Bicultural Urbanite Banner © Goethe-Institut Australien; Photo: Isabelle Beyer

Luke Troynar

Luke Troynar Headshot Born in Melbourne, Luke Troynar is a part-time wordsmith, part-time musician and semi-aspiring member of the workforce. He shares his time in Berlin between toying with the prospect of academia, fronting his dark pop music duo 'Bad Tropes', fashioning his satirical blog 'Pathetic Inversions' and procuring work as a freelance writer capriciously.

Brianna Summers

Brianna Summers Headshot Brianna Summers has a fondness for inventing words. She excels at Denglish and can crack jokes in German. When not translating, copywriting or blogging, Brianna enjoys making parties and driving with a bike. She has been on a 'working holiday' in Berlin for the past eleven years. Her family in Melbourne has stopped asking her when she is coming home.

Making sure my water is sparkling like a good quasi-German. © Isabelle Beyer

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Becoming Germanian

When I first got to Berlin I developed something of an infatuation with 'Zee Germans'. Compared to Australians, everything about German people seemed so endearingly serious and neat. [more …]
Watching the World Cup final in a beer garden at Tempelhofer Feld, a former airport that is now a massive park. © Brianna Summers

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
On the Ball: World Cup Fever and AFL

I don’t really get soccer. Instead of growing up watching ‘The World Game’ on SBS, I spent my youth listening to the dulcet tones of Richie Benaud’s cricket commentary. [more …]
Berlin Peter Panners in the making, circa 2013. © Isabelle Beyer

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Forever Young

In the fictional world of ‘Peter Pan’, Neverland is an imaginary place where children never have to become adults. In the real world, that place is called Berlin. Or so it would seem. [more …]
Promotional poster for Berlin’s 'We Are Not Gemüsed' stand-up comedy show. © We Are Not Gemüsed

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
A Berliner and an Expat walk into a Pub

Germans don’t exactly have a reputation for stand-up comedy. But that’s not to say they don’t know how to make each other laugh. Germany enthusiastically embraced the anything-goes chaos of cabarets in the early twentieth century and since then has produced countless clowns, comic musicians and other satirical entertainers. [more …]
The foyer of the Funkhaus. © Nino V. Valpian, Funkhaus Berlin

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Soviet Decadence Revamped: Inside the Funkhaus

Up until recently, the Funkhaus remained one of Berlin’s best-kept secrets. A grandiose complex of purpose-built recording studios and a veritable goldmine for Instagram clout, I was always amazed the place wasn't permanently crawling with well-clad millennials—smartphones poised and ready for lush image-crafting. [more …]
Copywriter and photographer Fiona Laughton has called Berlin home since 2013. © James Fancourt

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Love at Second Sight

Fiona Laughton is a storyteller whose story doesn’t quite fit the mould. Unlike the many young tourists and creatives who fall in love with Berlin and vow to stay at all costs, her decision to emigrate was driven by a desire to escape. [more …]
Summer bliss at Teufelsberg. © Luke Troynar

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Berlin Summer Loving

It’s happened again, thank god. The Berlin sun has returned from its annual sabbatical some place far, far away. From here on in, things escalate pretty quickly. The moment temperatures creep above 15 degrees, the number of people on the streets quadruples and shirt buttons start bursting open with unbridled gusto. The birds are singing, the drinks are flowing, and that peculiar German fondness for nakedness is finding its yearly stride—it’s time for Berlin summer loving. [more …]
Performing the all-important anstoßen ritual. Cheers! © Brianna Summers

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Bottoms Up!

Internationally speaking, Germans and Australians both enjoy a drink. Booze pervades their social lives and lubricates virtually every social event, from birthdays and christenings to weddings and work parties. Yet there are differences, cultural and regulatory ones, in the way Germans and Australians handle their grog. [more …]
Freie Universität Berlin © Luke Troynar

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Degrees for Free!

A degree for free?! Yes please. I probably would have considered enrolling to become a Master of Currywurst, had that been the only thing on offer. [more …]
The crew at the Passenger Coffee roastery in Elsen Strasse Treptow © Meike Kenn Fotografie

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
FLAT WHITE IS THE NEW BLACK

Coffee shop owner and Australian expat Garth Gregory has been keeping Berliners caffeinated since 2004. I had a chat to him about starting a business in Germany, gentrification and the perils of third wave specialty coffee. [more …]
St. Agnes nave, courtesy of König Galerie © Roman März

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Brutalist Heaven: Inside Berlin’s Most Ethereal Gallery Space

Berlin is undoubtedly a city that thrives on its adventurous use of space. One of my favourite examples of a Berlin building being re-appropriated in a manner deviant to its original purpose is the current location of König Galerie. [more …]
Vitamin D infusion © Brianna Summers

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
At home she feels like a tourist

In the darkest days of the German winter, a lack of vitamin D triggers my homing instinct and I embark on a long seasonal migration south – not unlike a duck. [more …]
Standing in line for bread. © Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R00012 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Queuing For Milk And Honey

Queues for good times, queues for serious business—queues for queues, and queues to find out which queue you should be queuing in and which you should not. Berlin may be the modern land of milk and honey, but you’d better be prepared to wait in an orderly line for your share of the good stuff. [more …]
Rear view of Tacheles © Helen Barlow

Guest blogger Helen
A deep-dive into 90s Berlin

Helen Barlow is an Australian film journalist who lived in Berlin for three years in the 1990s. For Bicultural Urbanite she recounts some of her anecdotes from that time. [more …]
The Berlin Zalmi cricket team © Abdul Hasib Bajawri

