M2 Travel Boston Sunday Globe FEBRUARY 9, 2014

By Billy Gray IF YOU GO . . . GLOBECORRESPONDENT ERLIN — “That feeling Where to stay never goes away,” Ashkan Casa Camper Weinmeisterstrasse 1 said outside Lab.Oratory, 011­49­30­2000­3410 a fetish venue nestled be­ www.casacamper.com/berlin/ neath Berghain, Berlin’s default­en.html Bmost notorious nightclub. A favorite of the young­ish and fash­ Ashkan, a friend who’s lived in Ber­ ionable since opening in 2009. Brings lin for seven years, referred to the anx­ sleek design and the esteemed Dos ious thrill that has, since 2004, envel­ Palillos restaurant to the heart of oped hundreds of thousands of suppli­ Mitte. From $223. cants who’ve lined up at the door of Michelberger Hotel this former East Berlin power plant. Warschauer Strasse 39/40 Berghain’s gatekeepers guard what 011­49­30­2977­8590 dance­music heads refer to, with a rare www.michelbergerhotel.com absence of critical irony, as “the Creatively designed rooms in the mid­ church.” dle of clubland. Rooms from $95. But Berlin’s status as debauched night life nirvana — long the envy of Where to eat 24­hour party people from London to Il Casolare Los Angeles — is being dragged earth­ Grimmstrasse 30 bound. The German capital’s modern 011­49­30­6950­6610 club culture is threatened by capital­ Puckish pizzeria with a loyal following ism’s purest distillation: real estate. and charming location just off a Kreuz­ Four years ago, on my first trip berg canal, from $16. here, I stayed at the Eastern Comfort Horvath “swimming hostel,” a houseboat Paul­Lincke­Ufer 44a docked on the Spree River. Berghain 011­49­30­6128­9992 was a short, dark walk away. The sleek www.restaurant­horvath.de Watergate and antic Bar25 were even Traditional and “New German” cuisine closer. But the most raucous, idiosyn­ is served prix fixe in chef Sebastian cratic party I saw was a techno flotilla Frank’s Michelin­starred Kreuzberg unts­unts­unts­ing down the river in a restaurant, from $78. four­to­the­floor battle cry against Me­ diaspree. Mediaspree is the ambitious 440­ are,” Hetz said. “It’s a big business acre development project converting branch and it would be stupid to inter­ the eastern banks of the Spree from a fere with that. But smaller clubs have forlorn squatter’s and club kid’s para­ closed after people moved to new ar­ dise to a gleaming Riviera of new me­ eas. That’s a bigger problem than the dia headquarters. And the city’s finest government.” clubs are square on its target. Indeed, night life in Berlin could be Even in Berlin, which Mayor Klaus a victim of its own success as canny de­ Wowereit described as “poor, but sexy,” velopers cash in on the flood of com­ gentrification is a cocktail party topic. paratively affluent out­of­towners the Mitte, where artist communes flour­ scene attracts. ished post­Wall, is chockablock with “In a funny way, it correlates to EU polished galleries and chain stores. politics,” Wang said. “All the talented, And once­anarchic Prenzlauer Berg unemployed European youth dream of has become Europe’s most fashionable coming to Berlin. Berlin has become stroller capital. Eros, exuberance stir not only the art and party center but Still, Mediaspree prompted a pro­ also the center of the erotic imagina­ tracted round of soul searching among tion. In that sense, it’s become an eco­ Berliners who want things to stay as nomic center, just without the bank­ they are in a city generally eager to ers.” pave over its traumatic past. The psy­ Berlin’s nocturnal spell As for Berlin’s underground scene, chology of place has been center stage Wang thinks it “could put itself out of in Berlin’s history. But the Mediaspree business. But I think it will take much controversy is less about the city’s dis­ NAMYNOSRATIFARD longer than in hypercapitalized cities. tinct politics than the delayed intru­ And I suspect there’ll always be a free­ sion of the 21st­century global econo­ Berlin, I was heartened by this resilien­ The dance club, even find a mirror at Berghain, a wise wheeling attitude.” my’s interchangeable glass condos and cy. Sure, more construction cranes restaurant, and arts concession to the effects of 18­hour Hetz also doesn’t “see an end to Web startups. loomed over the river. Double­decker space KaterHolzig dance parties on one’s looks. [Berlin’s] freedom and opening hours. And though the threat to dance buses shuttled tourists by the East Side recently closed. Night life, like the fresh faces it rav­ At one point it will probably happen. clubs might seem trivial, Berlin is one Gallery’s murals (painted on the lon­ Management plans to ages, is famously ephemeral. But the But not in the next five years.”He’s also of the few great cities in which night gest extant stretch of the