Coworking craze
Over the last two decades, coworking spaces have been springing up throughout Brandenburg at a rapid rate. Artistic minds saw potential in the disused factories, run-down barns and vine-swallowed manor homes scattered across former industrial and agricultural villages as early as the 1990s.
Now, the move to remote working, a certain pandemic who shall not be named, and rising rent prices in the city have people looking to the ‘burbs and beyond for a more affordable and sustainable way of life. In the village of Gut Stolzenhagen, Terezas opens its doors to creative minds itching to get away.
The space
Arriving at Terezas feels like entering a true artists’ colony. The collection of buildings, including the Ponderosa artist centre, are mismatched and patchwork, but clearly built with care. From the outside, the craftsmanship of partners Tereza and Jörg is on display: hand-built wooden furniture and sturdy, linear architecture ground you in the space.
Stepping in, you get a better sense of the personality they bring to the place: bright colourful walls with stone inlays, patterned fabric sourced from Tereza’s home country of Rwanda, funky mismatched 70s cookware lined up on a shelf. The result is a pleasing mix of at-home-and-not: the Zuhause feeling of curling up in front of the wood-burning fireplace as another guest cooks dinner, but with large windows and open-air spaces clearly demarcated to facilitate both work and pleasure for guests.
The living room and kitchen flow through to the deck and workroom, but without the feeling that work “spills over” from one space to another. Instead, it seems designed to inspire the kind of thinking where a project or idea lingers on your mind as you go about your day. Tereza and Jörg say they get all types, from students finishing their Master’s theses to groups of writers finding motivation in numbers.
The vision
To the pair, Terezas is not a fixed entity: it is a coworking space and a guesthouse, but also a place to start building a community, and they hope that the space will evolve as they do. It’s already expanded since they first arrived and now includes a summer kitchen, garden area, three indoor double rooms and three outdoor cabins. Visitors will often wander down to the nearby lakes and canal, or take a long cycle to Parsteinsee during breaks from their projects.
So what’s on the horizon for Terezas? Says Jörg simply, they just want to surround themselves with “really nice people”. That could mean expanding to become more of a coliving space, which would give them the chance to follow their own artistic pursuits.
For the couple, sustainable living is ultimately about redefining luxury, examining it not as it relates to material wealth, but to a wealth defined by access to wild nature and the freedom to do the kind of work that makes you feel good and whole. “We are living in luxury here,” says Tereza with a smile, “and I want to share that with people.”
Getting there
Public transport to Terezas can be a bit tricky – you’ll take the RE3 one hour to Angermünde and then make one or more bus connections, depending on the time of day. You can also opt to cycle from Angermünde, a hilly but beautiful ride on a mix of paved roads and cycle paths that will take around an hour. It’s best to visit by car (a journey of around 1.5 hours), which also makes it easier to pick up provisions from nearby Lünow.
Double rooms start at €54 per night in the shoulder season, with a two-night minimum stay. Email [email protected] to make your reservation. More information available via the website.
