art by upcoming artists and accessories.

Really sick place! In case you might not want to leave they will feed you in their instore café and you can book this apartment attached to the store for short of long term stays. Next to that their store includes a lovely small cafe where they brew hot coffee and soup. They also do in-store concerts and other cool stuff so be sure to follow them on Facebook .

When visiting the photo automat project we obviously had to take some pictures (hell where are the 2 euro photobooths in Dam/London??). I had the ambitious idea to fit the lot of us in just one photo strip. Seeing there were about 16 of us we had to fit 4 in the booth every few seconds. Obvs that failed miserably. But good fun nonetheless! In the pictures are the lovely K-MB/Bettery fellas, Costas from Yatzer, Joe from Thisbigcity, Simone from Frizzifrizzi and my manic face. Swell!

In the evening we had dinner at an amazing pop up restaurant/supper club in Mitte around the corner from our hotel. It was a living room turned dining room with furniture made of pallets adorned with industrial lamps and other found objects. The food was nice and the atmosphere great, be sure to check out Bettery Magazine for a guest article on The Parlour Dinners by our hand, as well as more coverage on the other projects by fellow bloggers!

See you soon Berlin <3