What Designer Hotels Miss About Real Hospitality - Tom Michelberger & Matthias Huettebraeuker

Matthias: My guest today is the owner and creator and mastermind behind one of my favorite hotels for the last 20 years. I think 17, or something. The Michelberger Hotel in Berlin. And since a couple of weeks ago, since I've been to his new project, the Michelberger Farm, he's the owner of two of my favorite hotels: the farmhouse and the Michelberger. He's a visionary guy, as you would say. He's a creator. He's a very grounded, wonderful person, I think. Tom Michelberger, welcome to the show.

Tom: Wow, thank you.

Matthias: Thank you for doing this. We're actually doing this in the podcast studio of the Michelberger Hotel, which is one of the many things about the hotel that until a couple weeks ago, I didn't even know existed. That's one of the things I love so much about the hotel. Even though it was built in 2009, opened in 2009, right?

Tom: 2009. Yes.

Matthias: After all those years, you still come here and you see something new, which I find absolutely fascinating. Speaking about that, it's been opened 17 years ago to quite a bit of buzz, right? It made a lot of waves in the Berlin neighborhoods, but also in the creative enclaves in Europe and beyond. If you come here today, it still seems as relevant or maybe stronger than ever. What's the secret behind staying relevant and resonating with people, even though the world has massively changed in that timeframe? You're still so in tune, it seems, with the people. How do you do that?

Tom: I would say that it's just very connected to Nadine and myself, our own personal journey. From the beginning, when we came to Berlin 20, 25 years ago, we were very much inspired by what we found in the city. The initial idea was, what would we do with the space that would benefit us, benefit others, and reflect what we found back then here in Berlin?

The idea of a hotel came very spontaneously, just by the pure fact of, what would we do with all of that space? The idea kind of made sense the more we thought about it. Since then, very much in our DNA is really reflecting on what we would like to provide, what our own inspirations and dreams are, but at the same time, also picking up what's around us, what the reactions are, what we see, what we want to provide.

The dream always was that the hotel gets better with age. I remember now very early on, that was something in the pretty crazy creative design process in the beginning. It was always clear to us that no matter how good of a job we do making and building this place, it will not have the relevance. The life will only begin once the doors open and then the people come in. So in this preparation time, as much as we could do was just to set the grounds, prepare the soil for this life to happen.

It was always set up in a way of, of course, this space will take on a life of its own. In the planning phase, we can only give it our best shot to provide the DNA for it to evolve. We're doing this now since 17 years and a lot of side projects and additional added elements have occupied our time and thinking. But it's quite fascinating how, when we every day walk through the space, what we can see to improve. Not just reacting to what's around us in Berlin or in the world, but just kind of seeing the space getting older with us.

One element was very clear, and this just kind of happened over the last couple of years. Until five, six years ago, I felt almost like in the same generation as our youngest team members. We had a very direct connection. So at some point, it became clear, of course, the hotel grows older with us, and also the average age of the people coming have grown older with us to a certain degree, because of course we also expanded our offer, from the Cozies now to the Hideouts with the sauna. So we provide a round experience, no matter how big your budget is. That is very much in the spirit of Berlin. On the streets and in our lobby, everyone is the same. But in the rooms, people can spend a lot or a little.

Now it's just obvious that the youngest team members, it's really hard for me to dig and dive into their world. But what is really helpful is, what I practically realized through having this diverse range of age groups, the connection is now indirect. We're in our late 40s, but there are still people in their 40s, in their 30s, and in their 20s. It's very interesting to see how it connects through those different generations.

Matthias: It becomes what we in Germany call basically.

Tom: Yeah. The fear at some point was, what is this hotel going to look like if we lost the touch in a full understanding of this young generation? That is peacefully answered, as long as the connection remains intact to the different periods. The DNA of our hotel doesn't need to grow continuously older with us. The entry level to reach young people, in terms of sustainability, that very much became a topic the last couple of years. That we remain accessible, that we focus on connecting first time travelers, the first romantic trip when you're 18 or 19. Because that's what we witnessed over the years, that people, even if they just came back every couple of years, a lot of people have this 17-year journey with us.

I would just say, always be aware of these evolutions and stay connected, both to the city, to your clientele, to your team. I think that's the key. If we would have fallen out of love with Berlin, if we wouldn't evolve our concept to attract the diverse group of people that we would like to have, then I think it would not be possible.

Matthias: Listening to you, and from my own experience with the place, it seems like a lot of people, even if they do a hotel with the best intentions, if they give all their personality into it and try to be authentic, whatever that means, there comes a point where it turns into a monologue. They open the hotel and they say, this is us. Your hotel feels more like a conversation. It feels more like you opened the hotel with that mindset, and I think you still have the mindset, then you say, now we're curious what you're going to do with it. So it's basically an offering, and people can make it into their own life context. Is that right? You see how people live with that and spend time with it, and you react to that. It's that curiosity, both to how your life develops, but also what other people bring into it, maybe.

