Rooting from the underground club scene of both Munich and later on Berlin Mellie was a key figure in the upcoming of the subculture. Organically after moving to Berlin she became a family member of the bar25, which later rooted into becoming Holzmarkt as we know it today. The time of the Bar25 was a time of revolution and forward thinking on many different levels, as they were reinventing the way of celebration and bringing people together in new ways. It was also at the early stages of Mellie’s time at bar25 that she encountered with Christian on night where she was working behind the bar. Christian was sparkling the atmosphere in his own special way, which was never to forget. Who would have thought that, that exact moment would lead to eXhale.ROCKS. Fast forward to 2017 the whole concept called Bar25 has branched into a multi-facetted village project, by the name Holzmarkt, in the centre of Berlin, where her role is covering not only door selection at Kater Blau, however also being the personal assistant of the people behind. Mellie is known for being the woman who is tying all of the knots together and always fulfilling the different roles in which she is covering, leading her into a burnout because of the lack of self-care. The burnout resulted in a 3 months’ rehabilitation retreat in Munich where she originally was born. The time made her rethink her life situation and question how to continue her life from there. It was then one week after the rehabilitation that Mellie bumped into Christian again after some years and completely out of the blue both had the idea to move to the mountains, and build a utopia. None of them has an exact plan of the setup, only that it should include health, sustainable living, nutritious food and nature. eXhale.ROCKS is a retreat space
The name, eXhale.ROCKS, was born and describes both the landscape of the land where the retreat is taking space as the fresh air to breathe. Situated on the middle of a mountain, therefor .ROCKS, which is also representing the team behind, being formerly ROCKstars of the Berlin club culture. Exhale stands for: “To send the air out of the lungs” as well as “it’s muscular action is involuntary: it pulls downwards when we inhale and RELAXES when we eXhale”. Also, being the synonym of leaving your past and stepping into present moment and realising a new beginning, which is something that all of the three people behind the project can relate to and has been going through recently. Those two words are the building block for what this retreat space stands for. To take a moment for just “being” as in the end of the day we are human “BE’ings and not human “DO’ings”.
