First the Kino International, now the former Mokka-Milch ice cream bar next door: two well-known buildings from the GDR era on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin are reopening their doors this year after renovation. The cult pavilion in Berlin-Mitte, which once housed an ice cream parlor that was even sung about by a pop singer, is now being run by Natacha and Alexander Neumann - under the name Mokka Milch. The opening ceremony will take place on Wednesday (tomorrow).
"We immediately fell in love with the property," says Natacha Neumann. Even though neither her husband Alexander nor the Frenchwoman had ever lived in the GDR, there was an immediate connection. "It was a perfect fit because we were looking for a place to meet. And then we did some research and saw that it was already a place like this in the GDR era," she says. "It was a place that made it possible for people to spend time together."
Whether in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig or Zerbst, milk bars were popular, modern meeting places in the city centers of the GDR from the 1960s onwards. Among other things, they served ice cream sundaes and ice cream shakes - and non-alcoholic drinks. Almost all of these ice cream parlors disappeared after the fall of the Wall. In Leipzig, the Milchbar Pinguin still exists.
