Best bread in Berlin

Our whole office has been abuzz about this for weeks now because a new bakery opened up just across the street, and they make the best bread in Berlin! In Germany you do get great bread: heavy, dark, ryes and wholegrains, packed with sunflower seeds. But soft breads and buns baked with yeast tend to be a disaster: airy and light and dry or heavy and dense and dry. At Zeit für Brot on Alte Schönhauser Straße the organic breads are just perfect: La Baguette (2.60€) is soft and chewy with a thick, crispy crust, the Zimtschnecken (cinnamon buns) are soft and juicy... And now I'm addicted to their Schokobrötchen, a fluffy little thing, resembling a flat scone, with big chunks of dark chocolate melted in it. Of course the more traditional, darker German breads like Bauerbrot are good, too, but a person just has to have a good baguette now and then! A part of the reason why the bread tastes so exceptional here is that the bakery itself is in the back of the shop, so everything is fresh, fresh, fresh. And what they don't sell by the end of the day, the donate to the homeless. Perfection.

Mitte bookshop gem

On Thursday at lunch time my colleague M and I popped by Pro qm bookshop in Mitte. They specialize in design, architecture, fashion... the selection is impressive, also in design magazines, both in English and German. It's a gem among bookstores! I couldn't stay long, luckily, and so this time I only bought one book.

Canadian pancake breakfast

It's an exciting day because A's band is playing a gig later tonight. He was able to sit still long enough to have breakfast with me, though. Because of a (futile) attempt to get Berlinale tickets we were in Mitte and decided to try the home-made pancakes with maple syrup at Blaues Band. The small portion comes with three giant, soft, dense, fresh, delicious, pancakes and is plenty – A couldn't finish his big portion. Tip: share a triple-decker sandwich and a portion of pancakes, that way you get the best of both worlds!

Glühwein season uncorked

Yesterday we had the first glühweins of the season at the Nordic Lucia Weihnachtsmarkt in Prenzlauer Berg. When we met D and S at the Kulturbrauerei it was crowded and it was raining. After having waited for them for almost 30 minutes I was in rotten mood. And the longest queue of the whole market? At the Finnish glühwein stand where we wanted to get a cup of glögi. We marched over to the Swedish punsch stand and after just a few sips, the world was a better place again. And even better when I realised that we were standing next to Herr Nilsson's stall – our favourite Swedish candy shop!

The guilty shopper

After finishing my article on Berlin's new veggie restaurants and their ethics, I can't go into any shop without assessing the ethics of each product there. So, naturally, when I stepped in to the new 24colours shop on Alte Schönhauser Straße the first thing I wanted to know was where the clothes come from – knowing that the answer wasn't going to be nice, since the prices are so low. Sure enough, their cool clothes are made in China, but the sales girl assured me that no child labour is used. But what about employees rights and the chemicals used in the fabric dyes? Well, I shut my eyes tightly, pulled out seven items from the racks and bought them. Oh, the guilt. At least 24colours is a local, Berlin-based, design company. I don't know how I'll explain it to myself when I find myself there next time? Except by that I found myself a cotton sweater for €8.90 (on sale), skirts for €12.90 and €16.90, a casual cotton top for €15.90 and a sleeveless print top for €13.90...

New: Raw food in Berlin!

As the weather is getting colder (only +5C now), it's natural to think of nothing but eating. I got the opportunity to write an article about new vegetarian restaurants in Berlin, so the past week and a half my life has revolved around food. 2011 has been a great year for vegetarians and vegans in the city: NINE veggie restaurants have opened since February. When my mom was here, I dragged her along to Lucky Leek and Kopps, and since then I've been exploring raw food with A. There are two new raw food restaurants in Berlin: Gesund & sündig in Wilmersdorf and café style LebensfRoh in Kreuzberg.

