It is the opening weekend of the 25 Hours Bikini hotel and, despite being only one day old, the restaurant is fully booked and the bar’s heaving. It seems most of the clientele are forsaking the opportunity to have an epic media brainstorm in one of the hotel’s fashionable workspace-cum-furniture-showrooms in favour of a pricey penthouse cocktail.
Already, it seems, the hotel has become a defining attraction in an area of Berlin not previously known for it’s cool credentials. Situated in City West, the hotel is flanked by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial church and sits just in front of Berlin’s Zoologischer Garten. While the city zoo may not be a draw for the hip visitors, a hotel bar overlooking it certainly is.
Sipping a drink on the rooftop, Imeet a couple from a rural town near Cologne. They heard the hotel was opening and decided it was the perfect opportunity to take a friend of theirs who’d never visited the capital for a night on the town. “It’s very cool here,” we agree, before I’m asked to budge up by a glamorous woman whose dog is wearing a shirt.
The hotel is the latest in the 25 Hours boutique hotel chain’s portfolio which includes Frankfurt, Hamburg and Vienna and one of several major construction projects to be completed in City West over the past year. The less cool but nevertheless classy Waldorf Astoria opened nearby last January and in November the art deco Zoo Palast cinema returned to action following an ambitious renovation in time for the Berlin Film Festival.
This month, the contemporary art foundation C/O Berlin which previously occupied the vast Postfuhramt in Mitte will reopen in the area’s Amerika Haus building, a move that surprised locals who expected it to remain in the east. And the rectangular Bikini-Haus building, from which the 25 Hours Bikini hotel takes its name, will open its doors as a high-concept shopping centre, with space for over 60 fashionable businesses soon after. Located exactly between the Zoo Palast and the 25 Hours, the hope is that the “Bikini Berlin” centre and its neighbours will make the spot a buzzing destination.
For now, City West still has a way to go before it can compete with the after-dark vibe of some of Berlin’s other districts such as Kreuzberg but the hotel’s decor seems to have been created with late nights in mind.
The rooms, which remain dimly lit unless you sweep back the thick curtain covering the huge windows, are the kind of places in which you could happily wallow. Fluorescent lighting beside the door fades from red to yellow to green, reflecting off the black glossy interior, like the bathroom of a nightclub.
There are no doors to the shower, and there’s no TV at least in my room. Instead the centrepiece is a square, double-sided mirror suspended by wire cables. These are rooms for narcissists, perhaps.
By now you’re probably keen to know how a gritty 1950s office block that has been derelict for two decades came by a name so conveniently sexy as “bikini”. The origin of the nickname comes from the third floor of the building originally being vacant, giving the impression that the building was split into two sections, like a well, you get the idea.
The design concept bears little relation to the name but is fantasticallyimpressive. Conceived by local designer Werner Aisslinger, it follows an “urban jungle” theme, with leafy plants hanging from the ceilings and climbing the walls of a greenhouse-type structure in the centre of the restaurant.
The “jungle sauna”, as they call it, has a glazed window that overlooks the trees of the Tiergarten and the hotel’s interior has a lush inside/outside feel that’s quite a feat for gloomy Berlin, and helps make guests want to stay put. You can venture into the city too, in one of the free Minis available to guests, or on a shiny white single speed bike that shouts “hip” almost as loudly as the hotel’s very own Airstream street food van permanently parked outside.
Accommodation was provided by the Berlin tourist board (visitberlin.de). Budapester Strasse. 40, +49 30 1202 210, 25hours-hotels.com. Flights were provided by easyJet (easyjet.com), which has flights to Berlin Schoenfeld from Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Gatwick, Luton, Southend and Manchester.