OTA Berlin Apartments

A Review of Chalet – Berlin’s New Kreuzberg Nightclub

If heaven were a place on Earth, for hipsters that heaven might just bear the name of Chalet. The club, which was created by the owners of the former Bar 25 and the current KaterHolzig, opened earlier this month during Berlin Fashion Week with a 4 day non-stop party, hoping to capitalize on Berlin’s predilection for partying around the clock.

The club itself is remarkably close to Club de Visionaire, which naturally means there is an especially large amount of visitor cross-over between the two establishments. The exterior is not as picturesque as the pictures of it posted on the internet as advertisements might have you believe, but no one has really high expectations for nightclub exteriors in Berlin anyway. Let’s call it sufficiently worn down but not terribly ugly.

Inside there is a spacious garden that grows filled with puddles in times of rain, and offers ample seating opportunities as well as a bar and a DJ area. Watch out for the puddles if you are dancing at night! This is more or less the place for chilling. Inside there is a relatively small dancefloor on the bottom floor that hosts concerts and DJs. There is more space upstairs for art exhibitions and parties. The bathrooms were clearly not that well thought out, as for women only 3 stalls are available (as opposed to 6 at Kater Holzig) which means long waits for the bathroom whenever it is even relatively busy.

The crowd is, on most nights thus far, comprised of Berlin’s hipster scene. Bright orange or neon green sunglasses? Check. Too fashionable or too intentionally unfashionable outfits? Check. Ready to discuss art? Check. Working in a start-up or as an artist? Check. In the future this could of course change, because eventually Chalet will become “out” when a new club comes “in” and the club will be dependent on its hardcore partiers to survive. Whether or not this will happen, only time will tell.

Thanks to Chalet’s owners’ connection to KaterHolzig, many top DJs are quite willing to play here and the line-ups are usually quite good. The prices for drinks are however, steeper than in many other establishments (4 Euros for a small glass of wine etc.) which leaves something to be desired. Obviously they will check your bag at the door so smuggling in drinks is to be done at your own risk.

The atmosphere varies a lot, at first it was replete with beautiful and snobby Fashion Week visitors but since most of those left, a more humble looking crowd has had to suffice and it has relaxed. A bit.

Conclusion: If you consider yourself somewhat hipster you could feel at home here. If you don’t consider yourself hipster you might want to run away screaming, at least for now. If you are not sure if you are a hipster, then this might be a great way to test it out.

Don’t go expecting another Bar 25 though, so far that it is not, and neither should you expect another KaterHolzig. Think of Chalet as the younger sibling of the two, the one who dresses posher, more like a hipster, and represents a more presentable side of the family.

LINKS:
http://www.residentadvisor.net/club-detail.aspx?id=65654
www.katerholzig.de
www.bar25.de

Cindy Su

Previous articles by Ms Cindy Su for OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog – http://www.ota-berlin.de/blog/category/berlin/articles-by-cindy-su/

Ms Cindy Su - OTA-Berlin