Berlin I

Greetings from Berlin!

We arrived on Friday morning from Toronto (via Zurich) and have been enjoying and exploring the city since then. Both Kristi and I (Jon) had visited Berlin while on exchange in Copenhagen, but a lot has changed in the 6-7 years since our visit (both with us and with the city).

Berlin is an incredible patchwork of old and new (and a lot of the “old” is in fact newly rebuilt/restored in the past 50 years, as over 90% of the city was destroyed during WWII bombings). Since re-unification 18 years ago, the former East Berlin has undergone a radical transformation and gentrification is rampant across the city. Beyond “seeing the sights” such as the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gates, the many museums that abound, the TV Tower, etc. we have really enjoyed exploring these gentrifying neighborhoods, like Kreutzberg, Prenzlauer Berg and Freidrichshain. To us, this is the “real” Berlin and much more interesting than the pomp of Unter Den Linden (the Royal Boulevard) and Potsdamer Platz (not to say that we haven’t also visited those places and will revisit them again before we leave). These neighborhoods were not on the radar 15 years ago but now are packed with hot bars and restaurants, young parents pushing babies in prams and cool shopping.

We have had a great time exploring a neighborhood organic market (enjoying some incredible Turkish fast food and organic soup), relaxing in several great small pubs (including a punk bar that makes you realize the benefits of smoke-free drinking establishments) and enjoying a wide variety of the great ethnic cuisine that makes Berlin such a dynamic place to live and eat (including pizza, Turkish, Vietnamese, contemporary German, traditional German). We still have a long list of restaurants/fast-food joints/cafes/pubs to hit up in our remaining 4 days although we likely won’t be able to make it to all of them before we depart. So far, the food highlights have been 1) Henne, a restaurant that has served ONLY roast chicken for over 100 years (photo at top of post); 2) Brunch in Fredrichshain (who new that Berliners were so competitive with their brunch - our chosen restaurant was packed and since we didn’t have reservations, which surprisingly were a must for this place’s Sunday brunch, we had to “settle” for a neighbouring restaurant which was itself incredible), and; 3) The Gozleme, a Turkish panzarotti served up by what looks like a husband-and-wife team at the Kollwitzplatzmarkt, an organic street market in Prenzlauer Berg.


Beyond all of the great food and drink, our trip highlights have been a trip to the world-class Berlin Philharmoniker (photo above) w/ guest conductor Zubin Mehta (a great deal at 16 Euro for last-minute seats) and an incredibly informative 3 hour walking tour of some of the main sights in central Berlin. We have seen/done more, but the details would belabor this blog post.

We have several more exciting things planned for the next few days, prior to our scheduled departure for Lisbon on Friday. We have posted and labeled some of our pictures to date (click here) and will continue to do so throughout the trip.

Next: The rest of our time in Berlin and some questions from our "Reader Mailbag" (feel free to post your questions/comments to the comments section or email them to us directly).