Berlin | 03: cheesecake, museums and the final coffee

It's one of life's great truths that if a day begins with cake for breakfast, it's going to be a great day. On our penultimate day in Berlin we're at Five Elephant first thing, for some of their legendary cheesecake. It's light and dreamy with a decent base, and worth all the hype. Their crumble cake is equally good; the coffee is thick, dark and strong.

The sugar fuels our feet north to the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, so well-stuffed with history that a whole day here wouldn't be enough. The Holocaust section is a must-see, a beautiful and moving display of a nation's sorrow and regret. But it's also interesting to learn about other aspects of Jewish history so often overlooked by the blunt, overwhelming tragedy of the Holocaust. 

Onwards to Checkpoint Charlie, where I once again mourn the forgotten facts of my History A-level. Visitors queue to have their photo taken with US soldiers, but the authenticity of the scene is marred slightly by the ultra-tacky tourist shop behind. (It's strange to write this a year on, in a land of divided continents and the ascension of Trump, where the idea of building a wall to divide countries has re-emerged as a very real possibility.) 

A sugar crash renders necessary a Bäckerei trip: plagued by hungry wasps, we try the poppy seed pastry that's in every bakery. Next up is the Topographie des Terrors, a free outdoor museum detailing the history of Germany. Built on the site of the Gestapo headquarters along an extensive segment of the Berlin Wall, the museum is incredibly informative: you need a few hours and a fair bit of brain space.

Later we visit the Holocaust memorial site. Like the 9/11 memorial in New York and the war graveyards of Ypres, this is the kind of place you've already seen on websites, Instagram and blogs, yet still remains a moving monument when you're there in the flesh. It's nice to see children running and playing among the foreboding concrete blocks that make up the memorial. I think the best kind of memorials and monuments facilitate more than one kind of reaction; places that are not just about solemn remembrance and sorrow but the idea of life continuing, of a multi-faceted experience, of the visit being a memorable part of your trip in more ways than one. At any rate, a couple of dudes are sitting on one of the blocks drinking beer. Life goes on. We remember. And drink beer.

We walk through the heart of Berlin, the closest thing it has to a centre, where art galleries, memorials and museums nudge against the Reichstag and the cathedral. Our 'museum legs' have kicked in by this point (the kind of achy jelly legs you only get after extended time in museums) and a trip to an ice cream parlour is all we can think about.

That evening, we buy a budget picnic (including flatbread, hummus and baklava) from a nearby Turkish supermarket and drink beer by the canal as the stars come out.

On our final morning in Berlin it is hot and sunny. Coffee at Roamers, both a hidden gem and a Neukölln institution among those in the know. It's my favourite coffee stop so far. I'm a sucker for succulents, exposed wood and a wild west feel: I don't care how poncy that makes me. Inside it's bustling, so we sit on a bench in the street, drink black coffee in the sunshine and read.

Nearby is Tempelhofer Feld, a public park that was once a city airport (and before that... a public park). On the grass, where once no member of the public would've been allowed to stray, people sunbathe and picnic. You can climb a small tower to look out across the field to the city beyond. The airport buildings and control towers are empty, dotted with weeds, an eerie reminder of what a war-torn capital might've felt like (although Tempelhof was used for civil aviation right through WWII). But any tang of emptiness is blown away by the activity in the park: the flat open runways are jammed with runners, roller skaters and kite flyers. We sit under a tree and eat our last giant pretzels of the trip.

Later, I'm alone on a bus heading through Berlin to the airport. I'm taking photos as we glide through the street, and I realise it's my first time completely alone in a foreign city. It's exciting. 

places mentioned
cheesecake, cake and coffee at Five Elephant | Reichenbergerstraße 101
Jüdisches Museum Berlin | Lindenstraße 9-14
Checkpoint Charlie | Friedrichstraße 43-45
Topographie des Terrors | Niederkirchnerstraße 8
Holocaust Memorial | Cora-Berlinerstraße 1
coffee at Roamers | Pannierstraße 64
Tempelhofer Feld

Berlin | 02: palaces and pizzas

It's been almost a year since this Berlin trip, but it was so good that I'm going to continue writing about it anyway.

So. Day three in Berlin. It begins with a cortado served from a little red van parked inside a florists. We get a free biscuit too. It's warm and sunny again, the streets full of the soft golden feel to the air that signals an impending September. Everything - the clean modernist facades of the East Berlin Plattenbauten, the wide concrete pavements, the trees - feels as if its been washed in shimmering honeyed water and put out to dry.

On bicycles once more we nose our way to the Spree and cycle alongside it all the way to Charlottenburg. The river path is nice, reminds me of the Thames towpath, and affords us a good view of the changing architecture as we head west. If Neukölln and Kreuzberg are the equivalent to London's hip east quarters, then Charlottenburg is Chelsea and Kensington. It's affluent, grand. We eat a picnic under a willow tree in the gardens of the Schloss Charlottenburg; a palace I'd love to return to and explore.

