Café Kotti

owned and operated by social worker, and activist Ercan Yaşaroğlu since 2009

staircase to the first above ground floor and Café Kotti

view from the bridge over Adalbertstraße

Afternoon customers at Café Kotti

Entrance Café Kotti

Anti-discrimination statement in English, German and Turkish at Café Kotti

Extra room at Café Kotti

Hand decorated ceiling tiles at café Kotti

Smiling wait staff and hand decorated ceiling tiles at Café Kotti

About:

Owner Ercan Yaşaroğlu came to Germany in 1982 fleeing first political persecution under the military junta in Turkey, and then once more, this time from war in Lebanon.

In 2009, Yaşaroğlu took over Café Kotti from the previous owners with whom he had been closely acquainted.

Yaşaroğlu turned the locality into community oriented bar and café with an emphasis on youth work, neighborhood outreach, and anti-discrimination.

– Zauner, David: Kreuzbergs letzter Optimist – Der Sozialarbeiter, Café-Betreiber und Aktivist Ercan Yaşaroğlu schaut auf viele Jahre am Kottbusser Tor. On: nd-aktuell.de (Berlin > Berliner Keiz-Größen. Dated: April 08 2022. URL: https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1162868.berliner-kiez-groesse-kreuzbergs-letzter-optimist.html. Last viewed: Sept 11 2023.

Address:

Café Kotti
Adalbertstraße 96
10999 Berlin-Kreuzberg
Germany

Open: from afternoons until late at night

Die Busche

a gay and lesbian night club whose beginnings go back to East Berlin in the 1980s

Die Busche
Warschauer Platz 18
Berlin-Friedrichshain

Die Busche
Warschauer Platz 18
Berlin-Friedrichshain

About:

Die Busche is a gay and lesbian dance club whose beginnings go back to East Berlin in the 1980s. The name “Busche” harkens back to the early 1980s, and LGBT dance events held in a multi-purpose hall on Buschallee in Berlin-Weißensee in East Berlin. In die Busche’s early days, prominent co-founders of the GDR lesbian-gay movement, such as Christiane Seefeld, “mother of HIB*”, worked the bar.

The atmosphere in die Busche is to the present day somewhat more relaxed and intimate when compared to other large LGBT and LGBT-friendly Berlin night clubs.

✱) The Homosexuellen Interessengemeinschaft Berlin (HIB) (English: Homosexual Interest Group Berlin) was an early East-German LGBT organization founded in East Berlin in 1973.