Help me add to my body art and travelling experience!

May 12, 2008 4:12 PM

I'll be in Germany for about 3 weeks in September/October. I want to get a tattoo (towards the end of the trip, probably) while I'm there. Any recommendations from personal experience? I don't speak German but will be with a native.

We will be in Wuppertal definitely (he lives there), and probably Berlin and Frankfurt, maybe a couple other places. Just looking for good, clean, low cost (I'm not really cheap, but the exchange rate is horrific) places.

posted by pontouf to grab bag (5 comments total)

(I think I'd have posted this in travel. Categories likely matter more than they used to, now that there's MyAsk)
posted by mumkin at 4:26 PM on May 12

It seems like the possibilities for getting a bad tattoo or having a linguistic error (even with a native with you) are high. Since you don't speak German it is difficult for you to get reviews (good and bad) of local places. Why not get the tattoo in Seattle? Some of the country's best tattoo parlors are in Seattle and you can go through all of their reviews. Best yet, the person engraving a permanent image on your flesh will share a common language with you.

I got my tattoo at the critically acclaimed, highly-reviewed Seattle institution Slave to the Needle.
posted by arnicae at 4:31 PM on May 12

I don't have a problem getting tattoos in Seattle, I've gotten two here so far and love them. I got them at Emerald City Tattoo by Bryan (who is awesome and I already have more tattoos planned for him to do), not Slave to the Needle who, despite rave reviews, refused to do a piece I wanted at the size it was (meaning they wanted to charge way more for it) so I have a bit of a bias against them.

In any case, I want to get a tattoo IN Germany to commemorate my travels, not get a tattoo in Seattle, which is what I've been doing, to commemorate them.
posted by pontouf at 7:36 PM on May 12

Depends on what you want. Next time I'm in Germany I'm going to these guys. But that's because I really want a hand-poked tattoo and these guys do crazy good work.
posted by piedmont at 8:18 PM on May 12

Slave to the Needle who, despite rave reviews, refused to do a piece I wanted at the size it was (meaning they wanted to charge way more for it)

It wasn't necessarily because they wanted to charge more for it. Many very good, very reputable artists will not do certain pieces small because they feel the detail work or lettering or whatever it is in the piece will not hold up over time. Just because it can be done as small as the drawing you brought in doesn't mean it'll look good in 20 years.

Anyway, I have heard good things about the shop that piedmont linked to. You might want to check the ModBlog archives for other work by German tattoo shops.
posted by bedhead at 9:29 PM on May 12