Melitta Sundström, Berlin

About Melitta Sundström

Named for Melitta Sundström — the stage name of cabaret performer and HIV/AIDS activist Thomas Gerards, who died in 1993 — this Kreuzberg bar-café on Mehringdamm is one of Berlin's oldest queer scene cafés, and has anchored the Bergmannkiez end of the gay scene for roughly three decades. By day it's coffee, homemade cakes, and board games spread across mismatched furniture under high ceilings; by evening it shifts to cocktails, cabaret nights, and rotating art on the walls. The crowd is a mix of neighborhood regulars and visitors who prefer Kreuzberg's scruffier, less-polished energy over Schöneberg's tidier scene. A terrace out front fills up the moment the weather turns. It's more living-room-with-a-stage than nightclub — a place to ease into an evening or land softly at the end of one.