Here are some of our Berlin pictures, now that I'm home and slightly more coherent. (When I last posted I was in my hotel room, preparing to check out both figuratively and literally after five solid days of eating, drinking and snowball fighting. Slightly delicate, let's say.)
Our days were filled with museums and walking the streets. The Bauhaus Archiv was in a fabulous building, and great for a couple of hours of pretending to be a German art student in the 1930s, painstakingly painting colourwheels.
There was an exhibition of Blue Note photography that I really enjoyed at the Jewish Museum. (A brilliant building within interesting exhibits but chaotic, with airport-style security.) Their kosher food exhibit was really interesting too, with a whole room devoted to matzo bread.
I decided that I would like to live on
Rosa Luxemburg Platz. Dominated by the stunning
Volksbühne building on one side (great for a couple of hours of pretending to be the actress from The Lives of Others, on stage at the People's Theatre); with
this awesome cinema facing it, and lined with Soviet style apartment blocks.
Evenings were mainly spent drinking glühwein, tasty beers and cheap cocktails in bars such as
Scotch & Sofa and
Chagall, both close to where we were staying, in Prenzlauer Berg. Formerly a rundown area in East Berlin, the beautiful buildings are now home to the yummies and their associated boutiques and brunching spots. The evening walk home usually entailed a race up to the top of the area's landmark
Wasserturm, a water tower which the Nazis used as a torture chamber. Nice.
On New Year's Eve we sat in our favourite bar, Chagall, and took part in the Berlin tradition of setting off fireworks at midnight. It flew against all six of our British sensibilities, i.e. fireworks are dangerous and more than likely to blow off your hand, if not your whole head. There was an eight year old girl setting off the rockets outside our bar. One guy walked over a burning rocket without a murmur. Luckily we'd consumed several bottles of sekt, so we managed to cope with the scene.
I would've quite liked to go to a huge ballroom dance which was being held in one of the few original theatres left standing after the war, the
Admiralspalast. How very Berlin! Unsurprisingly, the boys weren't keen.
Oh and for those who asked: here is a currywurst. It doesn't look like much, but really good sausage smothered in a ketchup and curry powder mix is strangely delicious.
Honestly. I mean, look at this huge queue at
Konnopkes Imbiß. (Okay, I'm the kind of girl who likes a battered sausage from the fish and chip shop, so I don't blame you if you don't believe me.)
Some more awesome photos of our trip
here. (Hope you don't mind, Paddy.)