Steampunk bar

I'd never heard of steampunk before, so when a new theme bar opened and I made my friend L check it out with me, she had to explain the whole science fiction genre to me from Victorian aesthetic to Jules Verne adventure. Looking at the lovingly assembled Aetherloge 12° says a lot, too. The hand-built big, wooden bar, enforced with bolted steel plates, shelters the exotic rum and absinthe bottles and a set of decorative, brass pipes. What isn't hand-built is at least tweaked to perfectly suit the purpose, like the lamps; orbs that sit in simple iron holders, omitting a pleasing yellow light around the bar. As my friend was leaving Berlin for the winter, she made us promise that we were going to patron the customer-less bar and make sure it doesn't go out of business – but it seems like business has picked up and we now have to go on a week night to get a table. I guess it's apt that a steam punk bar allows smoking indoors to create a veil of mystery, but thankfully on weeknights the veil is thin.

The Labyrinth - Peristal Singum

I waited for my new friend, A, for a half hour sitting at the bar at Salon zur Wilden Renate. She had gotten lost; her iPhone had her to go somewhere near Rigaer Strasse rather than to Alt-Stralau 70, near the Treptow Park S-Bahn. We are going to visit Peristal Singum, the art project / labyrinth built in connection to Renate. I've heard it's disturbing and cool, and I'm very curious, A's excited. At the bar a girl asks me if I was already in the labyrinth. "I was going to go, but as my friend was going in she saw a girl crying inside the doors, so we didn't want to go anymore," she says.

A arrives and we are sit in front of a fire place, holding giant golden coins, waiting. I finish my small bottle of Pilsner Urquell and get invited to follow a girl wearing a Davy Crockett style coonskin hat. I leave my bag and scarf behind the bar. I keep my winter jacket on – I don't want to get lost in a labyrinth and be cold, too. I'm a bit nervous. She ties a scarf around my head to cover my eyes. She makes sure I have my gold coin as she slowly leads me to the entrance. She speaks softly and tells me to forget my stress and worries and to stay in "there" as long as I want to. "So it's my happy place, then?" I laugh dryly.

After I insert my coin in the door it takes me embarrassingly long to figure out how to actually enter the Peristal Singum. I can't be sure if I'm feeling excited or scared. I hurry my steps. I try to smile to encourage myself. I walk through hallways bedecked with scruffy collages of old wallpaper, painting and pictures and am lead to a hole. I have to kneel down to look into it – but it's dark and it twists in a downward spiral. I realise it's a slide and that I have no choice but to ride it.

I don't want to describe my Peristal Singum experience in detail, as not to ruin it for anyone. After the slide came more dark holes, pits and narrow corridors. I definitively had to push myself. I felt claustrophobic not knowing where the exit was and how long it would take to find it. I wanted out. I crawled through a tunnel and poked my head out and found my friend A. With her excitement and the light from her iPhone we faced the pits, tunnels and the darkness together. When we found the exit all I could think about was the bar and having a shot of vodka, but A wanted to keep exploring all the routes and doorways we didn't try yet. Knowing where the exit was made things easier.

Back at the bar, after a shot of Stolichnaya each, A reckoned it was a pity that she didn't have a chance to be alone in there – she missed the core of the installation: discomfort and endurance.

It costs €10 to enter the labyrinth. Only one person can enter at a time. You can't book a ticket in advance, you just show up and express interest.

Tips for buying presents in Berlin

Buying heaps of presents at once, like at Christmas, isn't always easy or fun. We got really excited to bring home carefully selected organic, fair trade and even raw chocolates from Bitterveld in Prenzlauer Berg. The most interesting – and delicious – chocolate we bought was their self manufactured goat's milk chocolate, flavoured with blood orange.

At Vom Fass you can buy oils, vinegars, wines and spirits "vom Fass", i.e. on tap. We chose cool, old fashioned looking bottles and wrapped up Scottish and Irish single malt whiskies as Christmas presents – they were a hit!

