ZeitMagazin International, fall–winter 2019
With Autumn come the biannuals, and Zeit International is always high on my to-read list. This time, ‘the world’s oldest fashion icon’ Iris Apfel graces the cover, decked in a shock of green feathers. More on that later: let’s dive into our latest page 23.
The page marks the start of Zeit’s City Guide 2019: a mini almanac for Berlin with 50 featured things to do, eat and see, curated by Clair Beermann. Really it ought to be titled 2019/20, as the list stretches all the way to March next year, and the Spring/Summer edition of the magazine.
Rather than simply reeling off a list of high profile festivals and exhibitions, Beermann has taken a detailed approach. Some serious effort has gone into researching Berlin-based independent shops and the seasonal products they’ll be launching: a blue woolly jumper for November, a ‘blossom hat’ for March. Of course it would make little sense to avoid mentioning events like the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 4-10), but the list is peppered with nods to small events too – jazz nights and exhibition openings.
There are cheap and cheerful suggestions to get through the cold months: the ‘Berliner Winter, a hot apple drink mixed with wintery spices and a dash of vodka’ is one of my favourites from December. Various parks, gardens and ‘the Orangery Palace at Sanssouci’ are amongst some of the free places Zeit encourage us to visit on those sunny-but-freezing days, while buying a couple of tickets to the Berlinale film festival will be a great (and cosy) way to avoid February’s sleet.
It’s rare to see this kind of listings feature these days, a throwback to a time when magazines were the only place one could find a comprehensive guide to the upcoming months. Rather than wading through Eventbrite, wondering if Google’s half-hearted translation of ‘Die MEGA Sause mit BLÜMCHEN am 02.11.2019 im VELODROM’ is entirely accurate, Zeit has done the hard work for us, and in the process helped define their descriptor ‘The Berlin state of mind’.
This highly localised list is a daring move for a magazine compiled specifically for an international audience. But the city’s global reputation for art and culture precedes it, and the Zeit editors are probably aware that if their readers weren’t necessarily planning to visit the city before, a few of these featured spots might tempt them to swing by. For those London-based magCulture regulars planning a visa-free mini-break to Berlin, the list is an invaluable guide to events taking place before January 31st!
Elsewhere in the magazine there is a wealth of in-depth interviews – Madonna, Peggy Gou, Thom Yorke and, of course, cover star Iris Apfel. German photographer Patrick Beinhart’s photographs of Georgia are unmissable, as are a selection of portraits from ZEITmagazin’s long-running column ‘I Have a Dream’.
Editor-in-chief: Christoph Amend
Creative director: Mirko Borsche
Art director: Jasmin Muller-Stoy