Princess Cheesecake (Mitte) - Let them eat (cheese)cake.

• Oukan 71 (Mitte) - Ultra-contemporary concept shop lures Japanese design back from the future.
• OnePiece (Mitte) - The Scandinavian take on Snuggie style.

● Flamingo (Mitte) - West Palm Beach meets East Berlin.

A rundown of the world's most tagged-up hotels.

“I visited, really liked it, and then months turned into years.”

There's a new nightlife hotspot in Berlin where tourists are congregating in droves to socialize, booze, and immerse themselves in wild, late-night fun. But it's not a bar or a club or one of the city's ever-so-popular unadvertised, underground warehouse parties. In fact, it's a locale where the nearby residents would really rather you didn't go.

Poor Knut the polar bear. First he was born in a zoo. Then he was rejected by his mother, left to be raised an orphan. Then he became a cuddly international sensation, the darling of children everywhere. He had his own song and stuffed animals and throngs of adoring fans. Then he got bigger and less cute and people stopped caring about him, sorta like what happened with Britney Spears. Then, his beloved zookeeper, Thomas Doerflein, who was essentially Knut's surrogate father, died suddenly. And now, PETA wants to castrate him.

While New York Fashion Week will have everyone from magazine editors to bloggers on tenterhooks searching for the next big thing, the most style-savvy fashionistas will be taking notes and packing their bags to head to the European hub of vintage shopping. When it comes to vintage style, no one does it better than Berliners. The quirky chic inherent to the Berlin street style ranges from the plethora of vintage stores to treasures troves of utilitarian design classics from East Germany's socialist past. And with so many designers set to reference fashions from the 80s and 90s in their collections, the wallet-friendly approach that Berlin offers to vintage style is more than worth the cost of a flight.

Yesterday I reported on the rumor that Lars Von Trier and Martin Scorsese were in talks to perhaps do some kind of remake of Taxi Driver. Today I’m beyond happy to report that said rumor was totally apocryphal—no such plans are even halfway in the works. Problem is, now I’m skeptical of every other report that’s coming out of the Berlin Film Festival, even the ones about projects I’m actually keen to see realized. The latest involves a new film version of The Threepenny Opera. In and of itself, this doesn’t sound like anything to get too excited about, but allow me to sweeten the deal. Although details aren’t very abundant, it will apparently be some kind of collaboration between Nick Cave and Andy Serkis, better known to the kids as Golumn from the LOTR movies. Oh, and did I mention that the pic will also be done with motion capture technology?

Two half-naked attention grabbing events took place this weekend! As you may have heard, or unfortunately witnessed, crazy kids in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco dropped trou on public transport Sunday as part of the annual "No Pants Subway Ride." Meanwhile, in Germany, members of the country's Pirate Party -- an offshoot of Sweden's Piratpartiet, aka those that are cool with file-sharing -- stripped down to their undies and hit airports in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Dusseldorf on Sunday to protest the implementation of full body scanners in airports.