Berlin with dad - Tadjiki tea and Tintin in 3D

My dad was in Berlin for a visit over the weekend. He and his wife have been to Berlin only once before, precisely two years ago. For the life of me I can't understand why they keep coming to Berlin when it's cold and dark here! Despite some light rain and a few gusts of Siberian wind, we had a wonderful weekend and manage to do things that were new to A and me, as well.

 

On Saturday afternoon, after a cosy cup of tea and coffee in our kitchen, we took of to Dahlem to visit the Christmas market at Domäne Dahlem. It was rainy and cold, so the market wasn't crowded and we didn't have to queue for marzipans, glühwein, roasted chestnuts or mustard. For a meat-eater there were interesting things on offer, like horse and deer meat, or organic boar sausages. The museum and the little atelier shops around the market were open, so we could get warmth and shelter when we needed it. All in all, it was my favourite Berlin Christmas market and we had a lovely time.

On Sunday we visited the Tadschikische Teestube – a place we wanted to see already on dad's last visit. The little tearoom is hidden in plain sight on the second floor of the Palais am Festungsgraben, next to the Deutsches Historisches Museum. Since it appears in many guide books it's well known and very popular, so a reservation is advisable. We managed to get a table with cushioned floor seating by being there exactly when the Teestube opened, which is at 3pm on the weekends. Most of the tables were reserved but we could sit down at one that was reserved for 5pm. Almost immidiately a queue started forming at the doors. The tea selection at the the Tajik tearoom is extensive and ranges from smoky Russian tea to iced Japanese cherry tea. The kitchen prepares a few Russian dishes like pelmeni and blinis, both sweet and savory. Dad and M were really impressed and we realised that we now have to bring all our guests to the Tadschikische Teestube for a pot of tea.

Through work I tried to get us tickets to see Rigoletto at the Komische Oper, but had no luck. Instead we went to see The Adventures of Tintin in 3D at Cinestar Original im Sony Centre. My dad hadn't seen any modern 3D film before, so even if we ended up at the dubbed-into-German film version, we all enjoyed the experience and the film a lot. And we all understood almost all the German!

It was a fun weekend and now I feel geared up for shopping for Christmas presents, for the office Christmas party on Thursday and for the last deadline of the year at work.

Paleo dining with the inlaws

When we bought Blitzdeal vouchers for three course dinners at Sauvage, we decided to take A's parents out for a special dinner when they visit. The parents were here last week, with A's nieces in tow, but it was the middle of print week for me so I didn't get to see them much. But we did go for a paleolithic dinner, and I do think we gave them something to talk about at home!

Sauvage opened last spring in Neukölln and is the first paleo restaurant in Europe – probably even the only one. The concept is home-made, sugar-free, gluten and grain free, organic and transfat-free food, and  nothing is processed, sprung from agriculture or a domesticated origin. Be prepared for a whole new dining experience!

The menu is short but sweet. On the night we visited, the mains ranged from about 12-19 euro and for a vegetarian option the rump-steak, chicken fillet and swine medallion could be swapped for fried mushrooms to accompany the inventive side dishes. This was a bit surprising since the portion became considerably less filling. Three of the four vegetarians among us instead opted for the large antipasti selection for a main dish, but that, too, had to be specially ordered as vegetarian. I didn't think cavemen had access to so much meat.

While we waited we curiously tasted and analysed the starter of crackers served with rucola and tomato dips and a tapenade. One of the most exciting things at Sauvage is really their breads: held together by vegetable puree, nuts and seeds replace the wheat and grain you'd usually bake with, and the taste is nutty and full. The main dishes were all delicious and I can warmly recommend the adventure that is the antipasti plate. The only disappointment was dessert – maybe we were just too full to appreciate our hefty slices of carrot, orange and ginger cake, but it tasted like cold baby food mash, spiced with cinnamon. Next time I'll order the intense, unsweetened, coconut-milk hot chocolate and share the big glass with A for a dessert instead.