In the afternoon we cycle back toward the city centre to check out Friedrichshain, a more gentrified version of Neukölln. A criss-cross of cobbled streets is home to independent boutiques and bookstores, coffee shops and the photobooths the neighbourhood is famous for. We drink cold brew at Silo coffee and hunt down a photobooth for a strip of black and white photos to take home.

Later, beer and vegan pizza at Sfizy Veg. I've always been a little suspicious of fake cheese, and I tend to believe that once you've been to Franco Manca all other pizza pales in comparison, but this is good. We sit outside. The food doesn't last long.

places mentioned:
cortados from The Coffee Ape at Blumen Weyer | Sonnenallee 51
Schloss Charlottenburg | Spandauer Damm 20-24
cold brew from Silo Coffee | Gabriel-Max-straße 4
vegan pizza from Sfizy Veg | Treptowerstraße 95

Berlin | 01: rivers, burgers, bicycles and flea markets

In late August of 2015 we go to Berlin.

Within an hour of arrival we have settled in the first coffee shop we pass (Melbourne Canteen) on one of Neukölln's wide leafy streets in order to study maps and imbibe as much caffeine as possible after our early start.

Neukölln, location of our Airbnb apartment for the next few days, is a bit like Berlin's equivalent of Shoreditch. Except, Berlin does hip better. Falafel isn't a fashion statement, charity shops aren't overpriced, bars aren't contrived to look cool. There are very few chains in the capital: I think I saw one Starbucks, on the most touristy street near Potsdamer Platz. London's independent coffee shops, in order to square their shoulders against the omnipotence of Starbucks, Costa, Nero and the like, have become almost cartoonish in their hipness. But in Berlin, independent coffee shops are the norm. Their minimal signage, distressed woodwork and fancy brews aren't half as achingly pretentious because they aren't a retaliation against corporate competition. They don't need to compete. They just need to make good coffee.

The apartment is on the third floor of one of the many sturdy old blocks that populate what was East Berlin. The ceilings are high, the hallways and windows wide, with white walls and wooden floors. There is a shelf of empty gin bottles in our room, and fairy lights.

Later that day we take an ambitious walk north towards Friedrichshain to see the East Side Gallery. A wrong turn teaches me my first lesson about Berlin: there's no such thing as a minor detour. Everything is so far apart. It's as if somebody has taken hold of London by her circumference and stretched her out like a freshly washed jumper.

Our wrong turn involves a walk along the Spree, the wide river that flattens its way through the city. On this hot day it is translucent, sparkling. We are suddenly thirsty. The East Side Gallery, a stretch of the Berlin wall covered in murals, is busy, but it is nice to see Honecker and Brezhnev snogging, and to test my memory of A level History. Later, we buy pretzels and buns from a station backerei and attempt to snooze by the river in the sun.

That evening we eat the most incredible vegetarian burgers for dinner, along with our first pint of Berlin beer, in a small place called Let it Be. You know it's going to be good when Tom Waits is playing as you walk in.

On our second day in Berlin, after a morning cortado, we cycle north to the Flohmarkt am Mauerpark, one of the capital's popular Sunday flea markets. Berlin is unlike London in that you can't walk everywhere. It's just too big: the city's districts sprawl as far away as possible from each other, and trying to walk between them during a day of sightseeing is exhausting. However, and again unlike London, the city is excellent for cycling. We find a place that rents renovated old bikes for 4 euros a day. This fits well with our 'frugally hip' aesthetic, despite the combination of juddering old bike frames and cobbled streets almost costing us our teeth and bones.

It's a particularly exciting trip for me because the flohmarkt is where I finally get my hands on the secondhand record I've been hunting for for years: Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska. (Later I have fun trying to translate the German lyric sheet: Heute Nacht haben sie den Chicken Man in Philly hochgejagt, sein Haus noch dazu...)
As well as records, the stalls offer books, secondhand clothes, silver rings and plants; a warren of browsing, thick with students and families alike. And when we escape from under the canvases into the wider park area, it feels like a music festival: people lie on the dusty grass drinking beer, smoking and watching musicians jam. Again there's something relievedly less 'try-hard' about it all compared to London.

We cycle back via the Reichstag and the Tiergarten to pose for photos before heading eastwards towards our apartment. As we near the Landwehr canal we pass a man standing next to a hole in the wall being handed the most incredible looking falafel wrap, and we squeeze the brakes, hard: it's dinnertime.

We prop our bikes on the bank of canal, buy bottles of beer from a nearby cafe. The falafel is hot and delicious and we eat as the sun turns the water purple and orange.

places mentioned:
coffee at Melbourne Canteen | Pannierstraße 57
East Side Gallery | Mühlenstraße
vegetarian burgers at Let it Be | Treptowerstraße 90
cortados from Café Treibholz | Hermannstraße 37
cheap secondhand bicycle rentals from Rent a Bike 44 | Mahlowerstraße 9
Flohmarkt am Mauerpark | Bernauerstraße 63-64
falafel from Mo's Kleiner Imbiss | Urbanstraße 68 (at least I think this was the place - we were too hungry to notice)
beers from Pavillon am Ufer | Paul-Lincke-Ufer 4