"Building from scratch is less exhausting than continuing to maintain the wrong thing"
– Ela Krause
Above Alexanderplatz, somewhere on a rooftop that should not exist above all that noise, Ela Krause is trying — once again — to keep the vegetables alive. The station below is permanently under construction. The square gets harder every year, more concrete, more of everything. But up there, in a garden suspended above the chaos, there are flowers and herbs and a very determined human being who chose to live here anyway.
That contrast — brutal outside, unexpectedly quiet within — describes both the building and the person who inhabits it. Fourteen neighboring apartments in a complex she calls one of the strangest she's ever seen. Eerie silence on the inside. Berlin at its fullest outside the window.
Ela is the founder of Laika Communications, a Berlin agency she built in 2018 after more than fifteen years of translating technologies, ideas, and founders into stories that travel. She came to the city the way her generation did: finished school, heard it was the place to be, and accidentally built an entire life around it. The "accidentally" matters. Nothing about how Ela talks about her work or her city suggests careful planning. It suggests someone who stayed curious long enough for things to take shape.
The Daily Walk
We reached Ela on a weeknight, after 10pm, when the household had finally quieted down. She was folded into the corner of the couch — toddler negotiations completed, tiny Schnoodle at rest — and typing in peace. The morning, she told us, is a different kind of movement entirely.
It starts with plants. Then early playtime, which currently requires her to perform as either a unicorn or a dog depending on the day's brief. Then daycare drop-off. And then a walk — the same walk, every morning — through Mitte, across Monbijoupark, and up far too many stairs to her attic office. The Schnoodle has been her shadow for about ten years. The dog and the child and she herself, she says, all move through life with the same puppy energy: curious, excitable, probably a little messy from the outside.
Her work life, by contrast, runs in the opposite register. Structured, strategic, intentional. She believes communications work actually requires both modes — sensitivity to chaos, and the ability to shape narrative and direction inside it. The morning walk is where those two registers meet.
What the City Does to You
Ask Ela how cities shape the way she thinks and she reaches for atmosphere.
She absorbs places intensely. Some environments unlock energy in her immediately. Others shut her down within the hour. Over time, she's learned to understand that effect — and to apply it professionally, particularly in the event-planning side of her work, where the space you choose is part of the message you send.
What she needs is density. People. Movement. Overheard conversations. The feeling that something is always happening slightly out of frame. Community — even in small, fleeting doses — matters to her enormously. A kind interaction with a stranger can genuinely change the texture of a day. She's not someone who romanticizes escaping into nature. She appreciates it. But creatively and emotionally, she needs cities to function. Suburbia unsettles her — that particular in-between state, neither city nor countryside, that drains her over time.
Berlin still feels creatively unmatched. But she mentions Canada, where she travels to reconnect with family, and the way the culture there — its softness, its open-handedness — reminds her how much those qualities shape a place. The kindness cliché, she says, is absolutely real.
The Moments That Linger
When we asked which moments between places tend to stay with her, Ela didn't hesitate. The unplanned ones.
Tiny moments of openness between strangers. Someone telling you something honest in passing. A conversation that wasn't supposed to matter but lingers for weeks. She remembers the emotional atmosphere of places more than the destinations themselves. Not landmarks. Not arrivals. The feeling.
That's a different kind of travel intelligence than packing the right bag or finding the right hotel. It's the intelligence of attention — staying open long enough for the unremarkable to become something else.
What Ela Carries
Ela is not sentimental about objects. No lucky charms. No symbolic desk items. No curated essentials pouch — except, she notes, for two tiny management consultants permanently stationed on her desk: Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, and Bob Slydell from Office Space, in Funko form, silently judging every move she makes.
What she actually carries is an enormous bag of semi-organized chaos that somehow always contains exactly what someone suddenly needs: snacks, band-aids, crayons, balloons, dog treats, small toys. She moves through life like an overstimulated field producer. Even when traveling, she packs like a prepper — not for fashion, she'd be the first to say so, but because she genuinely believes morale improves with snacks and small forms of entertainment.
For client events, though, the chaos collapses into precision. Emergency stain remover. Backup chargers. And a small bottle of champagne tucked away for the walk home after a pitch that felt particularly right.
Design That Starts a Conversation
When Ela talks about design, she doesn't lead with function or form. She leads with wit.
She loves objects that quietly start conversations — things that make daily routines feel slightly less mechanical. Not novelty for the sake of it, but design that understands how people interact with things emotionally. She admits to being a sucker for company merch and constantly inventing new reasons to justify it, as long as the materials hold up.
Her best example is the CO₂ sensor in her office. It's shaped like a canary from an old mining tunnel — the kind of design decision that makes you stop and ask someone about it. Completely impractical in practice: they constantly forget to charge it, so half the time it hangs upside down, looking deceased. She still loves it. Because it adds personality to an otherwise functional object that could just be a digital display with numbers. Her in-house designer, she suspects, hates her guts.
This is the same instinct SpY describes in his Roam Lines conversation — the idea that the best objects carry meaning beyond their function, that good design is a form of quiet communication.
The Transition That Changed Everything
Of all the transitions that have shaped her, Ela names one without hesitation: motherhood.
Nothing else, she says, rearranged her personality, priorities, rhythms, and understanding of time so completely or so instantly. It touched every layer of life at once. Before that, her brain was always somewhere slightly ahead of the moment. Having a child forced her back into the immediacy of everyday life in a way nothing else had.
The professional transition runs parallel. At some point, she stopped trying to force systems — work relationships, structures, expectations — that fundamentally didn't fit anymore. There's a certain moment, she explains, where you realize that building from scratch is less exhausting than continuing to maintain the wrong thing. That realization shaped both how she works and the kind of workplace she built.
Laika is the result. Less a masterplan than a necessary shift — toward independence, toward curiosity, toward work that actually feels aligned. What started as freelancing became an agency when former colleagues joined along the way. That's a pattern she recognizes now: things take shape when you stay open, not when you force them.
Comfort, Defined Simply
For Ela, comfort is space. Physical and mental. Room in a suitcase. Room in clothing. Room to stretch out mentally for a second. She's aware of the irony — needing big-city life and space at the same time — but she's made peace with the contradiction.
After enough years folded into cramped backseats and overstuffed budget airline luggage allowances, you develop a very clear sense of what you actually need. Not luxury. Just enough breathing room to feel like yourself. Emotionally, the same logic applies: comfort means not feeling compressed by life all the time.
That's a quieter definition than most. But it's the kind that holds.
Connect with Ela on LinkedIn or explore Laika Communications at laika.berlin and Instagram.
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