Gesund & sündig
Germany's first raw food restaurant opened in June. The location and the opening hours reveal that most of the diners at Gesund und sündig come from the sports centre that the restaurant is connected to. Luckily it's along the Ringbahn and thus within reach even for a Friedrichshainer. A more central location is under consideration for the new year, we were told. Everything on the menu here is raw and vegan. As a starter we share a plate of delicious "Sweet and sour sushi" (€7.90): a mixture of sunflower seeds and sauerkraut replace the rice, and the centre is carrot, zucchini and pineapple sticks – because of the seaweed, it still clearly tastes like sushi. In Pizza Crudo del la Casa (€7.90) the base is made with dried seeds and has a slightly bitter, nutty flavour which the tomato sauce and roasted vegetables balance with their mild and sweet taste. The "ricotta" on top is made of cashews. Pasta is replaced with sliced courgette in the "lasagna" (€8.50), and the side salad is instantly a new favourite: rucola and pear with a garlic dressing. Everything is as bright and colourful on the palate as on the plate. I tried a super healthy green smoothie (€2.80) while A played it safe with a fresh apple juice (€3) – we pretended to be health nuts and skipped beer and wine. Gesund & sündig is definitively not just for hippies, but dinner there was delicious, interesting and filling. If only it was a little closer to home: I'm certain we'd visit again and bring tons of adventurous friends with us!

LebensfRoh 

This homely café opened next to Görlizer Park in August. They're not very busy on the Tuesday morning when we've decided to have breakfast there. The café is filled with sunlight and the lonely voice of Kurt Cobain singing from the Unplugged album – I had the song "Jesus don't want me for a Sunbeam" stuck in my head all day afterwards. For breakfast the choice is between raw müsli (€4) and chestnut porridge (€3), but a plate of raw food crackers with assorted spreads, olives and veggies sounds like Berlin breakfast to me (small plate, €5). The porridge is nice: slightly sweet, sticky and a little grainy. For another euro it comes with fresh fruit or warm fruit puree. The Hertzhafter Teller is simple: two crackers piled with different spreads, a salad, olives and some grapes. They're out of many items, and so I'm asked if it's ok to use a milk-based spread, too, rather than vegan. The plate is nice, but not exactly as filling as a Berliner might expect after having paid €5. If I'm around the area, I might want to pop by again to try their raw courgette pasta or one of their daily dinner specials to really make up my mind about LebensfRoh.

A city in the cloud - or - Vegetarian Dinner Club visit

All of Berlin was covered in a beautiful cloud of fog today. I wanted to take photographs of everything I saw: the TV tower disappearing into whiteness, the windows of the Park Inn Hotel slowly fading into invisibility, the Volksbühne's outlines blending with the grey veil around it, the traffic lights glowing insistently, multiplied by reflections in the fog particles. It was a beautiful day, even if you couldn't see much more than a few buildings ahead.

Work was a hurried affair. Lately, I've been up reading all night and today I had turned off my alarm and slept until noon. And then I closed my eyes again and slept another hour. At work I noticed that I had double-booked myself by promising to sit in on a meeting at 2pm, as well as have a tandem lunch with K. Back in the office at 3.30, my colleague W reminds me that I made dinner plans with him only yesterday – for 5pm.

I've wanted to check out the Kurukshetra Vegetarian Dinner Club for over two years now: ever since I saw their flyer in Mauerpark. W and I lock our bikes outside an Indian shop that looks just like any other hippie store specialising in incenses and wooden pearl bracelets. A blond girl with markings painted between her eyebrows tells us that if we're here for dinner, it's through the backdoor. She opens it for us and points us in the right direction: take a left after the yoga hall. Luckily we get some help and we find the homely dining room decorated with a half of a straw hut and pillow strewn chill out corner.

