Berlin - December 2013/January 2014

So... yes. Berlin, once again, for the third time in 2013. After a few days with my family in the mountains, we took a plane to Berlin on December 27 - to visit Monsieur's parents and his sister. These visits are usually quite busy as we of course want to spend time with his family, but we also have friends in Berlin we don't see very often, and after all, it's still a huge, buzzing, tempting monster of a city, and you want to make the best of your time when you're there, meaning: enjoy the cafés and go shopping and visit museums and have brunch somewhere nice and walk around and discover new corners and go back to the places you love and... sigh. Of course you never have enough time to do all of this. We didn't go to any museums this time (but we saw one of the famous "revues" at Friedrichstadtpalast with Monsieur's parents). We didn't have brunch (but a nice piece of carrot cake at Spreegold). We had coffee and great sandwiches at KaffeeMitte and yes, we went shopping (new shoes, yes!) and again a lot of postcards at Das Buch. A few steps from Das Buch, there's one of my favourite shops in Berlin, morphose. Design, design, design, I never leave them without buying something nice (and they have a really nice dog).
And of course we met our friends - with some of them we visited Gestalten Space (where I could've spent an awful lot of money on fantastic books like "Around the world - an atlas for today" - if you ever happen to need a present for me...) and had lunch/cake/coffee at mittendrin, both places are in Sophienstrasse, which is actually worth walking through just because, but there's also a few places I came to like a lot during my Berlin visits, one of them being Barcomi's (for their incredibly yummy cakes, not so much for the noise in there). With the same friends we celebrated New Year's (although - we didn't really celebrate much, we stayed at their place and had a great, special, spanish-influenced raclette and nice wine and played board games for the best part of the evening before trying to see the fireworks from the street, which didn't work out very well, but we could hear it - sounded like all hell broke loose).
At the moment Monsieur and me are crazy for two games, "Brändi Dog" and "Dominion" and we are trying to convince everyone to play with us, which worked fine with said friends and also with our families so far  =)
On January 1st, after having spent half of the day in bed and the rest of it with breakfast, coffee and more rounds of Dominion, we had dinner with other friends at Escados (steak etc., very nice!), another great evening. It's lovely to meet our Berlin people. I like the feeling of having friends all over Europe, but sometimes it's annoying that they're far away most of the time. Being in Berlin always means being with friends, which is just awesome.

I didn't take many pictures this time, but when we were waiting to meet the raclette friends, we accidentally ended up in the backyards of Haus Schwarzenberg and were late for our meeting because we had to spend more than half an hour just marvelling at the street art there. That's what you can see on the photos this time. Haus Schwarzenberg, by the way, has seen a lot and could probably tell us amazing stories from the past, for example how Otto Weidt saved the life of some of his jewish employees during the Nazi deportations. A fascinating place!

Berlin - May 2013

 

Berlin again. Not even four months after my last visit, Berlin again. My choir friends love to travel together, and last year we started to visit (former) members of the choir who moved to interesting places. So now, after Paris in 2012, it was Berlin. Actually I was not so sure what to think about this short trip, especially because we'd decided to travel by train (which takes an awful 6 hours and turned out to be ok for the way there and hugely annoying on the way back, when we arrived home after midnight). But in the end we had a great time. We stayed at Die Fabrik in Kreuzberg, a really special place I would recommend if you'd like to stay in a cool location and don't mind a short trip with the bahn to the city centre.

Kreuzberg is a part of Berlin I didn't know very well before, I have visited the East Side Gallery right after the restoration in 2009, but otherwise I spent most of my time in Berlin so far in Mitte and Friedrichshain because my friends live there. Anyway, I had the possiblity to get to know Kreuzberg a bit and I liked it right away, it is a very lively, colourful and buzzing place. I'm not so much into nightlife, but according to my friends this is also one of Kreuzberg's assets. 

What I like better: walking around, taking pictures, having coffee and checking out nice restaurants, flee markets (I've visited the one at Boxhagener Platz this time, it's really nice), and watching clouds. When it comes to cafés and restaurants, Kreuzberg offers an overwhelming number of possibilities. We had the chance to test some of them for brunch and dinner. I liked them all, we've had brunch at Salon Schmück, see the pictures above, it was truly fantastic - and at Kantina von Hugo, which has been a very nice journey through time as they serve grandma's favourite dishes. The best dinner location this time has been Freischwimmer, it's a really cool open-air restaurant and bar directly at the river Spree. And on one evening I took some of my friends to Ruz, my favourite place for tapas in Berlin. They don't have a website at the moment, but it's situated directly opposite the famous Clärchens Ballhaus in Auguststrasse.

Of course we did not only enjoy Berlin's cafés and restaurants, we also gave a concert which has been a nice and exciting experience as always when we sing for an audience that doesn't know us. People at Marienfelde were really welcoming and it was a pleasure to sing for them. 

Again, Berlin has managed to win over a piece of my heart. I see it coming, we'll be friends some day. 

 

Berlin - January 2013

Berlin and me, that's a love-hate relationship. I really want to like Berlin, and it's sometimes hard to explain why I don't - Berlin is _the_ european city, everybody wants to go there and comes back with bright eyes, telling fantastic stories about the greatest place ever... oh well. I've been there a few times now, not always my choice, work brought me there and visiting friends and Monsieur's parents who also live close to Berlin. Confrontation therapy? It seems to work, though. Now I guess I can say I like some things there and enjoy being in Berlin, too. Some parts of it are nice, some sights are beautiful, and the atmosphere at some historic spotslike the East Side Gallery is incomparable. Not all of it is nice though, it's still too big, too noisy, too much history jumping in your face, too much impressions.
However, I might get used to Berlin, really, and I come home every time adding a little piece to my list of things I like about it. And funny enough - my next journey, starting in a few days, will bring me back to Berlin again, and again it's not been my idea.

So: here are some pictures of our Berlin trip in January. More to come soon, I'm afraid =)