If you can read any amount of German, avoid the tourist-traps as listed in the Exberliner and find more interesting sides to the city by using "Zitty" or "tip".

Looking at Klamotte's other listings, I can't help but conclude that perhaps he or she has a vested commercial interest: The ExBerliner, Room with a Loo (credo: "give us your money, we'll sublet your flat to somebody and take their money too") and - I might be wrong on this last one - are all run by one and the same company (Iomauna Media).

The ExBerliner is a curious hybrid of advertorial and pink times: the monthly guide to different Berlin districts tends to highlight bars, clubs and restaurants that most right-minded people would normally avoid. Moreover, the editorial team has an avowedly gay and lesbian worldview - fine in and of itself, but makes for a rather limited read if you have little or no interest in gay adoption or lesbian motherhood. Final nail in the coffin? Extremely mitte-centric to the point of Nathan Barley-ism.

Only continues to "flourish" because there is no alternative.

As a recent expat, I read Exberliner on and off, even though I'm a 'respectable', 'normal' person with a family and on the wrong side of 40. Whatever the subject, the articles are good and my German is not yet fluent enough to enjoy German publications.

Even if "there is no alternative" the magazine would not be going strong after six years if Berliners didn't like it. Even a monopoly can go under.

Perhaps readers should not judge the magazine by one issue only - you cannot get an objective view this way. PS Perhaps Thinman has a "vested commercial interest" in one of the other Berlin magazines?