The dinner club serves a vegetarian all-you-can-eat meal for €4.50 every work day between 5-8pm. Each day of the week has it's own menu that you find out there, or by signing up to the newsletter. As we take a seat, an older woman with long, gray hair comes to ask us if we want some of her own blend of magical herbal tea. We politely accept and I ask her if how long the Club has been around? She tells us that she's native American, a wold citizen who's travelled everywhere, teaching and uniting people in peace and love. I compliment her tea and ask her if there's licorice in it – there are six herbs in it, that's why it's magical, she replies. The conversation is interesting, but not very informative. We are brought a plate of pasta and tomato sauce each and dig in. The sauce has a great taste, but the pasta is watery and over cooked, so I leave most of it. We converse about Norwegian black metal bands and mass-murderers, as well as about work and ecstasy parties. Another plate appears in front of both, this time with a veggie burger and a stuffed bell pepper. The veggie burger is fantastic: it has great texture, great flavour and is completed by a slice of cheese, tomato and cucumber. I'm so stuffed that I can barely look at the bell pepper, but out of curiosity I have a bite anyway. Luckily I concentrated my efforts on the burger, because the pepper is really bland. We get a refill of the magical tea and dessert bowls with a generous cut of chocolate cake. Somehow, neither one of us has a problem with finishing the whole piece. Even if not every single component was to my liking, everything was all right – and when the dishes were good, they were fantastic. If we were only served the burgers, cake and tea I would have been happy to pay €4.50 for that alone! Surely this is one of the best dinner deals in Berlin.

Vegan restaurants with mom

After a week-long visit I walked my mom to the TXL bus stop on Alexanderplatz. Depending on how you see it, my mom is a really easy or a really difficult guest: she doesn't want to do much and has no demands. She's been to Berlin four times and prefers to stay local and take it easy. For me it's really trying, because it means that we sit around our flat a lot and all the little things that annoy a daughter about her mother stew. But all in all I was a well behaved adult for the whole week – I found that a glass of wine worked wonders on the nerves!

We did do something; a visit to TK Maxx in Charlottenburg (the Neukölln shop is nicer and less crowded), coffees with my friends who are learning Finnish, watched Christiane F. – Kinder vom Banhof Zoo, spent a Sunday afternoon at Mauerpark... And I managed to lure my mom and A with me to try two new vegan restaurants in Berlin: Lucky Leek in Prenzlauer Berg and Kopps in Mitte.

Lucky Leek
Lucky Leek offers sophisticated vegan food in a cosy, candle-lit, basement. We arrived early and the only other diners were a tourist couple, seated in a candle-lit corner. I realised that they, too, are Finnish and they try to stay quiet as not to get caught. That's how I know, because that's how Finnish people react to meeting other Finns abroad. The menu is short and sweet: four starters (€4.90-7.90) and four mains (€11.90-12.50), two dessert options (€6.50 each) and the daily specials. Tofu, seitan and soy are given the spotlight in only one or two dishes. In order to sample as many dishes as we could, we went for starters, mains and desserts. My Balinese spiced tofu, topped with a chive pancake and apricot chutney, was refined and hit all the right notes in terms of balance and texture. A's essence of shitake mushroom turned out to be a bitter broth with root vegetables and pearls of barley – the only disappointment of the evening. The mains were all wonderful: linguine with zucchini mini-schnitzels, pumpkin maultaschen with fried mushrooms and a creamy (vegan!) hollandaise and a roasted aubergine and bell pepper picatta served with thick chestnut noodles and a flavourful ragout of tomato and orange. Our plates were practically licked clean when our waiter came to clear up. Asking if the amazing nougat-chocolate tiramisu really was made in-house was clearly an insult: all the desserts are home-made. My mom said the tiramisu was the best dessert she ever had. I would not recommend anyone to skip dessert at Lucky Leek!

