Gift ideas Berlin

Running out of inspiration when it comes to bringing back memories for family and friends? Have you thought about theAmpelmann, that little fellow at the traffic lights of the former GDR and for whom the former East Germans fought? Indeed, there was talk of institutionalizing the classic, unfunny West German model all over Germany, but the sentimental attachment to the little man in the hat was stronger? And it has become a cult symbol: T-shirts, lamps and all kinds of accessories are available in red and green...

Here you can make your own necklaces, bracelets, rings, earrings and anything else you can imagine wearing, thanks to the multitude of beads and accessories that are sold. Roberta Oehmigen, who has been running the shop for years, also sells her own collections which are stunning and each one more original than the last. You will find vintage jewellery as well as eccentric and crazy jewellery (earrings with dinosaurs or seahorses for example).

Most of the shops that sell hemp take advantage of the opportunity to sell water pipes and other bangs to inveterate smokers, and the beautiful utopia of hemp, a raw material that could save our forests from destruction, often takes a back seat. Except here at the hemp house, where no hypocritical promotion is made but where real hemp products are sold: clothes such as trousers, shirts and sweatshirts, and also hemp pasta, rasta pasta, cleaning products, tea, etc.

This is a huge shop, well known to Berlin's many artists and creative people. There's an art bookstore (with some very nice books about Berlin), a general bookstore, but above all on two levels there are displays of dozens of materials for painting, drawing, sewing, and other disciplines in the do-it-yourself art family. Here you will find every pencil, brush, spray, cloth, tool and accessory imaginable. Everything for the artist in you.