The dance community helped reunify East and West Germany in the 1990s, but gentrification is slowly killing it

I was in bed when my friend Alfonso called me. “It’s the last party at Griessmuehle,” he said. “It’s the last Cocktail there. Throw on some clothes. We’re going.”

Cocktail d’Amore is one of a handful of landmark Berlin parties that have made the German capital a centre of LGBTQ+ youth culture over the past two decades. It took place in a venue called Griessmuehle, an old East German grain mill that people enjoyed because one moment you might be kissing on shower tiles, the next dancing in a silo. Sadly, it is to be demolished this spring to make space for a resort hotel. It certainly wasn’t an architectural jewel like the Berlin Philharmonic concert hall or Museum Island – but clubs, along with cheap studio space and vibrant subcultures, are what made Berlin the city so many love today.