Meta House Is the Phnom Penh Arts Center That Teaches German by Day and Books Techno DJs by Night

A Converted Villa on Street 228

At Meta House, a converted villa in central Phnom Penh, a neon "BERLIN BAR" sign buzzes over the courtyard on weekend nights, and Tommy Schultz steps behind the decks. The same building also houses a Goethe-Institut-backed language center where Cambodians study German.

That combination is original to the place: German filmmaker and arts activist Nico Mesterharm opened Meta House this way in January 2007, in a private villa, as a small community space for a country barely out of three decades of civil war and the Khmer Rouge genocide. It grew into what its own materials call an award-winning arts and media hub: a gallery, an open-air stage, a library, art exhibitions, film screenings, workshops, and, since 2014, an NGO (the Cambodian-German Cultural Association) partnered with the Goethe-Institut and the German Embassy. The Goethe-Institut still runs German language classes out of the building. There's also an Italian restaurant, Genova. None of that reads like a nightclub. On weekend nights, the Berlin Bar turns it into one.

Currywurst, Beer, Then the Beats

The venue calls it weekend DJ sessions. The format is deliberately unglamorous: Berliner currywurst, German wheat and dark beers, then DJ Tommy Schultz and guests on the decks, billed by the venue as bringing "the best underground sounds to the bar." The Berlin Bar keeps its own hours separate from the rest of the complex, 8AM to midnight, closed Mondays, which makes it one of the few spots in the city where you could plausibly get a sausage and a beer at 10AM and a techno set the same week without changing address.

A Different Kind of Phnom Penh Nightlife

It's worth setting this next to Pontoon, the barge club that famously sank on its own opening night and is, by design, chaos on the Mekong. Meta House is the opposite kind of institution: an NGO with a language school, diplomatic partners, and nearly two decades of continuous operation, that happens to also be where the city's small techno scene has quietly lived since the genre barely existed here. Phnom Penh's electronic nightlife doesn't have one personality. It has a barge that sinks and keeps partying, and it has a cultural center that teaches German by day and books techno DJs by night. Both are still running.

If You Go

Meta House is at #48, Street 228, Phnom Penh. The Berlin Bar hosts weekend DJ sessions with Tommy Schultz and comrades, and is open daily from 8AM to midnight, closed Mondays. Check Meta House's own event calendar before showing up, since the DJ lineup and the rest of the week's film and gallery program change regularly.

Cover photo: Meta House.