Tom: Yeah. And the pure fact that the guests who arrive today don't care how amazing yesterday was.

Matthias: Exactly. Yeah. Is that also because one of the things many hotels try to achieve is what they call neighborhood integration or integration into a culture or subculture? You've done that quite effortlessly over the years. You've been very well connected into the music scene, probably rather subcultural and culture. Is that also a function of just being open and saying, sure, you can do a gig here, you can do that here, we have a band room, but we're not trying to put you into a box? We're basically open for you to own this place.

Tom: It took us a few years to find the right space, and we painted our whole apartment full of ideas. One image that keeps coming back, I drew this pyramid. At the top, you have the basics, you have the shower, you have the bed.

Matthias: Mm-hmm.

Tom: It's one of the core ideas, what we wanted to provide for someone who just wants to sleep well and shower well. That's enough. Don't overthrow them with all of the other stuff. But if someone wants to dig deeper, the more we can provide, the more interesting it becomes. That was a natural consequence that we never really thought about scaling, because the idea was always to go deeper, and maybe more diverse.

Matthias: Because you want to go deeper.

Tom: Exactly. Maybe it's just a platform for other things to happen. The whole music element only came because in the beginning, we were just a team of 30 or 40, and now we're a team of 150. We were at the bar making coffee sometimes when it was needed.

A lot of musicians initially came because there are a lot of small local venues. Back then, not really the super big ones. We connected with them. They enjoyed what we were providing. When you're touring, it's a refreshing experience if you come to a place that feels personal. Those friendships grew, and then the natural thing was concerts, hosting them. For years, it was a lot of times very spontaneously. Someone checking in in the morning, some of the biggest shows we have done, meeting people in the breakfast room and putting the show on in five hours.

In 2011, we did a beautiful festival here in the courtyard. This whole musical arm of our hotel pinnacled in 2016 and 18 with these pretty crazy, special, unique festivals we have done together with 200 artists, which evolved from these friendships. It was just this week here in the hotel and in Funkhaus. Across these 30 spaces, the People Festival.

It would not have been possible without this physical space, without serving and caring for people authentically. It was just a natural progression from listening to artists for years, on what they would like, what they would look for. Being outside, we were never part of the music industry, just as much as we have never been part of the hotel industry initially. Of course, we don't feel estranged to this world, but it really helped us to look from the outside with our fresh eyes, and then you just observe.

In the hotel case, we observed what's happening in the city and what kind of hotel, if there is a hotel, how would the hotel look like that we would like to stay in? The same approach we had with music and with the festivals. What would happen if the artists take on a space and make a festival and decide what they want to play and how?

That was possible through the setup and approach we had with the hotel. You build your confidence based on the experiences you have and the ideas that you manifest. In the process of all those years, there are so many ideas that didn't happen, but all of that just becomes part of the work. Sometimes you just manage to find the right constellation and the right moment and the right time and the right people to bring something into reality.

Matthias: The moment finds you.

Tom: Yeah. To bring something, or you're allowed to bring it into reality. Then it becomes beautiful. In regards to the hotel, it is important to set it up in a way that it has an opportunity to have a successful life. This whole design process is, in a sense, not as important as you might think.

Over breakfast, we talked about this experience in the Turkish mountain village at this gastronomy place. What are these authentic experiences? There is definitely a desire to provide an authentic experience, which reflects where we stand and what we observe, and to open the doors for people to experience that. In that sense, we're very connected to people doing small things in remote places, and maybe doing it since generations, in full responsibility and decision making.

Matthias: I think when you say openness, openness is very important. And what we just talked about before, having a conversation rather than a monologue, basically going or meeting people and being open to what they bring, and where that leads you back. Maybe give a little bit of context for the listeners. You are basically in the neighborhood of what's called the MediaSpree in Berlin, which is when you opened, it tried to become this media hub in Berlin. MTV was there, Universal Music was there. It became this attempt at building a creative neighborhood.

Then, as it happens, the hotel chain came, and they built the hotel and they hired this fashionable designer, Karim Rashid, and they themed it all around music and it became an attempted storytelling rather than depth. Of course, it never worked, basically. So that never became a thing.

Tom: But I think it does work. There is...

