Beer-mindedness

All set for tomorrow's flight to the UK to spend Christmas with my family.  It's been a very beer-oriented few days.  On Thursday evening we checked out Hops and Barley in Wuhlichstrasse, Friedrichshain, a micro brewery with an inviting tiled-walled bar area, complete with mash tuns.  The Weissbier is a lovely deep colour and certainly doesn't disappoint on flavour.  On Friday we headed over to Spandau to check out the Christmas market there.  If, like me, you are stuck in the eighties, the name Spandau probably makes you think of the band Spandau Ballet or the place where the infamous Rudolf Hess was incarcerated until his suicide in 1987.  It was suitably atmospheric - we got there just as it was getting dark - but the ambience in the area around the Rathaus was somewhat sullied by the unrelenting gaudiness of the market.  On the way back we called in at the Eschenbrau Brauerei in Wedding, another micro brewery.  It was tricky to find - the surrounding area looks a bit like a Battersea housing estate and the actual 'keller' is down an alleyway and underneath one of the blocks.  It was well worth it though, for a few of their 'Panke Golds'.  They also distil their own whisky.

Things have been a bit more low-key today, although I am now looking forward to visiting the awesome Coopers Tavern in Burton tomorrow night, with fingers crossed that they have Sarah Hughes or Jaipur on tap

The 'tasteful'...

and not-so-tasteful sides of Spandau Christmas Market

Back in the DDR

The one thing I’ve learnt about Berlin weather is that it seems to do something different every day.  Sometimes it even seems as though we get ‘four seasons in one day’.  This week, however, has been consistent – cold but dry and still and sunny – perfect for an urban ramble.  Yesterday we turned out of the flat and headed along Prenzlauer Allee into DDR territory – blocks of Cold-War era housing and even the odd Trabi to be spotted.  I love walking in this part of Prenzlauer Berg – it’s so different from the unrelenting prettiness of areas such as Kollwitzplatz, with its ubiquitous middle-class parents and its twee little shops selling overpriced stuff that absolutely no one can have any need of.  The buildings further out are built with utility rather than beauty as the main concern and the shops are more functional – bakeries and bike repairs for example.  It’s more like I imagine the DDR to have been before it was invaded by (sorry, ‘reunited with’) West Germany.  After an hour or so’s wandering we eventually came to the bridge at Bornholmer Strasse.  We last came here on the 9^th November – the 24^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  To see traffic hurtling across into Wedding now it’s difficult to believe that this was once an international frontier.  I don’t believe that walls should separate people, I don’t believe in barriers of any kind, physical or ideological, but I fear that modern Germany is doing its best to erase the old East.  I worry that monuments such as the memorial to Ernst Thälmann (a socialist leader murdered by the Nazis) in the park that bears his name will disappear.  There are already plans to ‘develop’ the park by building yuppie homes in the place of flats that were once occupied by DDR officials.

I’m not defending the surveillance practices of the Stasi (even though they were only doing what the ‘land of the free’ does routinely all the time, i.e. spying on everyone and justifying it as being in the interests of national security), I just believe that capitalism is the great evil, and the capitalist world, with its injustice, its inequality, its corruption and the weight of the establishment-friendly media behind it has done its best to try to convince us all that socialism is bad.

Atmospheric Soviet-era architecture

Trabi!

 

 

I'm not a camera

Waking up to the morning rush hour on Prenzlauer Allee, I watch the street life rolling inexorably on; the trams that slide in and out every few minutes, the S-Bahn station across the road that, at similar intervals, disgorges a fresh swathe of passengers, the frequent clamour of an emergency vehicle as it hurtles towards whatever calamity requires it.  In the Vietnamese restaurant next door a cleaner is mopping the floor in readiness for another day’s business.  The florists across the road have spread their wares out on the pavement – fir branches, poinsettias and bunches of mistletoe.  Over to the left, through the naked branches of the tree outside my balcony, I can see the huge silvery globe atop the Fernsehturm.  It is a clear morning and Christmas is nine days away.

I am reminded of the opening passage of Christopher Isherwood’s 'Goodbye to Berlin': I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

I don’t want to be a passive observer, merely receiving transitory images, but an active agent, participating in the life of the city.  In my own small way, as I make my way to my language course of a morning, or sit in a café reading my book while nursing a coffee, I feel that I am weaving my own little thread into the fabric of a Berlin day.  I am among pedestrians and cyclists, people forging ahead towards their own destinations, people exercising their dogs or taking their kids to school. There is traffic noise, movement, human voices, many of them foreign like my own, belonging to people like me who have sought to make their home in this once divided, now eclectic capital.