Kopps
Yesterday we tried Kopps, a vegan restaurant and bar that opened in September. It's great that vegan restaurants don't settle for a homely or a hippie look: Kopps looks like a designer hotel bar with soothing dark wood tables, sleek blue walls and upholstery in sophisticated greens. The menu sounds generic, mid-range: tuna salad, schnitzel, goulasch, roulade, mashed potatoes, serviettenknödel and blaukraut. The difference is of course, that Kopps serves only vegan food – not even your milchkaffee will be made with cow's milk here – which means that the menu has a lot of soy in different forms. The service is prompt and comes with a smile from the healthy looking, tall, german guys, all clad in black. As our drinks arrive, we have already gotten a basket of bread and a bowl of an interesting, butter-like spread that tastes of eggs and fresh onion – but apparently made of chick peas and pasta. I went for the three-course evening menu of pumpkin soup, cordon bleu and a selection of desserts (€19.50). This time it was A who had the highlight of the meal: battered fresh field mushrooms with a dill-remoulade and lemon (€5.90) – the best battered mushrooms I ever had! I'll go back just for those, I think... And they set the tone for a rustic, hearty meal. The braised vegetables with polenta (€8.90) represented the vegetarian dish that you would find on the menu in many ordinary restaurants: not very exciting (except that the roasted polenta comes in slices cut to look like toast halves – fun!). To my joy the cordon bleu did not taste much like processed soy and the crispy breading together with the beefy mash made the dish into real comfort food. The goulash (€11.50) that had me so excited before our visit, had great flavour, but the soy pieces had an unpleasant texture and that distinct taste of cupboard that soy has. The trio of deserts was plenty for the three of us: a little bowl of cremé brulee, marinated pears and a chocolate-orange brownie. The cremé brulee was amazing, the other two were unnecessary: just get me another bowl of the brulee, please!

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...

Betahaus

Two weeks ago, at the Screen Print Festival 2011 in Stattbad Wedding, our new friend R told E and me about Open Design City, a space in Kreuzberg where you can rent tools and appliances and get help for your more ambitious design projects. We were particularly interested in screen printing possibilities, but also curious to know what other things can be made there, like with laser cutters or soldering equipment.

The ODC is a part of Betahaus, so to familiarise with ODC you have to go on a tour of Betahaus, a shared office space where you can rent a desk by the day or by the month. Tours are available twice a week and are free of charge. I now know three people who work there, so I was curious to see what it's like.

E and I were on time like proper Finns tend to be – R was nowhere to be seen. Later I saw her message on Facebook, saying she'd been held back at the office.

Betahaus is very impressive: it's big, it's airy, it's light. If it wouldn't sound so corny, I'd describe it as an inspiring environment. The Open Design City space, on the other hand, seemed small. There was no one there to explain precisely what tools are available and what the possibilities there are, so that part of the tour was very disappointing.

As we sat down in the downstairs café afterwards, an American girl who'd also been on the tour asked to join us. We had a nice chat among graphic designers and as we were leaving AS wanted us to reveal which guy from the guided tour we would date if we HAD to. She was quite taken with the amount of cute guys she spotted at the premises. We made diffuse plans to meet up at an art gallery later in the week – so if nothing else, I made another friend today!

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!

HBC party for rich people

You're Only Massive

On Friday we were invited to see our friends from Berlin band You're Only Massive perform as a warm-up for, and later on with, Hanin Elias for her record release party at .HBC on Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse. To my great surprise my rock'n'roll/metal/hard core brother was really excited to see Hanin – I think he had a little mini-crush on her. She was insanely charismatic on stage, so no surprise. The gigs were good, but the room got insanely warm and everyone was sweating and smelly. There was not much comfort in drink, because a small Pilsner Urquell cost €3, and to a Friedrichshainer that is just unforgivable. A vodka mix drink cost €7. We won't be going there for a drink any time soon!

