Words by Robbie Hodges
Design by Yosef Phelan

Sometimes, while slumped and sweating over the predictable summer glut of Instagram stories, it’s easy to wonder: is there life beyond Fire Island torsos, Mykonos sundowners and gnarly twilight breakfasts in Berlin? More to the point, when did the big Queer summer vacay become so formulaic, so – *groan* – clichéd?

Fret not. GT has plunged deep, bared all and got the blistering sunburn to prove it, all in the name of taking you beyond the festoons of rainbow bunting. So gird your loins and grab your swimmers. We’re serving “where-tf-is-that?” realness, honey. With absolutely zero shade to the world’s most iconic queer hotspots, here are the locales we’re choosing to scandalize instead.

Before you book… Berlin, Germany

If you’ve yet to scratch your initials into a toilet cubicle in Tresor, sorry to say but you’ve missed the window on Berlin’s glory years. Before Berghain became a mere reference on a Zara moodboard and after the fall of the soviet bloc, the city was one endless construction site, undergirded by feral go-go boys and tumultuous kink clubs that had your Queer elders one studded choker short of an emergency IV infusion (a proper medical one, not a ‘collagen booster’).