Bite Club at Urban Spree, Friedrichshain, Sunday 15th December

 

 

 

Christmas fever

On Monday the Christmas markets opened and the weather played along accordingly.  It’s almost as though the cold was lying in wait and came rolling in as the markets began trading.  I’m now leaving the house buried under layers of weather-combatting garments so that not much of me is visible beneath hat, coat, snood, gloves… It takes forever to leave anywhere because getting ready to face the outside world is like a ceremonial robing.

The whole city seems to have turned Christmas-mad overnight.  The florists have all given themselves over almost entirely to Christmas-related flora.  I see people riding by with fir branches swaying in the baskets of their bikes.  The shop windows are all decked out with festive displays and even the little bakery where we take our breaks has put up a tree.  On Stargarder Strasse strings of twinkling lights zig-zag their way across the pavements from buildings to trees.

The temperature slips perilously close to zero and the air has a dank, clammy quality.  Often now the TV tower is either totally invisible or only hazily apparent through a murky gloom.  Small children go about looking like astronauts in their thickly-padded all-in-ones and the number of cyclists has definitely dwindled.
Thursday provided a temporary blip by dawning bright and springlike, in defiance of the dire predictions of the weather forecasters but Friday returned to wet and dreary normality.
Venturing out of doors brings anew the shock of cold.  By far the best place to be is a cosy candlelit bar or café, especially in the late afternoon when the daylight begins to give way to an atmospheric city twilight.  One can only feel for the homeless and for the refugees at the Oranienplatz camp for whom the creeping cold of another bitter Berlin night must be anything but atmospheric.

Christmas tree at the Christmas market in the Kulturbrauerei

One of the weirdest 'attractions' I've ever seen - great heavy medieval-looking coats suspended from poles that people huddle into whilst sitting on top of radiators - very cosy I'm sure, but very strange.

Another oddity - the gluhwein yurt

 

 

Internet Blues

It's been a very business-like week so far, getting to grips with the practicalities of Berlin life.  I started my language course on Monday.  It's an intensive two-week course, three hours a day Monday to Friday.  The fantastic bakery across the road provides a welcome interlude at breaktime, and at less than two euros for coffee and a doughnut, it could prove a serious danger to my health.  I'm hoping that the fact that I either walk or cycle (depending on the weather) to and from class will counteract the effects of the daily sugar overload.
On Tuesday afternoon we went down to the local Burgeramt to register as residents in the city.  This was a fairly painless process and definitely not the nightmare of Kafka-esque bureaucracy I'd been led to expect.
Wednesday we had a problem with our internet availability.  We have no Wi-Fi in the flat so we're renting a surfstick from the estate agents who we found the flat through.  We have somehow exceeded our download limit and now have no internet (apart from on Alan's phone) until 4th December.  This brought a couple of immediate problems to light.  We are going to Mallorca on 5th December for a little pre-Christmas treat instead of buying each other presents.  As it's online check-in, we took the laptop down to Wohnzimmer - one of my favourite bars - on Helmholtzplatz to do the checking-in and will go to one of the copy shops to print out the boarding passes.
Last night we went to the language exchange at the St Gaudy Café for the second time.  It was very busy and lively but I got the chance to inflict my terrible grasp of the language on the two Germans I was sitting with.  They were very kind though, and one gave me his e-mail address and said he'd be happy to meet us for more language exchanging.
As we've no internet at home, I'm writing this post in Beakers, which, I think I've said before, is my favourite bar in the city at the moment.  It's so cosy, atmospheric and friendly.  I've just had a smoked salmon and brie sandwich placed in front of me so that's my signal to sign off.
Until the next post.  Tschuss!

