Susanne Ahner and Rachel Kohn

The Wo Ihr wollt Café is a mobile café inspired by the history of Karl-Marx-Allee’s second section as a destination for daytrips. In this vein, a trailer will be converted into a fully functional mobile café with the help of its residents.

The area between Strausberger Platz and Alexanderplatz was once home to an infrastructure that included a variety of cafes and stores geared towards an international clientele. All that remains of the stores, doctors’ offices, service providers and restaurants today are a supermarket and a snack bar at each end of Karl-Marx-Allee’s second section. This has resulted in the disappearance of numerous possibilities for neighbourly encounters. Nevertheless, five years ago the initiative Max Pflanzen managed to secure the garden of the Max-Plank-Gymnasium (the area’s local high school) for a community gardening programme. Here they have created an inspiring space for learning close to nature.

The Wo Ihr wollt Café will build on this residents’ initiative. The artists and residents will plan and build the café trailer together with the neighbours. A meeting to kick off the project will be organised for all participants and interested parties. On six weekends, up to eight participants will build a bicycle trailer that can also be used as a hand truck in the HolzOMA workshop. It will offer space for a coffee machine, a refrigerator, silverware as well as folding chairs and tables.

In the summer months of June, July, and August, the Wo Ihr wollt Café will move around the area. On the first Sunday it will be parked at Max Pflanzen. The second community coffee date will take place on the north side near the Hasensäule, and a third gathering will be held on the centrally located lawn between Café Moskau and the KMA-II-Treff (local community centre). Residents can mark their homes with thumbtacks on a map of the district that will be mounted on the trailer’s front-facing wall. A community blog will be set up for further networking and communication among neighbours. After the period of active programming has ended, the trailer will be handed over to a person or a group residing in the neighbourhood, ideally to keep it running indefinitely.

The Wo Ihr wollt Café invites residents to come together as part of a collective project. The personal initiative required will create trust and lasting bonds. And last but not least, it will reawaken the memory of the sorely missed Mokka Milch Eisbar.