After the gig we hung out with our friends for a few hours, using up their drink tickets. My party-fit brother and I agreed that we still wanted to go somewhere else for drinks, and arranged to meet up with a few guys in Friedrichshain; they'd go by taxi, we'd come by bike. This was at maybe 5 am. On the way M and K got really tired and I could see that they just wanted to go to sleep – but on Frankfurter Tor the two guys were waiting. We ended up in Paule's Metal Eck on Simon-Dach-Strasse and as the sun was coming up we forced ourselves to drink one more beer... We were home at about 7am.

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!

Summer enough for Freiluftkino

Freiluftkino is one of my favourite things about Berlin summer, and now the season has kicked off!

A was sure it wouldn't be too cold to FINALLY see the 2010 Banksy film, Exit Through the Gift Shop as it was the opening film of the Freiluftkino Kreuzberg season last Friday. When we found our way in between the buildings on Mariannenplatz we were warm from cycling and it was still not completely dark. We could see rows of beach chairs parked in front of a hoard of green, plastic, garden chairs. The outdoor cinema in Kreuzberg is definitively smaller than Freiluftkino Friedrichshain! We grabbed fold-up beach chairs and found a nice spot in the centre. Typically for Berlin, people arrived late and when the announcer finally got to introduce the film it was already dark. Smartly we'd brought a blanket, but it didn't stop the cold air beneath the chair from soaking through the fabrics and onto my back. By the end of the film I was pretty cold, but hadn't even considered leaving: the film was funny and good, poignantly asking the question: "what is art?" – depth that I hadn't expected.

A chilly May first

I've suffered another spell of unwillingness to write. From the beginning I wanted to keep a blog about how we are settling in Berlin and what new, lovely things we discover about life here. When we moved to Ireland five years ago I never jotted down a single thought or epiphany I experienced in my new country. But lately it has felt like I'm not stumbling across new things in Berlin anymore, but rather like I'm happy with what I have already discovered. This is my life now.

Still, life has not stopped. Since Easter, when I last updated the blog, summer has arrived. At least for a Finn this is summer – it has been over +20°C most days and we haven't seen rain in weeks.

First of May was chilly and the riots were sparse. I guess all the commotion around closing down Liebig14 and Kunsthaus Tacheles has kept the activists busy and when May came around, they too wanted to take it easy. For the first time we dared venture to the annual MyFest in Kreuzberg, but the icy wind and the hoards of people put a damper on our spirits. We went home and waited for warmer weather!

Boxhagener Platz prepared for rioters on April 29th.

MyFest is not about rioting, it's about eating and drinking in the streets of Kreuzberg!

A glimpse of the Berlinale

FriedrichstadtPalast, Mitte

 
Next week will be a hard working one, again. I'm still hoping to make it to a few more Berlinale things, like a Berlinale Shorts screening (I'm super eager to see Swedish zombie film "Återfödelsen" ("The Unliving") and later I want to take advantage of the Berlinale Kinotag on Sunday the 20th when all films are only €6.

On Friday we saw the Cohen brothers' True Grit at the FriedrichstadPalast. It was a pretty cool venue since it gets converted to a cinema only once a year, for the Berlinale. It seats almost 2000 people so festival atmosphere and buzz are a guarantee. True Grit itself was nothing special: a very true-to-its-genre western with good actors. No Country for Old Men was far better.

After the film we had tapas at the Spanish Barcelona restaurant in Mitte – we bought a voucher for a €14 tapas plate for €7,25 on Blitzdeals.de and were eager to use it. The tapas were really good, but the plate wasn't really enough of a dinner for two... And the atmosphere was slightly lacking, but that might have been because we got there at 6pm, which is pretty early.

Berlin moments, 29.1.2011

K and I had a walk around Mariannenplatz in Kreuzberg and stumbled upon this cool community in a corner of Bethanien: everything is built from old vans and trailors. Not sure who lives here and why.

The sun was shining today, but it still sets early, around 4pm.

All the ugly makes Berlin beautiful. Every time I pass this lot on Revaler Straße I feel I should go to RAW, Cassiopeia, Suicide Circus and the Sunday fleamarket here more often...