Berlin Wall). open a new venue, Berlin club circuit in many ways feels loath to condemn the nomadic club­ life remains vital — to the culture and Giant iPad billboards jostled with Holzmart, this spring. timeless. Its nonstop hours and sexual bers who’ve made Berghain a bona the bottom line. Indeed, it’s no big street art for real estate. freedoms recall an era long gone in fide tourist attraction. stretch to say that Berlin’s staunch bo­ “It’s definitely happening,” Wang buttoned­up New York and moneyed “Easy Jet tourists are a big part of hemianism is its own worst enemy and said when I asked about the sort of London. DJs and club runners chalk this scene,” he said. “People dis tour­ a driver of the real estate gold rush. gentrification that made him flee New and stay until Monday at 8 a.m.,”Wang up this enduring hedonism to Berlin’s ists, but it’s arrogant to say, ‘Oh, we “There’s been a big bang, expand­ York. (In a recent win for capitalism, said. perpetual poverty relative to other don’t want them.’ Many of them are ing universe trend,” said Daniel Wang, construction workers razed part of the Even if I’d had the stamina to follow world capitals and to its inherent lib­ annoying or rude, but many are stun­ an American DJ who moved here in East Side Gallery to make way for a Wang’s Sunday itinerary, shortsighted ertinism. ning people who queue up outside 2003. “When I started playing here in luxury apartment building.) flight booking foiled that possibility. Florian Hetz, the manager of Berghain for two hours and are ecstat­ 2000 there were about five clubs that Yet on the day I arrived, a Butt mag­ Although I haven’t experienced this Berghain’s upstairs Panorama Bar, ic once they pass the mighty door.” made the focal point of the scene.” azine party at the no­frills Prince new prime time, the Berlin nocturne’s said nocturnal rebellion is “part of our And Hetz had some advice for get­ Although several clubs in the Charles surged at 9 a.m. as an interna­ spell on me hasn’t waned since my ini­ history. We had two oppressive sys­ ting by that door: “Be sober. Don’t Friedrichshain­Kreuzberg nexus have tional contingent of (shockingly fresh­ tial, tentative dive into the scene. I tems and people don’t want that again. bring attitude. And please tip once in­ closed recently, today’s roster still pul­ faced) revelers chain­smoked and guz­ spent my first solo trip as a shy traveler People fight for these things here.” side.” As for the prospect of Friedrich­ sates, exhausting the traveling night zled Berliner Pilsners in the narrow in Berlin, and recall steeling myself for “Berlin was never really the Ger­ shain and Kreuzberg becoming so pop­ owl. Bar25, a Swiss family tree house courtyard. Club der Visionaere, a that inaugural Berghain visit (and like­ man center of industry,” Wang said. ular that no one but condo owners on hallucinogens, shuttered in 2010 in charmingly ramshackle dockside ly rejection) at a nearby punk dive. “It’s traditionally the home — even in goes there anymore, he suggested fu­ what many considered a coda to Ber­ haunt that lists atop a Kreuzberg ca­ I’ve always been struck by how dark Hitler’s time — of intellectuals, homo­ ture visitors dig for the next unlikely lin’s decade atop the dance music sub­ nal, has endured despite rumors of its the Berlin sidewalks are at night, an­ sexuals, artists, and politicians.” night­life hotbed. culture. Its alums quickly roared back closure swirling since 2009. other trait of the city that, in my mind, For better or worse, Berlin’s chroni­ “The east was deserted after the with KaterHolzig, a hulking party And Berghain still reeled in a eu­ makes beacons of its strobe­lighted cally high unemployment and low cost Wall came down,” he said, “making complex carved from the ruins of a phoric mix of heads, leather daddies, clubs. That’s not to say that many club­ of living mean that so­called techno way for all these clubs. Now, there’s a soap factory. KaterHolzig recently and cool kids, although the veterans bers on the scruffy east side crave flat­ tourism is an economic life raft. For chance that things could even move closed. Management expects to open had ceded Friday and Saturday nights tering lighting. Widespread no­photo that reason, the government keeps its west again.” Holzmarkt on the old Bar25 grounds to the Easy Jet set that each weekend policies codify the mindset of going hands off the all­hours clubland. this spring. descends on the city. “It’s quite cool out to get lost in the party, not to stage “The city realizes what an economic Billy Gray can be reached at william.f In June, during my fourth trip to now to show up on Sunday at 8 p.m. Instagram photo shoots. You can’t factor Berghain and the other clubs [email protected].