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Refugees welcome: Hitting integration for six

On the remote island of Australia, it seems possible to hold much of the world’s chaos and turmoil at arm’s length. So when millions of asylum seekers began arriving in Europe in 2015, it was as if the fourth wall had cracked. [more …]
Confessions in the making... © Luke Troynar

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
English Confessions of a Bicultural Urbanite

Traditionally, the beginning of a new year comes with resolutions. But I’d like to start mine here with a confession. The divulging of a dirty little secret I’ve been harbouring and trying my best to forget. It could compromise my prized status as a bicultural urbanite, and it has to do with my bilingual abilities. Though ‘abilities’ would be a generous term here. [more …]
Getting into the Christmas spirit. © Isabelle Beyer

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Two Homes Are Better Than One: Christmas as an Expat in Berlin

One of the major drawbacks of being an Australian expat in Berlin is the egregious distance between yourself and your loved ones. This likely explains the twinge of envy I feel whenever my European friends tell me they’re casually popping home for quick a visit. And as December rolls around each year, and the popping home to Italy or England or France or Sweden starts unfolding as casually as ever, the twinge becomes a protracted spasm. [more …]
On the last warm day of summer we raced to Heiliger See and floated for hours in the cool, murky waters, trying never to stare at the many nudists. © Claudia Gillies

Guest blogger Claudia
‘Deutsch lernen’ and Mary Poppins: An Ode to Berlin Expat Life

It’s 6pm on a Thursday and I’m hopping mad. I’ve just been ‘controlled’. I’ve been fined for taking the U-Bahn without a ticket (allegedly). I’m indignant because I had a ticket but couldn’t access it. My lengthy protest, delivered in level A2-B1 Deutsch, falls on unsympathetic ears. [more …]
Franz Skarbina Christmas Market Berlin /extract. Gemeinfrei

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Classic meets Kitsch: This is why the Germans love Christmas time

In Australia, December marks the beginning of the ‘silly season’: a busy time of Christmas shopping, boozy socialising, TV re-runs and frivolous news stories. But while Aussies are slopping on sunscreen, Germans are slipping into thermal underwear and lighting Advent candles as they countdown to Christmas. [more …]
Me doing my best impression of someone who enjoys Berlin winters. © Isabelle Beyer

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
You Can Take the Boy Out of the Climate…

Being an Australian living in Germany who doesn’t really identify with anything quintessentially Aussie can lead to some rather trying conversations with strangers, writes our not-so Aussie Aussie Luke in his latest Bicultural Urbanite post in which he examines his identity in conjunction with Berlin’s winter weather. [more …]
Building an Ikea kitchen. © Brianna Summers

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Escape from the rising rents: Buying property in Berlin

Berlin’s low cost of living is one of its major drawcards. Creative young people flock here from all over the world to enjoy reasonable rent and 50 cent kiosk beers. But the property boom has made life tougher for tenants, so our blogger Brianna decided to get out of the rental game and into massive debt – by buying a flat. [more …]
Berlin is art. © Isabelle Beyer

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Uncanny Beauty: Berlin in 35mm

Treasured for so many of its intangible qualities, Berlin often gets something of a bad rap when it comes to the reality of its visual character. And at first touristic glance, perhaps the reputation isn’t entirely without reason. ‘My’ Berlin is a heady, affecting mixture of all these visual elements — an unlikely muse for magic and mischief alike.
  [more …]
Playground in the woods, ten minutes from home. © Felicity Tucker

Guest blogger Felicity
Navigating new beginnings times six

After facing a few years of adversity, a family of six embark on a rock’n’roll international move, braving the Berlin bureaucracy, language barrier and only eight weeks of summer a year, to live a whole new life filled with wonder and curiosity. 
  [more …]
Collection notice. © Brianna Summers

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Pipped at the post

Sometimes it is not as simple as it seems to pick up a parcel from a post office. Especially if you aren't a German citizen. A trek through the bureaucratic intransigence of ‘Servicewüste Deutschland’. [more …]
Plattenbau galore on Frankfurter Allee © Isabelle Beyer

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
When your Balcony is your fridge

If there’s a flip side of Berlin’s captivating essence, it’s the difficulty of finding the right home base in a city positively crawling with freshly captivated arrivals. With the sheer volume of applicants the renter of each room receives in Berlin, the ‘casual’ get-to-know-you chats that take place at the viewings often feel like you’re a contestant on some cringeworthy reality TV show. [more …]
Film still Lifeswap © Lifeswap

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Biotonnen and Chilly Bins: An interview with 'Lifeswap'

‘Lifeswap’ is an online animated series that explores the cultural idiosyncrasies and differences between Germany and New Zealand. And in the upcoming episode, Australia is added to the mix. Our 'Bicultural Urbanite' blogger Brianna has talked to one of the two creators of the series in Berlin. [more …]
Bicultural Urbanite © Isabelle Beyer

Bicultural Urbanite Luke
Berlin Calling - The Bicultural Urbanite Phenomenon

Like so many travel-bugged Australians before me, I moved to Berlin on a crazy whim. After becoming smitten with the city during what was fast becoming the obligatory Berlin party holiday, I decided to split from my incestuous flock of beloved Melbournians and jettison our plans of living together in London. [more …]
Bicultural Urbanite Brianna © Brianna Summers

Bicultural Urbanite Brianna
Origins of an Accidental Expat

When I arrived in Berlin in the summer of 2006, the city was still glowing with post-World Cup euphoria. Sunshine bounced off the pastel facades along Schönhauser Allee and impromptu bars served half-litre beers on overgrown, abandoned lots. [more …]

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