Matthias: It does work as a hotel, but it's not this music creative hub. It's basically just another hotel with a theme park kind of theme. Also, when we talked over breakfast, and it's actually interesting because we did talk before this podcast, and now we just pretend we start a conversation, which is not what happens. So we're just talking on this time recording. We also talked about another hotel, the 25hours in Berlin, which happens to be done by the same designer who did originally the Michelberger, Werner Aisslinger. We tried to talk about the differences. The difference, as so often, is there are people who create something that, as you said, develops with you and grows organically. It has a life of its own. At some point, people come and take a snapshot and replicate that snapshot, and think if they go through the same design decisions, they're building something that's as relevant. Then they're totally disappointed if it doesn't. Maybe it works in a shorter context, but it doesn't ever reach that level of connection, because they mistake the storytelling and the design decisions for that depth and for that connection. And, as you said, the fact that a good hospitality place is basically the extension of the people who run it, who own it, who live with it, who grow old with it.

There's probably another thing. You can't curate yourself into connection or into belonging. You have to work on it constantly.

Tom: Maybe initially, we didn't think about these things in the beginning. I just remember when people came, "Oh, that's a nice concept." I just recognized myself, I have a resistance, always had the resistance with that word. It never feels like a concept.

Matthias: Yeah.

Tom: It doesn't feel like a strategy. It was kind of a necessity. It was a necessity for me and Nadine to do something together entrepreneurially. It was a necessity to make something out of our opportunity that is given here in the city, with all of these empty spaces and the creativity that we experienced living the first years here. That's a very natural entrepreneurial take and approach.

When you distill things, even with the best storytelling and with the sharpest context, you maybe create a mountain retreat and you tell an amazing story, and it just looks outstanding. There was a lot of money invested, and for sure, for some reason, it makes sense that it costs 2,000 euros per night. But then you realize, if it's done to that perfection, and when you actually, unfortunately, haven't experienced it because it just feels wrong to spend so much money. To me, it almost feels like it's just a step away from living with some old person in a mountain hut, on a wooden floor. What's the next? Like, why would I spend 2,000 euros a night with the most amazing storytelling so a forager can bring something on the breakfast? It's just one step away to how a lot of people very naturally across the world live since centuries, if they're not disturbed and destroyed by wars and conflicts and all of these things.

That's why I find it a very interesting point in time. Our luxury, the freedoms we could live, and the money that was flowing all over the place, you had the separation of the entrepreneurial with the capital market. All of a sudden, you have these startups, you have people telling good stories and convincing people who have either real estate or lots of funds available to create something. There's a lot of products now on the market. Some get so absurd that it almost feels too absurd, that it kind of loses its point. It feels like at the end of some cycle almost.

A very positive outlook would be that we're now going back to actually a very interesting place where people automatically, by the pure fact that the crisis is just getting too crazy and the pressure is too high, and people lose their jobs, maybe we connect with these simple things again. Of craftsmen, of opening a little restaurant in a village, taking care of older people, opening a kindergarten, creating smaller events. Because most people know what makes them happy. Maybe now, the opportunity presents that we have to stick together. We have to think practical. We have to look into what's in our hands, what's our playing field. Stories like you shared, that someone who, the son of this beautiful hotel couple that we know, never thought about taking on this beautiful hotel, and now all of a sudden starts engaging and is interested.

I think that's the same with hospitality and with farming as well. We have these decentralized systems still in place, these families, the people that build things over generations, that are connected with the land, that are connected with the product they provide. What's more beautiful than to continue that story?

I feel very much connected to these people who have this very practical approach to seek the happiness and also seek the work and to make their living in their immediate environment. Maybe that is an opportunity where a lot of people who might lose now their classical career path can reconnect again with a more simple life.

Matthias: To a more simple life and to a probably more connected life. You talked a lot about connection, and the connection that you and Nadine had to the place, and the responsibility almost you felt to do something for this place and with this space. Is that also the reason, you also talked about entrepreneurship, and after the initial success of Michelberger, I'm sure there was a lot of outside interest to collaborate on scaling it. There probably were your own ideas to scale it. As you said, you never did that, not in the classical sense. I mean, you did the farmhouse, we'll talk about that in a minute, but you never did Michelberger two, three, four, five, six. Was that because you felt you would lose the connection? Or was it because you wanted to keep independence?

Tom: The independence element is at the core from the beginning. We really knew, the money needs to be in the system, it needs to come from us. We're not good in, we don't want to become managing and reporting. This freedom of decision making is at the core of what we do. Nadine comes from a farm. My father and grandfather, my grandfather after the war, came home to his village. There was nothing, and so they needed houses. He started the construction company, and then at some point he became mayor of this 800 people village. So it's this very practical entrepreneurial approach, which is just embedded with what we do.

What was your question?

Matthias: You never did New York, was basically the question, because you told me in one of our other conversations that you thought about going to Brooklyn.