Charles Daurier ordered the sequen­ tial numbering of Cologne houses so Cologne’sfamed4711 they could be used to billet soldiers. Muelhens’s building was designated No. 4711, which became the trade­ mark for Eau de Cologne in 1875. The scentedwithhistory family­owned company changed hands several times after 1994, and By Claudia Capos and stylistic 4711 emblems hang be­ the 4711 brand is now owned by Mau­ GLOBECORRESPONDENT neath colonnade arches. The 20th­cen­ rer and Wirtz. OLOGNE, Germany — tury building, across from the Cologne We return to the showroom where The first sweet whiff of Opera, was inaugurated in 1964, two an elegant Gobelin tapestry depicts a 4711 Eau de Cologne decades after Allied bombers leveled mounted French corporal scrawling wafts by us as we leave the company’s headquarters at Glock­ 4711 on the building’s gate. We begin the Café Reichard terrace engasse No. 4711 and manufacturing spraying tester strips with fragrances, Coverlooking the city’s Gothic cathedral plant in Cologne Ehrenfeld. including the original 4711 and newer and stroll down Hohe Strasse. Atthe The decorative glass entry door re­ aromatic combinations, such as blood next corner we see tourists milling leases a softly scented plume of fra­ orange­basil and pink pepper­grape­ around 4711 displays at the Raphael grance as it opens. Inside, lights illumi­ fruit. Jennifer Carman, ofGreatYar­ Cologne store and ask directions to the nate a two­story glass wall of 4711 Mo­ mouth in Norfolk, England, who is House of 4711, birthplace of the lanus­style bottles behind the paneled browsing through the Acqua Colonia world­famous perfume. counter where saleswomen in navy­ section, remembers her mother buy­ Over the past 220 years 4711has blue outfits wait expectantly. Brightly ing bottles of 4711. “I’ve known about become Cologne’s signature scent and colored packages of 4711 brand fra­ 4711 since I was a teenager,” she says. a brand name in the perfume industry. grances and handy tester bottles nestle After much spritzing and sniffing, Embraced by 19th­century high soci­ in shelves. We ascend a spiral staircase CLAUDIACAPOSFORTHEBOSTONGLOBE we purchase 4711 Nouveau Cologne ety, the fabled fragrance prevailed to a small museum displaying gold and turn to leave. Doug stops briefly to through the city’s near­total destruc­ medal awards and historical artifacts, A Gobelin tapestry producing “miracle water” — initially, wash residual perfume off his hands in tion in World War II and postwar re­ including an 1850 traveling toilet “cas­ (rear) in the House of as a health drink and revitalizing elixir what he assumes is water flowing from construction to gain an international ket” and a 1913 gentleman’s pocket 4711 depicts a French — in a small factory on Glockengasse, a spigot into a gold basin. It turns out following for its original and contem­ bottle. A vintage photo shows a 4711 soldier scrawling the but the French conquest crimped his to be the store’s 4711 Eau de Cologne porary products. bottle recovered from a sunken World street number 4711 plans. In 1810, Napoleon decreed that fragrance fountain. Spurred by curiosity about the cre­ War II German submarine. on the house gate all formulas for internal medications ation of Kolnisch Wasser and the pros­ The story behind 4711 Eau de Co­ during the 18th­ and be publically disclosed, so Muelhens HOUSE OF 4711 Glockengasse 4, pect of a shopping spree, my partner, logne is somewhat mercurial. Accord­ 19th­ century started selling Kolnisch Wasser as a Cologne, Germany. 011­49­221­ Doug, and I zigzag four blocks to ing to legend, a Carthusian monk gave occupation of fragrance to avoid revealing its ingre­ 270999­10, www.4711.com Glockengasse, where the perfumery’s Wilhelm Muelhens the secret recipe Cologne by the dients. The origin of the famous 4711 flagship store stands like a golden cas­ for “aqua mirabilis” as a wedding gift French Army. brand name also dates to the French Claudia Capos can be reached at capo tle. Colorful banners fly from turrets, in 1792. The young merchant began occupation of the city. In 1796 General [email protected].