The atmosphere is very cosy and we didn't even realise that we'd spent four hours at the restaurant until we had to hurry to the U-Bahn to make sure we caught the last train home.

African food at Yaam

Even if it's now apparent that the last days of indian summer are over, I hope we get another chance to go to Yaam and eat domoda again, the Gambian peanut stew we had there when A came to Berlin a week ago. Our friends tipped us off already ages ago that the food alone at Yaam is wort the visit, and especially this peanut sauce. I was very disappointed to not get to try any deep fried plantain, though, because they were out. But that alone is a good reason to eat there again!

Vegan weekend in Berlin

Last weekend our mutual friend K was visiting E here in Berlin and since she's pretty much vegan, it turned into a vegetarian delight.

One of the best breakfasts Berlin has to offer is the Sunday vegan/vegetarian brunch at Morgenrot in Prenzlauer Berg. We sat down there at just after 11.30 – exactly the same time as everyone else seemed to have arrived. And by 1pm, when we were done, the place was all quiet again. Lesson learned!

We continued to Mauerpark, where I found a really pretty but useless hand made glass bowl for two euro. Unfortunately the park is so popular now that it's not a very relaxing Sunday afternoon spot – but you can always skip the market and just enjoy the sun on the grassy slopes.

Thanks to K I also tried a few new things this weekend. Since we were already in P'Berg, we walked a bit further up north and checked out the vegan supermarket Veganz that's opened on Schivelbeiner Straße – one of the first ones in Europe! It turned out that the shop actually isn't open on Sundays, only their café is, but the girls there were nice enough to let us shop a little anyway. I was happy to find gluten flour because we've been searching for it around Berlin's organic shops in order to attempt to make home made seitan.

For dinner we ended up at Yoyo in Friedrichshain, where we decided to finally try the vegan pizzas – we always say we will, but end up getting one of their amazing burgers instead. To get the full experience we all ordered different pizzas: one salami, one tuna and one with rucola. They were all ok, but the pizza without any processed fake meat was the best one (of course). Also, the tomato sauce was in need of some more love. Next time I'll order a burger.

After a late night with white wine yesterday, today we hung out for one last coffee before K had to fly back to Finland and managed to make that a vegan affair at Cupcake, the American cupcake café on Krossenerstraße in Friedrichshain. I must say that this pink raspberry cupcake was the best one I've ever had and the fact that it was vegan was just unbelievable! It was fluffy, moist, creamy... delicious. The frosting was on the hyper sweet side for us non-Americans and so the cupcake was perfect for sharing.

"The girls" are coming for a visit to Berlin next week and I'm hoping we'll get to try out a few other new veggie haunts then, like the newly opened Lucky Leek in Prenzlauer Berg, Vegikreuz near Ostkreuz, the legendary Cookies Cream restaurant/club and the much applauded Café Vux cake café in Neukölln... And, and, and... :)

ROA in Berlin

Last week I was in a lot of pain and I went to the doctor again on Friday. I got prescribed more ibuprofen for what apparently was inflamed muscles over my ribs – from all the coughing. As a result I didn't use my free tickets to the annual Preview Berlin and I declined the opportunity to be sneaked in to Berlin Festival, but tried to take it easy and rest a bit. A decision I slightly regret.

On Sunday I, none the less, went to the finissage of the small Skalitzers Contemporary Art gallery in Kreuzberg who were showing an insanely cool collection of art from their 2011 artists. I wanted to see the incredible work by ROA, Belgian street artist extraordinaire. After the gallery visit we decided to go across the street to view some more of ROA's work: at the bottom of a sand pit, the very Pippi Longstocking-esque biergarten called Kjosk (at the corner of Oranienstraße and Skalitzer Straße), is defined by a white brick wall covered in large, black, hand-painted, dead animals. They're very impressive and make this makeshift biergarten worth a visit; we enjoyed a good chat and a cold OBC – Original Berlin Cidre.