Tom: We never thought about taking on money to open more places. But at some point, through the friendships and relationships that formed, we very quickly, I think in 2011 or something, came to Brooklyn. With our friends, we had the idea to do something similar there. The idea to do a sister hotel just made sense in our heads. This is something we could grasp.

We developed this for a couple of years, and then the place that we had fell through. But we learned so much in the process. It was a very inspiring time for us to always feedback. To hear in Brooklyn back then there were like five hotels, and there was nothing for a city as big as Berlin.

At some point, the whole idea of what we wanted to do there became too big, and then it just felt like, no, maybe it's not the time. Then we just looked for something closer. For a while, we were looking at maybe connecting. We had a city place, so maybe to do something in the countryside. We looked at Portugal in 2015, where we also worked for a couple of years on getting the permits, with something which would have looked similar to what we now have in Skreva, the farmhouse.

In a way, our journey was from Berlin, New York sister hotel and maybe having a few places, in the pre-corona times where we saw that opportunity. We would have had to figure out how we operationally do that. Looking back, these New York relationships manifested in the form of the festivals we then did. Portugal brought us in connection to the countryside again, into the local communities. When we started realizing, maybe it's not Portugal for us, it became so obvious it needs to be Brandenburg. It's, in a way, from New York, we could have straight away thought about Brandenburg, but we needed a little detour from New York to Lisbon to Brandenburg.

Matthias: Sometimes they have to go away to come back.

Tom: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Why would we go anywhere else? The beauty to seek that connection, that bridge between rural and city, and be a bridge in that. Start with the produce that we need for our spaces, and then right now also provide a direct experience out there.

Matthias: Maybe give a little intro to the concept.

Tom: It feels like the same process as with the hotel or the festivals. It has not been strategically planned. We always had the idea of growing our own vegetables would be a good idea, a natural consequence of our produce focus.

Then we landed in this area, which we spontaneously fell in love with. We found this little place in the middle of a village, and we just took it. We decided, okay, there is a field, we can plant our vegetables here, and then things started unfolding. By chance, we met at the same time Ernst Götsch, who is this pioneer of syntropic agriculture, these food forests. That whole idea made sense to us in the concept. We developed an idea for the field of how we want to grow it. Then the field started growing, Corona happened, we could spend time out there, the first produce came, we started doing events out there. Always 50% local community, 50% coming from Berlin. There were some really beautiful afternoons around the fireplace with food, very simple.

Another simple experience which triggered the next evolution was, if you transport the vegetable just an hour to Berlin, and then it's in the fridge here, and then it lands. It's just a different versus taking it from the field, putting it on the fire, and eating it 15 minutes later. It's a totally different experience.

In theory, that would have sounded, okay, sounds a little boutique or whatever. But if you actually experience it, it just totally makes sense. Then we said, okay, the best would be to turn this old barn into a place where people can eat at a long table every night, stay overnight, stay 24 hours. We started that process of building it. The core idea was just to build something that brings together people under one roof at one table.

Our restaurants since the beginning, these long tables, these communal experiences around food and music, just makes sense. It's fun, and it's what we can do. It's our first new build. It's much easier to envision a space that already exists, even if it's just the layout. Here in the hotel, we have these beautiful tiles outside, where you have a reference. There, the reference was the village, the neighborhood. Luckily with Sigurd Larsen, our friend who we did that with, his first draft was just perfectly matching that.

But until the first dinner we had there, it was unclear what this is. Even when you want to say concept, what's that? What are we doing there? Why are we in the middle of a village? When the first conflicts came up, and people were like, what are they doing there? It takes years to build that trust. The parking issue, here and there. Sometimes you wonder, why did we land in the middle of a village? And it becomes obvious, that's the perfect place to do it, because we're integrating into something existing. We're bringing in something new. We also don't know where that journey will go.

To then have the farmhouse, to have this long table, to have this shared concept experience, it only became clear in the first couple of dinners we had at this table. Every night, 30 different people come together. We're open on the weekends, Friday to Monday in summer. It takes literally five seconds for people to break the ice and find the connecting ground. You just witness and experience yourself how beautiful it is to actually spend the night with strangers. How quickly you connect on topics, no matter how. Every night there are people who would never encounter each other in their regular life, that probably have so many judgments and pre-assumptions about the way people live, what they vote for, what they think, how they behave, what their values are. But then you realize, probably 99% unites us. The differences are very marginal.

That's a very enriching experience because you become a little bit less opinionated, more respectful, more humble, more loving. You experience something which is just very normal. In essence, it's kind of what we have here in the hotel. Every day the world runs through, but it's very active, it's very alive. And then the farm, it's very focused. Every day the village comes together, or a small family farms for a couple of hours.

