In praise of the späti, Berlin’s late-night corner shops

The späti is a Berlin institution. These late-night corner shops began popping up in the former German Democratic Republic for workers clocking off from their evening shifts. Serving as a mixture of mini-supermarket and meeting place, spätis have outdoor seating, often wobbly wooden tables and benches on which locals sit and drink cheap bottles of beer from the amply stocked fridges.

Spätis are much cheaper than bars, with most beers going for around €1.50 a bottle (and some as big as half a litre). They continue a quiet and benign form of East German egalitarianism, attracting to their benches any character that can afford the low price of a drink. The fridges also serve people who dart in after work to grab a wegbier – a beer to drink as you walk or ride the trams home. They can be found on almost every block in Berlin’s city centre and each späti has its own personality, which reflects the character of the immediate local population. Owners and locals know each other well, their families often growing up together.

My younger brother, who lives in Berlin, rolls his eyes when he questions me the next morning and I confess that I again visited a späti: ‘There are so many good bars you could try,’ he says, frustrated that he can’t visit them now he has a four-year-old and a baby boy on the scene.

I admit that one of the reasons I prefer spätis to many of those undoubtedly funky-looking bars is because they feel like such a refreshing blast from the past (as does much of Berlin). People simply gather, have a drink and chat; perhaps even exchanging a phone number. I was recently talking to two good-looking, articulate Berlin men in their early twenties. One suddenly said to me: ‘What was it like back then? You know, when people got together without smartphones; when you tried to chat each other up in person?’ Quite a lot like sitting outside of a späti, I thought.

There is a primordial need for that way of life. The späti modus operandi is not complicated: cheap supplies – absent Nanny State judgement of alcohol and cigarettes – with a local touch. Such reasonable simplicity is increasingly hard to find on UK streets, which are dominated by pricey cafes and restaurants that seem designed to be anything but egalitarian.

As a visitor, doing a späti-crawl is a great – and very cheap – way to explore Berlin, bouncing between neighbourhoods while watching the people of the city. Berliners, especially young Berliners, are absurdly cool and edgy, in a way that doesn’t look forced (as opposed to in US cities where many edgy people appear neurotic). Regardless of age, as per the egalitarian code of the späti, the clientele will speak to you if you engage with them on the wooden benches.