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Among the Berlin oddities described in Atlas Obscura , the COOP Anti-War Café likely takes first place for sheer quirkiness and eccentricity. Rochstrasse is a prime location—Hackescher Markt and Alexanderplatz are just around the corner, parking is monitored 24/7, and the streets are lined with chic shops and restaurants. Then, sandwiched between two high-priced boutiques, "Wood Wood Men" and "Wood Wood Women," you encounter a sort of gateway filled with a jarring amount of clutter.

A large "Peace" rainbow flag hangs nearby, along with a pinboard featuring the faces of Marx, Engels, Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara, and other leftist icons. There are T-shirts with protest slogans, shaky stools, worn-out speakers, and a wallpapering table serving as a beer counter. It feels like a romantic throwback to a plenary room in a 1980s-era squat; the fog of alternative subculture lingers in the air.

Entering the open area and climbing a few steps, you find the bar and a sea of posters, banners, and pennants—as if an Antifa march had swept through and nailed every protest sign to the walls and ceiling. Vladimir Putin appears repeatedly, portrayed as a wise ruler, a political luminary, and even as a "Peace Indian" on beer coasters. US Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden fare significantly worse.

The main theme here is peace—peace on earth and peace with the Soviet people. However, it is specifically the brand of peace envisioned by the owner and operator, Heinrich Bücker . He has run his "bastion of the true faith" since the early 2000s. He has watched the neighborhood gentrify and become overgrown by capital; only his little gem defies the superior force, like the legendary Gallic village in Armorica—a sort of leftist Asterix and Obelix rolled into one.

Tourists are lured in by very cheap beer; an orange sticker on the Sternburger bottles reads "Anti-War Beer" —drinking for peace. Photography is explicitly encouraged to help spread "the truth"—Bücker’s truth, which aligns closely with the perspective of the current Russian regime. Now in his seventies, Bücker seems to have absorbed the socialist education of the GDR with his mother’s milk, internalizing it forever.

The whole establishment feels strained, dusty, and carries an aura of the unintentionally comic . In the basement, an "Anti-War Museum" features black-and-white internet printouts from the end of WWII. The iconic image of the Red Army raising their flag over the Reichstag appears multiple times, alongside text claiming the "friendly Russian people" brought peace to the Germans.

I chuckle at the thought of someone opening a café in Moscow today dedicated to brotherhood with Trump’s or Biden’s USA; its half-life would be short. Yet, Bücker’s institution remains a colorful splash of free speech in Berlin. However, this freedom has its limits: Bücker found himself in court again after a June 2022 speech marking the 81st anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, in which he appeared to endorse Putin’s current actions. His views clearly clash with the modern zeitgeist, though he ultimately avoided punishment after the case moved through several instances of the court system.

As of July 1, 2025, Bücker officially handed over the management of the COOP Anti-War Café to an association called "Deutschland im Dialog mit den Staaten des Globalen Südens e.V." (Germany in Dialogue with the States of the Global South). The cited reasons were his age and struggling finances. Curiously, the chairman of this new association is none other than Heinrich Bücker himself.

The world revolution continues to be planned over "Anti-War Beer" by graying radicals and "best-agers" with dreadlocks, all to the rhythmic sounds of roots reggae.

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Not so long ago, I found a stash of my old ZX Spectrum games in the attic. And rummaging through those tatty boxes - the old half-forgotten bargain bin bangers, the illicit passed-around-the-playground compilation tapes - it wasn't the games I found myself thinking about, it was the memories around them. My mind leapt back to evenings spent poring over stamp-sized magazine screenshots; the Friday night trips to Tescos and the exotic box art tempting me to part with my £2; the POKE codes and the dog-eared anti-piracy sheets; the wild classroom rumours of in-game secrets that would only reveal themselves when elaborate steps were performed. But they're not just my memories, of course; they'll be familiar to many of a certain place and time. And it's this sense of cultural nostalgia that Forbidden Solitaire captures so well.

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Science word of the day: Autotroph

Pronunciation: AW'-tuh-trohf

What it means: Autotrophs are organisms that can feed themselves with inorganic substances such as light (for plants) or methane (certain microbes). Autotrophs were the first single-celled life-forms to colonize the planet, thriving on chemicals bubbling up from the subsurface at deep-sea vents or figuring out how to harness the sun for energy. Heterotrophs (like you, me and all fungi), arrived on the scene later to feast on these DIY-ers.

How to use it in a sentence: Stromatolites, microbial mats built by cyanobacteria, are autotrophs that thrived in ancient shallow seas.

Can you crack our science word of the day puzzle, Chain Word ?

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Award-winning entomologist Dino Martins, known for his work on pollinators, shows in his latest book that even the most gruesome creatures have vital roles to play

Dino J Martins has never been able to resist the small things. The renowned entomologist and evolutionary biologist spent his formative years in biodiversity-rich western Kenya with his foster parents, Joe and Sarah Ellen, looking at birds, flowers and insects on Mt Elgon, and in Kakamega forest and Kerio valley.

He was especially transfixed by the miniature world beneath his feet – dung beetles rolling mounds of cattle dung; safari ants’ migrations across the plains; male butterflies that suck salt and other nutrients from the mud to produce “nuptial gifts” during mating; and bees pollinating the critically endangered African violet alongside crops in a farmer’s field.

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