In a sense, it's a similar experience, but at a more essential end. For us personally, for the first couple of years, it's a very beautiful experience because we could connect with people with more time and just be open for that experience, which in a hotel and a daily life is just not possible to that end in the city. That's where more our team take over that relating to people.

Matthias: What you just said is probably an interesting word. When we talked over breakfast this morning, you also said at some point, what really interests you these days is doing something that connects to the essential needs we always had as a species. As you just said, picking stuff from the garden to eat it right there is a really archaic experience because that's what we did for centuries or millennia. We talk so much about experiences and about social experiences, and then we create entertainment, and we forget that simple act of sharing a meal is probably the most archaic yet deep social experience you can have. To sit at a long table, as you do at the farmhouse, and just share a meal that's just been brought in from the garden.

The other thing you said, you said, of course we went to the middle of the village and integrated. That sounds easy, but integrating with your Michelberger concept in a place like Berlin is not as easy as it sounds. To go with that kind of concept with a rather urban clientele that comes to the place, to that village with a totally different life reality, that is probably not as easy as it sounds. Is it because, as you just said, you and Nadine have a similar background, so you connect easily to them and you understand them? How do you do it? I can imagine not everybody was happy when you built. The thing that Sigurd built is a beautiful building. I think it's nominated for an award. So it's not just taking what's there. It's quite, one might say, a statement, and not necessarily one people are familiar with in that village. Yet, as I noticed when you were there, you really are part of the village. You make it sound too easy. Probably it's not easy. Or is it just how you are?

Tom: One thing over the last couple of years to me always resonated. When we don't get along with our neighbors, who are we to formulate what the world should look like? We very much went into this space, like back to where we come from. We come from a village structure. So yes, it's not a strange environment for us. It's actually an environment we were maybe on a soul level seeking to reconnect with, because 25 years in a city does something to you. There was a natural connection to that type of living. We very quickly rediscovered the appreciation for the village as this original community idea. For reasons, we are organized for the most part of our history in these smaller units.

The support system, the fact you know that your neighbor, he's not going to move when the contract runs out. He's just going to be there, and if the grandfather died, the kid takes over. You get along.

Then, as a first step, it was to make clear, of course, describe to them what our intentions are. We're not building a private luxury place for us, nor are we building a retreat, because for that, we could have just gone into a forest. We are actually also on a discovery journey. To take the people along very early, that's what we did. We invited them, we showed them, we hosted events. We were open, integrated the local craftsmen.

But at the same time, you also at some point realize you have to develop a certain confidence with what you also bring. In the beginning, we were very open, we knew that it's like maybe a delicate situation. But at some point, we just said, you know what, you guys, you can do what you do, but we're also here, and we're here to stay, and we want to contribute.

Matthias: Mm-hmm.

Tom: It also needs to work for us. We're part of that group now. Then you just realize at some point, it becomes obvious that they actually don't have a problem with you or with what you do. It's just general. Even the people that are there since 50 years are kind of the newly arrived. You also understand it has nothing to do with Brandenburg. It's just when people from the outside come into a smaller place. It's just a natural thing. You need to integrate, but at the same time, you need to bring a certain self-understanding and also make your point. Because if you're just continuously taking on that role of, I need to provide for the locals, then it needs to be on an eye-to-eye level. In the beginning, you need to give, which we did and we keep doing it that way.

It took three years, I would say. Since two years, even with the most complicated or resistant neighbors, we're on solid terms. The worst is that someone doesn't care of what we do, and is maybe annoyed if a car parks where it shouldn't park. These are problems we can deal with, and we can also respect and understand that maybe some people just want to be on their own. But most people are just happy that there is more life coming to the city, because unfortunately it still is the case that most villages lose their infrastructure.

In that sense, we just trusted and took on what the environment was there. What we were seeking was authentic. For ourselves, we wanted to reconnect with smaller infrastructure. We wanted to reconnect with the soil and with where stuff comes from. That motivation is a good base, because we don't need to storytell.

Matthias: It's actually pretty close to that Turkish mountain village you mentioned earlier. And it probably helps with the integration that you're actually present. It's not like you build something, you hire a manager, and it kind of runs. Whenever it's open, you are there, Nadine is there, your wife is there. I think your sister is helping, at least she was when I was there. So when I visited a couple weeks ago, as you said, it's that long table, everybody eats together. You were on the table, it was your birthday. You were still on the table with strangers, celebrating your birthday with total strangers in your place. Nadine was serving, your sister was serving. So it's actually going to someone's house to have dinner, to be with them and to spend time with them. It's actually quite the opposite of a commercial hotel.

