Alongside Melbourne’s High Street, Dublin’s Camden Street and Chazawa-dori in Tokyo, a street in Berlin has been named one of the coolest in the world.
Berlin’s Oranienstraße, which stretches from Mitte into the heart of Kreuzberg, has been named one of the coolest streets in the world by TimeOut.
Praised for its people-watching potential, infinite informal dining options and all-around bustle, Oranienstraße came in at 12th place in the ranking, but lost out to thoroughfares in Hong Kong, Barcelona and Buenos Aires.
The online magazine determined the intangible quality of “coolness” based on what “bold, creative new ventures in food, drink, nightlife and culture” each of the streets around the world had to offer. Melbourne’s High Street took the crowning place, celebrated for its “unique, something-for-everyone local businesses”, and Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road followed in second place, a “bustling artery” where “all of the city’s coolest new venues are popping up”.
Those not cool enough to have set foot on Oranienstraße may be wondering what all the fuss is about. To the west, the 12-kilometre-long street starts with the Prinzessinnengarten on Moritzplatz, an urban community gardening project which serves up home-grown meals in its cafe.
Further along, Oranienplatz acts as a starting point for regular demonstrations in the neighbourhood, and between 2012 and 2014, housed the OPlatz pro-immigration protest movement. If you want to know more about who was hanging out on Oranienstraße before it was desperately cool, turn south at the crossroads with Adalbertstraße for a free visit to the FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum.
Beyond the crossroads, Oranienstraße becomes a slew of bars, cafes, Spätis, restaurants and cheap eateries, including the never-disappointing 1001 Falafel, Roses Bar, a dependable of Berlin’s queer nightlife scene, and one of Bowie’s old haunts, SO36. Do you get it now? Do you get why it’s so cool?
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