Later I also ate at Yellow Sunshine on Wiener Straße for the first time, and in my slightly hung over state their Lappland Cheese Burger was just the best fake-meat burger I've ever had... Mmmm...

Sweet was yesterday, sweet is the weekend

On Tuesday we made beetroot soup and apple pie for E, who's still waiting for her Prince A to arrive in Berlin (tomorrow!). Yesterday I shared a cheese platter and later a glass of red wine at Süß war Gestern (photo) with AK, a Polish girl I've been introduced to by a mutual friend in Dublin. Today, I'm staying at home, wearing woollen socks and drinking tea. I need to rest up for a busy weekend: on Friday a new club, Der Geheime Garten, is opening in Friedrichshain, on Saturday it's Torstrassenfestival (I'm very excited to see Hush Hush perform in KaffeeBurger at 15.30) on Sunday it's an open doors day at the Nordische Botschaften, the Nordic Embassies (I interpret that as an opportunity to buy Finnish bread and cinnamon rolls). No rest then!

Gardens of the world

Yesterday was HOT. Sticky. Berlin summer. Being the realist that I am, I figure it was the last day of summer this year, and wanted to make the most of it. My stupid cough and rib pains haven't completely given way yet, but if I would have staid buried at the bottom of the sofa for the whole duration of this illness, I would have now been stuck there for six weeks. Coincidentally, that's also how long I haven't smoked a single cigarette for!

Anyway, it was too hot to consider cycling to the Gärten der Welt in Marzahn, a trip I've been planning all summer. Instead we went by public transport; a U-Bahn and bus combo.

We spent a couple of hours walking through the different gardens, we had tea and biscuits in the Chinese tea house, we figured out the big labyrinth (eventually) and then laid down on the grass with our books for a while. A really good, summery day.

Maybe I shouldn't have finished it by getting drunk at Jägerklause...

 

 

 

 

 

A doctor's visit in Berlin

I've been coughing for over four weeks and have developed a pain somewhere in my ribs, so that EVERYTHING hurts, specially to cough. A week ago, on Monday, I waited for almost an hour at a practice on Rigaer Strasse to see a doctor who barely had time for me. After listening to my lungs he pretty much said it's all ok: I was in and out in three minutes. When my cough still hadn't gotten better after a week and the pain had gotten worse, I gave up and went to the doctor's office again. This time I wasn't confronted with an overcrowded room of sickly, elderly people: besides me there were only two pretty healthy looking women in the waiting room.

When you enter a doctor's office in Berlin, you enter the waiting room and you say a greet the people there with a nonchalant 'Hallo' or 'Tach'. You proceed to the receptionist's desk, where you greet her and present her with your health insurance card – there might be no one at the desk, only a little bowl or basket to put your card into. You might be expected to sit down while being processed and wait for being called up again to pay the administrative fee of €10 (mostly cash only, of course).

Yesterday, when the receptionist finally got around to processing my card, she called me up to her desk and told me very apologetically, that I was there at the wrong time. "Your doctor's hours don't start until after two o'clock, you could come back then?". "Can I not see the other doctor?" "No," she said confused "you have to wait for your own doctor." It was such an idiotic conversation that I decided to leave!

After desperately having trodden around the block, going into another doctor's office with only closed doors and cardiologists, I finally found a doctor in the old Stalinist building of Frankfurter Allee 27 who I was extremely happy with; an older man with not much hair, but a white rim around his head, glasses, kind eyes and a white lab coat. When I entered his office, he shook my hand. His German was pretty easy to understand, maybe he dumbed it down for the foreigner a bit. He put me on a nine day antibiotic regimen, wrote a prescription for painkillers and offered to give me a few days sick leave, which I declined, feeling too guilty about the workload for the coming seven days. But still, hopefully I'm on the mend now!

