Strips & Stories is still St Pauli’s first Bookshop, opened up two years ago in the Seilerstraße. They are basically focused on Comics and Graphic Novels and they offer a very specific range of books, novels, magazines and comics. Furthermore there is some space for current political, cultural or urban topics. I love this really tiny store, and I like that they offer such a small and clear selection with very inspiring titles.

Beyond this they regularly host events in their store such as readings, small exhibitions or concerts. Sometimes they do this in cooperation with the gallery Chéz Linda (who moved from Hein-Hoyer-Straße to the Seilerstraße). You can check their website for current dates.

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Strips & Stories | Art & culture, Shopping | Book € 20.00
Seilerstraße 40 | Sankt Pauli | +494038074009
Tue – Fri 12:00 – 20:00, Sat 13:00 – 19:00

The Brachmanns is a combination of a restaurant with a small gallery in the basement and a nice bar. Some of our friends used to celebrate their birthdays there, as there is a room you can rent for a party after the dinner. The Brachmanns is located in central St. Pauli so it is a good starting point for a night out anyway.

Brachmanns Galeron’s kitchen is high quality plain fare with a Southern German touch. They have only a few dishes which are scheduled on the handwritten menu. You should definitely try the typical south german “Maultaschen” (pasta squares filled with meat and spinach) – tasty!

What I especially like is that they get their meat only from a traditional family-run Hamburg butcher. But you will get some very good vegetarian dishes their as well. I feel fine there because I like the atmosphere, the service, the clientèle and the warm interior.

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Brachmanns Galeron | Art & culture, Restaurants (German) | Main dish € 12.00
Hein-Hoyer-Straße 60 | Sankt Pauli | +494067305123
Wed – Mon 18:30 – 23:00

The Human Empire is a design and illustration studio that works for a lot of interesting and international clients, lots of them come from the fashion-, music-, art- or culture-section. For example they designed for a lot of musicians including Feist, Deathcab for Cutie or Architecture in Helsinki. They do good stuff, which you may see on their website.

Since 2007 they run a small store in the Schanzenviertel. You can buy creative things there from posters to clothes and books and accessories. 

All posters are created by young and aspiring international illustrators, graphic designers or artist and so are most of the clothes. Meanwhile they carry some interesting international fashion brands which are not easy get in hamburg such as Happy Socks, Sitka or Rvlt and hence Sandqvist. The books they offer cover the latest in design, typography or illustration, furthermore they have a beautiful selection of kids books and accessories. Prices are very affordable; you can buy posters from 10 EUR.

I go there whenever I need a special gift or just to buy myself new stuff for my walls or for my collection of design books. You will love it, if you are into in design and creative things and fashion.

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Human Empire | Art & culture, Shopping | Poster € 10.00
Schulterblatt 132 | Schanze | +494022626811
Mon – Fri 12:00 – 19:00, Sat 12:00 – 18:00

DAS MAGAZIN is a room for international printing culture, design and art, run by Art lawyer Jens Brelle.

When this tiny space next to the Michel opened up last year, we did our Pop-Up Magazine Store there. Since this is over many interesting events – such as talks (for example Juli Gudehus introduced her “Lesikon”), Release-Parties (for exmple the Hamburg Based “Superkraft” Magazine”) or theme nights (We make Urban Magazines – a night on city magazines) followed.

DAS MAGAZIN is a relaxed place and you may find interesting people hanging out there, drinking beer and lemonade and celebrating this very small independent magazine scene in hamburg. it is worth to go there! You can check their current program via their Facebook page.

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DAS MAGAZIN | Art & culture, Bars, Coffee & tea, Music, Shopping | Beer € 2.00
Teilfeld 8 | City center
depends on events

Every second Tuesday there is a special cinema-experience. In the backyard of the Brigittenstraße in St Pauli you can find a very small cinema called B-Movie. The Dokumentarfilm Salon shows selected documentary films there, often followed by a debate with the director or other participants. The cinema has only 75 seats and there is a little bar where you can buy some snacks and drinks.

Films could be German so you should check the program on their homepage if you are not German. All films are carfully selected and refer to interesting, political and social topics.

If you come to late and it might be too crowded you could stay at the bar for a chat. What is interesting on top: you can rent the b-movie for your own private cinema show.

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Dokumentarfilm Salon | Art & culture, Cinemas | Free
Brigittenstraße 5 (Hinterhof) | Sankt Pauli
Every 2nd Tuesday from 18:00, Film starts at 20:00

The heliumcowboy Artspace is a gallery in the middle of hamburg, not far away from the Gängeviertel. This gallery shows young, urban, upcoming artists in different disciplines. It reaches from painting to very complex installations or sculpturing. Check their homepage for their current exhibitions.

All exhibitions are really worth seeing, because the artists they show are rare and surprising. I think it is often that kind of art that has an immediate effect on you, the moment you look at.

