May 19-25: The Dark Rooms, Camp for Adults, Carnival of Culture, and more!
Things to do in Berlin - Week of May 19 & beyond!
In this edition, there’s a wholesome event for the upcoming long weekend: a summer camp for adults. The giveaway prize is especially good, with accommodation, food, and activities all included. I’d honestly go myself if I didn’t already have plans. Read more below.
What’s in store for you this week:
⚫️ THE DARK ROOMS VEINS
🎞️ Xposed Queer Film Festival
🏕️ The Hideout: A Summer Camp for Adults
🎡 Carnival of Cultures
🎻 Staatsoper für alle
🍄 Psychedelic Integration Circle
🍽️ Iro Izakaya - Japanese Restaurant
📅 Spotlight - Sponsored
Put your social life on auto-pilot: You go to events, meet new people and never see them again. Real friendships means seeing the same people regularly and over time they become your people. That's Inner Circle. Limited spots available. Apply now to join.
Sensual Massage workshop for couples: May 22 at SPNKD Berlin. An invitation back into slow, attentive touch. Learn how to give a sensual massage without expecting anything in return, and how to keep pouring into your partner. Register online.
The 20% Berlin News Quiz: Journalist Maurice Frank from 20 Percent Berlin hosts a fun quiz night - 20 May (Wed) - on Berlin, German news, current affairs, and trivia. With drinks, food, and community mingling. More info.
🎫 This Week’s Giveaways
We have 2x2 tickets to ⚫️ THE DARK ROOMS VEINS for two subscribers to go with +1. To enter the raffle, hit the ❤️ button (top or bottom of this email/post) and send an email to this email address with the subject line “DARK ROOMS”.
We are giving away 3 spots for €150 (instead of €500!) - all-inclusive, to 🏕️ The Hideout: A Summer Camp for Adults for three subscriber. To enter the raffle, hit the ❤️ button (top or bottom of this email/post) follow Hideout Instagram, and send an email to this email address with the subject line “Hideout”.
⭐ Winner will be selected from those who both liked this post and sent an email, and will be notified directly via email.
⭐ partnership
1. THE DARK ROOMS VEINS
The Dark Rooms Veins is a walk-through art installation built inside the hidden service corridors and tunnels of a former Berlin cinema complex, staged across three weekends in July. Ten international light and sound artists fill the dark passages with their work, and visitors move through it on a guided route that lasts around 90 minutes. The exact address is sent to ticket holders 48 hours before their slot. Tickets are limited. Get Tickets.
💵 €35
📅 10 July (Fri) - 26 July (Sun)
📍 Announced Later
2. Xposed Queer Film Festival
The Xposed Queer Film Festival returns to Berlin for eleven days of queer cinema spread across several independent venues, including Babylon Kreuzberg, Moviemento, Wolf Kino and Il Kino. The program mixes new releases with older classics and a strong selection of award-winning short films from filmmakers around the world, with each regional block tracing how queer life has shifted over time. The program.
💵 €10+
📅 21 May (Thu) - 31 May (Sun)
📍 Various venues
⭐ partnership
3. The Hideout: A Summer Camp for Adults
The Hideout is a summer camp for adults in Brandenburg. A different kind of long weekend built around bonfires, games, lake time, arts & crafts, shared meals, slow mornings, and disappearing into nature for a few days. Part nostalgia, part escape from city life, part “why don’t adults do this more often?” More info.
💵 €500 - all-inclusive (3 giveaway spots from €150)
📅 22 May (Fri) - 25 May (Mon)
4. Carnival of Cultures
The Carnival of Cultures is Berlin's long-running four-day street festival, held since 1995, where communities from across the city present music, dance, performance, visual art and acrobatics. The centrepiece is the costumed parade of moving floats on Sunday, 24 May, which draws several thousand performers and very large crowds through the surrounding streets. More info.
💵 Free
📅 22 May (Fri) - 25 May (Mon)
5. Staatsoper für alle
Staatsoper für alle is the Berlin State Opera's annual free open-air weekend on Bebelplatz, where the opera's orchestra performs to a large public audience in the square. Saturday evening centres on Verdi's Nabucco, while Sunday opens with a children's opera orchestra concert in the late morning and continues with a Beethoven program conducted by Christian Thielemann in the early afternoon. The setting is informal: people gather on the square itself rather than in a hall, and there is no ticket or assigned seating. More info.
💵 Free
📅 23 May (Sat) - 24 May (Sun)
Submitted Event
6. Psychedelic Integration Circle
The Psychedelic Integration Circle is a recurring group session where people meet to talk through and make sense of psychedelic experiences in a structured, peer-led setting. The emphasis is on speaking from personal experience and on bringing those experiences back into everyday life, in a calm space organized around shared listening rather than instruction. More info.
💵 €10
📅 20 May (Wed)
Restaurant Suggestion:
Iro Izakaya - Japanese Restaurant (⭐4/5)
I’d passed by this place a few times before finally giving it a try. It’s a Japanese izakaya with outdoor seating that’s especially nice on warmer days. The menu has a good mix of small sharing plates as well as bigger dishes like ramen and rice bowls. We tried the gyoza, chicken karaage, onigiri, and a few other dishes. Overall, the food was good, although a couple of the plates were a bit hit or miss. Izakaya spots are usually on the pricier side, but this one felt more affordable than most. They also have a solid sake selection, with a map of Japan showing where each sake comes from, which was a nice touch. We asked for warm sake but they unfortunately missed it. The staff were friendly, they accept card payments, and you can expect to spend around €30 per person including a drink.
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