The Bermuda triangle & Pop shopping

Summer.Pop.Shopping.

E returned to Berlin on Wednesday and I'm feeling a lot stronger, if not completely cured from my cough, so we've been wining and dining around Friedrichshain for the past few days. Also, the very entertaining R and I are visiting Berlin this week, so with them we drank even more.

Like in the Bermuda triangle, we seem to gravitate towards the same little area in Friedrichshain: we end up on Gärtnerstrasse because of Yoyo Foodworld (amazing vegan burgers!), Kaufbar (like having coffee and waffles at your grandmother's) and Szimpla (cheap drinks). We find ourselves on Wühlischstrasse because we eating at Spätzle & Knödel (delicious, heavy German fare) and Datscha (Russian cuisine, vodka and an amazing Sunday brunch) or bringing our guests to Hops & Barley (micro brewery for the beer-geeky tourists). Often we head down Simon-Dach-Strasse to have a vodka with rhubarb juice at Kpnt A.Müller (cosy, cheap drinks), and if Kapten is full the backup plan is that we continue walking south to the RAW Tempel area. This is where we have been bouncing around for the last few days.

Yesterday we broke the pattern by visiting Summer.Pop.Shopping at the Alte Münze in Mitte – a designer shopping event by the same people who organise the Holy.Shit.Shopping Christmas market. My biggest criticism is that the entry is three euro; I find it crazy to charge people to enter a market! Other than that, it was good fun – I came home one cool t-shirt richer, 15 euro poorer.

Art about waves and art on the bridge

I got to take this really pretty poster home from the office, and I'm so inspired by it that I want to go to Martin-Gropius-Bau to see the whole Hokusai retrospective! Art is in the air: this Sunday is the second Open Air Gallery of the summer and the Oberbaumbrücke closes for traffic and opens for artists, galleries and music, and I'll definitively make my Sunday stroll go over the bridge!

Relocating to Berlin

It has been a very exciting week for me - one of my best friends moved to Berlin last Wednesday. E's staying with us until August, when she and A will get their own apartment. We won't live together the whole time, though: we'll be on holidays for two weeks and when we come back, E's going to Finland for two weeks, too. We have been getting along really well in close quarters, and I'm almost sad to leave for our holiday in Finland on Sunday. We've been taking it easy and have just been sitting in cafés, biergartens, parks or at home, chatting and catching up.

When escorting E to get registered at the Bürgeramt, to get a prepaid sim-card and to open a bank account I've realised just how easy it is for an EU-citizen to move around Europe. At work I hear the horror stories of Americans and Australians having to go plead their cases at the Ausländerbehörde. The only thing an EU-citizen HAS to do when moving to Berlin is to register their residency and address at the Bürgeramt. This took E about ten minutes: upon arrival to the Amt I realized that it was crowded and asked if we could make an appointment - a Termin - instead of just waiting for our number to come up. We got an appointment that was three minutes away. "Termin" seems to be the magic word around here! It can also be booked online.

Now I feel really guilty for leaving E alone in Berlin for two weeks... Luckily she's an independent girl and will go on a language course, bike shopping and on photo walks and will be just fine on her own. Plus some of our friends have offered to keep her company!

A day trip to Müggelsee

My brother left Berlin on Monday after almost a week's visit. His girlfriend, K, was new to Berlin, and sneakily A and I pretended to have to go to work and so we let them do the shopping and the sightseeing on their own. The weather was fantastic except for on one day out of six: it rained on Wednesday when M and K were emptying their wallets at TK Maxx Charlottenburg. We did get stuck in a thunderstorm in Treptower Park on Tuesday, too, but we had a great time sitting under the roof of at an outdoor café, drinking Krombacher and waiting it out.