That probably helps with the neighborhood, because they realize, okay, he really wants to be part of this village and bring people to his house. And like your presence in the Michelberger Hotel in Berlin, it also probably sets a ceiling to how much you can still expand. Whatever you do seems to thrive because you're actually there, and you can't lose DNA because you're still living in it and working with it and expanding it. Is that something you always want to make sure, if you do something, that you actually never grow too far apart from it? Or is it also not a concept, but just something that happens?

Tom: For us, if you cannot enjoy yourself what you create, then you're just operating something abstract, which you don't connect with. You don't enjoy yourself. Take it with the restaurant we have. If we don't enjoy the food, what's the point to have a restaurant?

Matthias: Mm-hmm.

Tom: That's the luxury. The luxury is to enjoy it yourself. If you don't enjoy it, think about what you can change, either with yourself in how you're organized, or what the offering that you provide is.

Matthias: Mm-hmm.

Tom: Currently, we're more thinking of integrating our ecosystem of distillery, music festival, country place, city place, coconut water. There's so much more depth we can create around this, and stability also in these times. At the same time, becoming even more professional on stabilizing the things and being sharp of what we offer. Our brunch buffet, our breakfast buffet, is always my favorite example. Since many years, we provide an exceptional brunch and breakfast experience.

For years, half of the people who come are local people. On the weekend, we run until three. People keep coming back for a specific offer that they currently very rarely or, in a lot of people's view, do not get in this composition of everything self-made, small selection, great produce, nice atmosphere. Operationally, it's a standard. We're not coming up every week with the new seasonal menu, but we have people in the kitchen who enjoy the basic standard, and every time create new vegetable salads or improve the bean salad. There is always evolving, going deeper, changing with the seasons, but it provides a very accessible, basic service. People know what they get and what they expect and they enjoy getting that.

The more we succeed in standardizing these special, solidly good experiences, the more freedom we have to think about other things. Nadine always is very important, the heartbeat of all that we're doing is the hotel, and the hotel needs to be healthy and needs to feel good for us, for the team. That's why we're considering doing the festival again, because we are in a good place right now. We have the best team we ever had. Considering the outside circumstances, we can move forward. That provides the opportunity to take some risk again and go into creation mode again into something new, or maybe a little bit risky.

That's the balance of just being solid and then having the freedom to explore something new. Currently, this exploration of something new is rather focusing on the things we already have touched on, on the relationships we have built. For example, with this festival, you wouldn't build a community right now if you would start right now. It's been building over 10 years before the first one happened in 2016. To revive and reconnect and heal also certain things that happened in the world and in between people over the years, it feels like a good time to reconnect with something that was of value and bring it into reality right now.

We're way far away from thinking in any type of scaling to another hotel or anything. It just doesn't feel the calling of the time, nor is that any desire from our side.

Matthias: If we talk about Michelberger Farm again, there's also this total level of intimacy. To explain a little bit, you have in that house the dinner place downstairs with the communal table, then you have the bedrooms, which are basically rooms with the bed. There's not much in it. You even have shared bathrooms. Everybody takes their shoes off if they enter the house and leaves them off. You're having dinner, which is really nice dinner with nice wines and everything, and you have no shoes on, and the people like you have no shoes on. That's very intimate. As you told me, it's also not a concept. It also happened accidentally, at the opening party or something. What was the story?

Tom: At the bottom, it's this beautiful stone floor, but on the top floor, we have the beautiful wooden floor.

Matthias: Mm-hmm.

Tom: For the opening, we had, we invited 100 people from Berlin and 100 people from the village. When everyone arrived, it became clear that the outside wasn't fully ready. There was a lot of dirt. If 200 people would just walk through the building, with all of the stones on there, it was just a practical decision to protect the material.

Matthias: But it adds so much now to the atmosphere.

Tom: Yeah. Then we just said, okay, here are the shoes. It was just really funny because the house at the bottom opens to almost all sides. So you have the feeling you're outside when it's really warm. It's our home, which we open to the public over the weekend and to the locals.

From that event, with everyone taking the shoe off, we afterwards said, that totally makes sense, because it makes a full-on difference if you walk into a space. So we since then kept it. Of course, if there's an older person who can't or doesn't want to take it off, it's also fine. It's not enforced, but 99% just naturally do it and also enjoy it.

Matthias: And it's the same with the shared bathrooms. It's probably not easy to get away with. But in that context, it feels totally natural.

Tom: Yeah. That was also a big, until the end I was like, with Sigurd, hmm, are you sure with this? Because we have the Hideouts where people can have a kitchen and have their own bathroom, and the Loft Room where they have their own bathroom. But most of the rooms have a shared bathroom. Until late in the process, I was advocating, because there was an option to add maybe a bathroom, but it would have destroyed the entire idea of the house.