Another week has flown by.  I'm getting more used to the bike and surprising myself at my fitness levels.  On Wednesday we rode over to Pankow, to the park where the Soviet soldiers' cemetery is.  It was chilly but gloriously sunny and the park looked beautiful covered in autumn leaves.  Wednesday evening we went along to the language exchange at St Gaudy Café on Gaudystrasse.  This was a lot of fun and I was quite reassured to find that I'm not the only person in Berlin with a terrible grasp of the German language.  Friday was cold and dank and we did a 16 kilometre round trip down to the Turkish Market in Kreuzberg.  The market is strung along the Maybachufer at the side of the Landwehr canal.  It runs on a Tuesday and Friday afternoon and has a great atmosphere, especially on Fridays when it seems especially vibrant to me.  Although the main focus is on the local Turkish community, it is well-visited by tourists and other locals keen to sample the delicious Middle-Eastern foods on sale, or shop for fresh fruit and veg, bread, meat and fish and other wares such as clothing and household goods.  Before heading home we called in at Martkhalle Neun, an old market hall that is home to several stalls selling top-notch produce.  We sat at one of the communal tables and had a coffee - most welcome after a very chilly wander around the Turkish Market - and a gargantuan portion of cranberry cake, which was heavenly.  Thus fuelled we tackled the uphill climb back to Prenzlauer Berg.  On Saturday we gave the bikes a rest and walked to the market at Kollwitzplatz  - this blog could be solely about Berlin's fantastic markets.  For me the area around Kollwitzplatz is one of the prettiest in the whole city, although it is thoroughly gentrified and maybe even a little smug.  I still enjoy a Saturday morning stroll around here though, especially if I go via Wortherstrasse and while an hour away in St George's bookshop.  A new exhibition opened in the museum in the Kulturbrauerei - Daily Life in the DDR.  Entry is free and it's an agreeable way to spend an hour or so, although, if it's going to become a permanent fixture, I worry about the impact it might have on the excellent DDR Museum in Mitte.  On the way home we called in for coffee and pastries at the lovely Portuguese/Greek Bekarei in Dunckerstrasse.  Great coffee and a mouthwatering selection of baked goods on offer.  We spent the evening at Beakers, also in Dunckerstrasse, a bar that we love so much we've practically lived there these last few weeks.

View from the balcony on a beautiful Berlin morning
 

An intriguing doorway (not sure what to)
 

Me walking down Prenzlauer Allee
 

The planetarium
 

New Life!!

Amazingly, it's now nearly three weeks since I quit my job in prison education and almost two weeks since I moved to Berlin with my husband Alan to fulfil a long-held dream.
The first week was largely spent catching up on sleep - I can't remember the last time I slept for eight hours a night and after eight years in a great but demanding job I had been feeling pretty burned out.  We also spent our first week finding our feet here - even though the flat we're renting is in a part of Berlin that we know well, it's different being here as a resident as opposed to being a holidaymaker. 
I love our flat.  It's right on Prenzlauer Allee, across the road from the S-Bahn station and next door to the planetarium and the Ernst Thalmann Park.  I love watching the street life from our little balcony and the fact that I can glimpse the Fernsehturm through the half-naked branches of the tree outside.
Last Friday we bought a pushbike each.  I haven't ridden a bike in decades and was surprised at how bad I was at it.  However, a quick pedal around the park and it all came back to me.  I must say that having a bike really opens the city up.  Even though I love walking and can happily spend hours on foot here, there is so much ground that you can cover by pedal power.  I am desperately unfit though and certainly no Victoria Pendleton.
On Saturday we biked up to the station at Bornholmer Strasse, a former checkpoint on the border between East and West Berlin.  It was the 24th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and this was the place where the first people entered West Berlin.  To ride over the bridge now from Prenzlauer Berg into Wedding you wouldn't even register that it had once been an international frontier, and not only that, but the dividing line between the two dominant political ideologies of the twentieth century.
Saturday was also the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht - the night during which the Nazis smashed up Jewish owned businesses across the city.  In remembrance of this shops in the main shopping areas displayed' broken window' overlays. 
On Sunday we had more Berlin Wall.  We cycled down to Friedrichshain where we had a stroll around the flea markets at Boxhagener Platz and Revaler Strasse before riding down to the magnificent East Side Gallery.  This is a stretch of the Berlin Wall which is supposed to be a protected monument but there doesn't seem to be that much protection going on.  A chunk has already been sacrificed for the monstrous 02 Arena and further sections are under threat because rapacious property developers insist on trying to build yuppie apartments where they are least wanted.
After a bracing ride down the length of the gallery, we began the climb back up to Prenzlauer Berg and a well-deserved coffee and cake break at Atopia on Prenzlauer Allee, which is so cozy and laid-back inside, I almost fell asleep.