Thursday was Christi Himmelfahrt and M&K's third day in Berlin. I had to do a work assignment that took us to the Müggelsee in Köpenick – a lake I've wanted to visit since last summer when I read about a floating wooden house in the middle of the water, the Spreearche restaurant. The four of us packed sun screen, bathing-suits and bicycles on board the S3 train (which involved a lot of carrying the bikes up and down the stairs) and rode for about 15 minutes until we got off in Friedrichshagen. After cycling south along Bölschestrasse for about 1,5 kilometres we reached the Müggelsee shore. It was crowded with middle-aged people spilling over from the loud biergartens and teenies carrying crates of beer and barbecue equipment around, trying to impress each-other with the loudest music or the biggest amount of drink.

We carried on and crossed the river through the Spreetunnel. The other side was less crowded and noisy. A little bit further from the tunnel (to the right) we found a grassy little plot that was the beach. We had no problem in finding space to sit down, and later we took over the jetty where no one else was sitting. The views toward Friedrichshagen and the old Berliner Bürger Bräu brewery were beautiful and the river was busy with rented motorboats and proud sailboats. The water was pretty cold, but seemed very clean. We all went for a little swim – except for M, who didn't bring a dry pair of shorts to change to.

When we finished our swim we found that the natives had joined us on the jetty: four tattooed 20-something guys. That would never happen at home in Finland – people just don't want to impose on strangers and would find it awkward to have to interact at all. These tattooed Köpenicker boys were there to drink and barbecue, and I have to admit that I was a little intimidated and thought that they might not take kindly to tourists and foreigners. Quatsch! They made friendly chitchat in their restricted English and said they were happy to see tourists visit Köpenick, because it's "the most beautiful part of Berlin".

After drying up a little we started to feel hungry and made our way even further on, towards a little jetty just after the beach. On the jetty we found a big sign saying "Bitte hier klingeln!" with an arrow pointing towards a doorbell. The doorbell sends an alert to the floating restaurant, and they send a wooden raft to collect their guests. Just a few minutes after ringing the doorbell we were on board the Spreearche. We boarded with a big group of twenty middle-aged Germans, but they were escorted upstairs to the roof terrace, and so it was pretty peaceful downstairs and we got one of the four bigger tables without a problem. We started to get really hungry and ran back and forth between our table and the menu written on a blackboard indoors, translating the different food options. The menu didn't have a single vegetarian dish and only two meat dishes, but us flexitarians were happy about the selection of fish: butterfish, plaice, scampi, shrimp, smoked salmon and Matjes herring, all fresh. The cuisine represented a typical German, straightforward style and most dishes came with potatoes in different forms. The plates weren't pretty, but the food was absolutely delicious, and I'd go back to Spreearche in a heartbeat just for those Schwenkkartoffeln and the Frühlingsquark my butterfish was served with. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it!

Müggelsee was a huge success and I can't wait to go back. Coming with our bikes was definitively an advantage, but there's a tram running between the S-Bahn and the shore, too, so you could do without. Maybe next time at Müggelsee we'll rent a boat and dock on to the Spreearche with our own little vessel!

The Blossom Festival revisited

The Baumblütenfest in Werder, Brandenburg, is one of my favourite annual festivities around Berlin. Werder is a little town about 40 minutes south of Berlin, known for it's orchards and it's fruit wine. Last year our friend S, who's from close by, was our travel guide and made sure we got the optimal experience. I was so impressed and had such a good time that and told everyone that they HAVE to go there next year. As a result, this year friends, and friends of friends, wanted to come along and in the end a group of 15 boarded the train at Alexanderplatz.

The fruit wine from Werder is reputed to be particularly strong – and is probably the reason this Volksfest is so popular. Avoid the crowded main festival area and schlager fever on the island, and take the Panoramaweg to the top of the hill. Along a stretch of village road there are endless rows of food and home made fruit wine stalls. Private residents set up beer gardens in their yards and the atmosphere is great. To make the most of it you should buy a bottle of local rhubarb wine (about €6), get plastic cups, find a seat with a view over the river Havel and get tipsy!