Berlin, Germany: Brrlin or Beerlin?

We had two things on our mind as we got to Berlin. BEER and FOOD. But this was temporarily forgotten, as we stepped into our huge 15^th floor suite, complete with two rooms and a deck. I was shocked that it was only 60 euro a night, but sure enough it was. Not a bad view of what I presume is the Mercedes building:

Felix was in Berlin last year, and there was a restaurant he’d wanted to try that served Berliner food, so we went there. How could a place with a menu like this possibly be bad?

We shared schnitzel and beef roulade, along with plenty of beer. The schnitzel was sooooooo delicious (but you know I like my salty food). I also had apple strudel for dessert. 

You know you want some!:

You’d think we’d go out and see the Berlin nightlife on a Saturday night, but we decided to be lame and get an early night sleep so that we’d have full rest for an “early” tour of the Parliament building the next morning (and by early, I mean it began at 10:30). And I got to take a nice warm shower, which was SO nice.

The Parliament building was quite something. It was fascinating because the border of East/West Berlin ran through the Parliament building. I learned that parliamentary elections don’t make any sense to me, as well as some good history about 20^th century Germany, which made much more sense. The dome was neat, as well, but we couldn’t walk up it, which was lame. And the tour was free – thanks to Felix for booking this in advance.

We walked through the Brandenburg Gate, and had lunch at a place right next to the entrance. Was it ever cold outside, as I hope this picture illustrates:

The food was mostly average, except for very good braised ox cheek. The beer was one of my favorites for the trip, which is surprising because it tasted of bananas, and I don’t actually like bananas (unless they are deep fried):

Next I wanted to see the Berlin Wall. I was pretty disappointed, actually – I think I built it up in my head too much (I was born while the wall was coming down). Don’t get me wrong, the East Side Gallery is a cool concept, but I really just wanted to see a blank wall. I guess that’s completely unfeasible, though, as it looks like they have to paint over the graffiti every year.

Well here's one picture I liked: 

Felix sensed my disappointment though, and researched a museum where we could learn more. We in fact went to that museum. The guy standing outside freaked out at me for no apparent reason, and spoke not a word of English. Entertaining.

We watched a Koyannisqatsi-esque helicopter flyover movie of the Berlin Wall taken during, I assume, the 1980s. It was actually quite informative. At the subway station, there was an exhibit all about the ghost stations that showed up during the division of the city (look it up!) so we actually stayed at the subway stop for awhile, before heading to a big Christmas market for “snacks”.

I immediately got my standard pommes frites. If that wasn’t enough potato, Felix spotted potato pancakes (we got them with bacon in them!) Then I had some sort of beef stew, while Felix had potato stew (more spuds!) Of course this is all outside, so we were cold. Obvious solution is lots of gluhwein! The station was even better because there was a crazy good fiddle player giving a performance.

Random delicious beef stew:

So since snacks turned into dinner, we didn’t really need to eat much else. So we went back to the hotel in order to research a bar to go to. And another hot shower…simply heaven.

We found an area that appeared to have some good bars. We passed by one that looked good, so we went in. It was pretty much a San Francisco hipster bar, but it had a great vibe. We had beers, then I had a G&T. A guy from LA started talked to us, and we discussed subculture and North Korea (random). Then people started smoking, and it was getting pretty late, so we headed back to the hotel.

The next morning we had brunch at a place called Noah’s (Felix liked it last year, and well the name and all). I had the “Farmer’s Breakfast” which was some conglomeration of potatoes and bacon and eggs, and looked like something Noah would dream up. It was strange, but surprisingly tasty: 

There was a huge department store across the street, and we made this silly mistake of going to the crazy food/drink floor, that was out of this world. If I hadn’t just eaten, I’d have dropped 50-100 euro here.

Felix wanted to check out two museums – the museum with all the ancient stuff (I forget the name), as well as the DDR museum (no not that DDR). The ancient museum was cool because they had the gates of Istar that you could walk through. There was much very old stuff. Some of it was cool, but it began to blur together after awhile.

Gates of Istar:

Random ancient bird dude thing: 

The DDR museum was rushed, as we were running out of time. It is not a computerized dance museum, but rather, an interactive history of the GDR, and was pretty cool, to say the least. But we were running late, and then I made the fatal mistake of wanting to stop at a market for currywurst and frites…

I wish we had more time at the DDR museum longer - here's a Trabi (GDR car)!:

…And yeah you can read all about the shit that happened on my way out of Berlin…

Angry, used, and exhausted, my head hit the pillow in Felix’s flat in Geneva, and I was out…

A great time in Germany – I’ll return to Berlin one day for sure, as well as some other cities in the country of much beerage.