And I like their motto “be true. be honest. do it all with passion or don’t do it at all. and always get your hands dirty”, because that’s pretty much what I think it should be like.

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Heliumcowboy Artspace | Art & culture | Free
Bäckerbreitergang 75 | City center | +494048408860
Various, check the website

Gudberg was founded as an agency for graphic design more then ten years ago. Today they are still doing great work in the fields of corporate-, editorial-, graphic-, interior- and web-design. Beyond this they publish their own or other’s book- or magazine-projects, they have their own magazine called “Gudberg” AND they run a small gallery with a selection of great books and magazines to purchase there (or online).

From time to time I visit them and browse through their range of books and magazines. I really like this place. Not only their interior (which was designed by themselves of course) but the idea of sharing working-space, gallery and a small shop in one location.

I recommend going there and getting inspiration from these great selection of publications.

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Gudberg Gallery | Art & culture, Shopping | Book € 20.00
Poolstrasse 8 | City center | +49408195150
Mon – Fri 09:00 – 18:00

The guys from the Krug (check the Krug Weinstubezi article) opened up a new space last summer: Oberstübchen. The Oberstübchen is located directly over the club Pudel Club (check the Golden Pudel Club article) in the Park Fiction (check the Parc Fiction article). 

You can sit on their awesome terrace now and enjoy the sun and free wifi. Inside it is very cozy, with lots of wooden furniture and with a fantastic view over the harbor. You can enjoy different dishes, from soups and salads, to pasta or coq au vin. On the weekends they offer really good breakfast. They have some cultural events in the evening as well, so you might want to check their facebookpage for that. 

Not much to say, it is a nice place, with good food and good wine. You should go there. 

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Oberstübchen | Art & culture, Bars, Restaurants (Intern.) | Main dish € 14.90
St. Pauli Fischmarkt 27 | Sankt Pauli | +4915112200488
Tue – Fri 18:00 – 00:00, Sat 11:00 – 01:00, Sun 11:00 – 19:00

The early bird catches the worm: For everybody who likes to take a long walk or to jog along the Elbe river in the early morning, take a Nordic breeze here:

The big stone, erratic boulder, is the oldest and probably first immigrant of Hamburg. During the Kansan glaciation (around 400.000 years ago) or the Wolstonian Stage (around 135.000 – 200.000 years ago) it came from East-Småland in Sweden to Germany and “slept” on the ground of the Elbe river in the valley till September 17th, 1999.

When they tried to deepen the Elbe river to increase the turning circle of big container ships, the stone became a dangerous obstacle. Divers prepared the Alter Schwede with steel-nets to lift it out of the water. A massive crane singled it out of the water, shortly after it came out it suddenly fell back into the river. Only 5 days later they tried it again, with hundreds of curious onlookers – it worked!

The 217 tons Småland-granite was baptized June 6th, 2000 with Elbe water and given its name: Alter Schweder (old Swedish). Between “birth” & “baptism” are 1,7 or 1,8 million years. The measure is 19,7 meter and 4,5 meter high. For geologists it’s very interesting to see the striation of the glaciers.

In the summertime it’s a nice spot for couples to watch a bit separately the sunset or making a fire with friends.

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Der alte Schwede | Art & culture, Relaxing | Free
Hans-Leip-Ufer | Harbour
24 hours daily

If you wanna go for a walk and are interested in flowers, plants, trees, dessert, … at least nature! Check out the Botanical Garden in Hamburg. It’s awesome!

Even the last drizzly weekend I was there and was really impressed again. So many different flowers. Have a look in the fragrance-tactile-garden – there I found a flower that smells like chocolate. Hilarious! Small labels and big “try-it-yourself” walls inform you about plants and their smell, touch and use. Discover the Botanical Garden, through all the different theme gardens from “plants of the bible” to “evolution of the rose” through all the continents.

The blue futuristic Loki-Schmidt-Building is a museum for economic plants encouraged by the ZEIT foundation.

One of my favorite places is the dessert garden with glas pyramids (which was a present of United Arab Emirates).

Special programs: The ‘Green School’ (A joint effort by the state institute of teacher training and school development and the faculty of biology of the University of Hamburg) hand out indoor plants and test plants for cytology, as well also carnivorous plants, succulents, etc. for learning.

Relaxing excursion: The Palme – the palm, is an outside café for some chilled coffee, ice cream and lovely cake. Also you’ll get sausages and potato salad there for absolutely affordable prices. (opens from April to October at 11:00 to 19:00)

Music excursion: Every first Thursday in the month there is a concert for free!

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Botanical Garden | Art & culture, Music, Relaxing | Free
Ohnhorststraße 18 | Altona & Ottensen | +494042816476
09:00 – till 1 1/2 hour before sunset daily