I'm very happy and surprised how actually little of a problem it is. Because in essence, it's exactly the same thing, that it's on a DNA level. The transition to whatever, the music, when people are in a room with an instrument and are talented, they naturally make music. When people sit at a table and eat food together, they naturally connect and create through their shared stories and share about their lives and explore whatever happens when people talk about things. When there's a shared bathroom, people arrange. When you use the bathroom, you leave it because you know someone else is coming. It's not a cleaning lady who comes after every guest. The cleaning lady comes, but not after every guest.

Matthias: You have to clean yourself.

Tom: But you just take care a little bit. We're programmed like this in a shared experience. Everyone grew up in one kind of a family with a shared experience. So it's not a big step to do that.

Matthias: And people are actually surprised how little of a big step it is.

Tom: Sometimes we do have people who say, I didn't know how that's going to be. They are just surprised how little of a step it is.

Matthias: It's actually what you just said. The first time you want to have a shower there, you've already had lunch or had a meal with everyone else. So it's basically your family already, so you might as well share a bathroom.

As you mentioned Sigurd, you just said there's no need to do another sister hotel. It feels like you've done, as I said at the beginning, the OG project, and then you did farmhouse with Sigurd, and then you brought Sigurd also to do stuff here, right?

Tom: It's the other way around.

Matthias: Oh, the other way around.

Tom: In 2015 or 16, with Sigurd, we built two rooms, the first Hideouts. We realized we need to provide a room that people don't have to leave. By then, we had people who weren't interested in a busy lobby or a nice bar. They just wanted to be on their own. We turned one of the big band rooms into two Hideouts, with the sauna and everything. Sigurd had these ideas. These are the original Hideouts.

Matthias: Uh-huh.

Tom: Now we have more, but he just came up with these ideas for this white inhouse. So it's like a hut in the house, and then the other one has the same ingredients but looks totally different.

That was the first beautiful experience with Sigurd. Then in 2018, we redid the lobby with him, which was also an interesting process, because the lobby somehow was iconic. You walk in, we had these book lamps and these bookshelves.

Matthias: Yeah.

Tom: We managed well to create a space which is accessible. Then you have certain elements that people like, and those things you don't necessarily want to mess up with the redesign or destroy the idea of the lobby. We knew the setup works. We knew those two lamps, the way the bookshelves and all of this. Sigurd managed to have ideas with, now we have these beautiful handmade big chandeliers.

Matthias: Mm-hmm.

Tom: We just kept the layout and the ingredients and just updated them, pretty much the material of the ingredients. In the beginning, we didn't have a lot of money, so we were forced to be creative, which we always knew is a good thing. If you have a thousand euros to spend on a lamp, you have a wide range of choices.

The lobby was, everything handmade, super cheap. After six, seven, eight years, it was time, basically, which age is better.

Matthias: So basically...

Tom: As a last sentence, the funny thing was, people come in, and they don't even realize it. It's the most drastic change. It's totally different lamps, the sofas. But for people, as soon as the layout remains the same, you just feel and sense, oh, that looks nice, or, that hasn't changed. I was maybe scared that after eight years, it doesn't feel right. But you give that uplift, which is not seen in a specific way, but just felt.

Matthias: So basically the Michelberger as it is now is its own sister hotel. So you did create a sister hotel.

Tom: Yeah.

Matthias: It's just the same place, basically.

Tom: Yeah, and probably many sister hotels.

Matthias: It's interesting that, as you just said, you bring a new designer, a new face, a new mind, who basically builds off of what exists already. He does something new, but it still feels coherent. That's not commonly done. People, if they hire someone new, they basically try to negate what was there before. That's not what happened. So I'm guessing that even if you talk to Studio Aisslinger now, they're probably happy with the result. They probably feel respected.

Tom: I think Werner, we have contact here and then. This original creator group, it was him, it was his team. He had a very strong team that supported, which we worked mainly together on. We had a strong team of interior people. It was maybe this group of five, six, seven, eight people who dove into this crazy creative process. It was challenging on so many levels, with how constructions are. The fact back then, we were just kind of, whenever someone had a better idea and it felt right, we adapted, and we changed. Which is, in a construction process, the most tricky part. Back then, I learned Roombook, and I never understood. We just knew we were going to live in this space, and if we have a better idea, we need to make it happen.

That's why it turned out the way it turned out, because we followed whenever someone had a clarity. Werner often had clarity on certain topics. We trusted him on that. In the public spaces, other people had clarity. Then we followed that. That's why it's a result of an interesting creative process where everyone who contributed took a lot out.

I think everyone who was involved back then knows what big of a part they played in creating also visually something original, because it naturally was original. It was not coming as an idea out of one head, but it was an idea that sprung with the interplay of many people who dedicated their time to make something new.

Matthias: That's interesting. It's also the basic story with the sister hotel within the same hotel that we talked about over breakfast. About how these days, we seem to, everybody always wants to consume more and do more and more and more.

The whole story of Michelberger is such a beautiful story of, you can constantly reinvent yourself, and to stick into actually one or two places is not stagnation at all. Because you can do so much, and it gets deeper and deeper and better and better and more personal. It's actually not necessary to always reach out to do the next thing somewhere else. Because you can still be very creative and very much involved and probably satisfied on a much deeper level if you have that kind of connection also to place and its history and future at the same time.

Tom: Every hotel, even if it's a, everything is a living organism. The more you allow that organism to have its phases. I wouldn't say that the general direction is that we reinvented and changed and evolved. There have been daily ups and downs, and there are certain focuses. You focus here and the other one, but I think that's the human side of it.

Matthias: That's how relationship works. Sometimes you're closer, and sometimes you focus on that. It's also relationship to the product.

We obviously put the links to both websites in the show notes. I really encourage everyone who comes ever to Berlin to obviously stay at the Michelberger, but also make your way out to the farmhouse. It's really one of the most beautiful experiences I've had in a long time. I have to admit, when I came there and saw the shared bathroom, I was like, ooh, really? But it was actually beautiful, and it was such a great time.

One last thing as we, which is totally disconnected, but I always felt, as we put the link to the website in the show notes, your Michelberger website is, I think, and without wanting to sound like a fanboy or something, the most brilliant hotel website I've ever seen still. But whenever I tell people I'm going to the Michelberger, whatever, everyone who works in the business of creating a hotel website says, it's a fucking disaster. There's two clicks and you still don't see an image, the pictures are so moody and stuff.

How could you have been so bold to create the website that defies every industry rule of how a hotel website looks?

Tom: What do you like about it?

Matthias: I think I like the level of boldness. It totally reflects not industry best practice, but it totally reflects on how you see your place and how you want to transport how it feels to live here, as opposed to transport facts or optimize click-through rates or whatever. It totally feels like, as you said, it's not a concept. It's what happened because you try to translate the feeling or your mindset into a digital form that is an extension. It actually is the best storytelling ever, because it transports what's already there as opposed to make-up stories. That's what I like so much. But I think it's a huge level of boldness to create a website that everybody says, what are you thinking?

Tom: We're just super joyful and happy that our first co-creator was Asar Kazimir, who's with us since the beginning, since 2008. He walked into the construction office, because we were looking, okay, we need a logo, we have a letterhead. Until that point, I never thought about any design element.

Then he was like, no one needs a logo. Logo is outdated. I want to treat this hotel like a creative agency. He's an artist himself, and he worked in agencies before, many years, and was not so happy with the whole life around it.

Do you know the Space Rocket website, the one before? He opened up a whole new universe of taking what our vision was for the physical experience and translating this into its own digital creative world. The website obviously is an expression for that. The first website was just this rocket flying into space, which was just very magical and super special.

At some point, he was just like, yeah, we need a new website. The cycles for himself as well, as soon as he got bored or over his own creations, he wanted, he proposed something new. Actually, this one started then. He picks the people he wants to work with, and then we give our input.

It's maybe an example of why we can do what we do, or why you experience certain things here with us the way you do, is because we translate what is in the physical and just thinking about wanting to change something up, and then he just came up with this idea.

The first one was everything was hand drawn, and this had this color theme and color frame. Maybe a strength is that if we have the trust into people, and if we know that they're committed and they want to do something good, we give that a space to them. Be it with the chefs or the service, or with Asar doing the website.

From our side, we brief and we give our input, but then we leave a lot of space for every person to leave their mark. As long as it remains in the frame, our job is just to hold the frame, to build the frame for more people than ourselves to express themselves.

If I would have done the website with the agency, it would probably look more like a, because it's not my world. But it's his world, and he has the skills. If you have great collaborators who see what you want to do and can add something new, which Nadine and I by ourselves wouldn't have been able to, then it just becomes so much more.

Over the years, we managed to do that with a lot of people, that we could give them the space to leave their mark and tell their story in the context of the hotel.

Matthias: Beautiful last words, I think. Tom, thank you very much for doing this. It was a pleasure. Everybody, check out the hotel, check out the farmers, and if you can't, at least check out the website. It's brilliant. Thank you very much.

Tom: That was joyful. Thank you.