Saturday, 18 May 2024 Berlin, Panoramic tour and "A Taste of"

Written 24 July 2024

The Grand Hyatt is quadrangular; each floor comprises four long hallways arranged in a square. When we arrived at our floor, signs directed us in opposite directions, so we set off and hiked a good ways only to meet on the opposite side, where our rooms were next door to each other. So it didn't really make any difference which was we walked—we were equally as far as possible from the only elevator bank. We certainly got our exercise, just coming and going from our rooms.

Like all large international chain hotels of any pretention, the Hyatt provided a lovely buffet breakfast. Just past a table of house-made yogurt in little glass bottles, two kinds of liquid honey plus honey still in the comb, and a platter of brownie-like cakes topped with blueberries and blackberries was this handsome platter of salmon and mackerel, decorated with pink peppercorns, slices of lemon, and sprigs of dill. To the left of the platter were bowls of all the usual accompaniements, and to the right of it a nice assortment of cheese, including Camembert and a Bavarian blue. Beside the cheese is a glass jar of fig jam, and in the top right corner is a rack supporting miniature ice cream cones piped full of tarama—herring roe spread.

On the hot table were bacon, sausage links, small meatballs cut in half, and scrambled eggs.

And here at the right is a pot of weisswurst, staying warm in its poaching water, just like the ones we made in (Regensburg in 2022.

Here's part of the bread table, which included, in addition to the usual sliced bread for the toaster and spherical buns with and without various seeds and nuts, pink curry breads (presumably flavored with one of the redder versions of the curry sauce served ubiquitously with mild sausages in Berlin), and soft pretzel balls.

At the right is my breakfast plate: A seedy bun, a sweet roll, butter, bacon, sausage links, meatball halves, a meat terrine that I found somewhere but isn't in any of my photos, salmon, and in the bowl at the top, a couple slices of cheeses that looked interesting. Mint tea on the side.

Around the corner, out at one end of the buffet, was the "vegan corner," stocked with lots of salads and fresh and grilled veggies, fake cheese, cereals, hummus, and pickles.

Our first excursion of the day, at 8:45 am, was the "panoramic" tour of the city (with driver Jusuf and guide Stephanie), usually a tour by bus of a city's highlights, but because Berlin is gearing up for a major soccer tournament, many streets and whole neighborhoods were closed to traffic. So we had to do some portions of the route on foot.

We started out by driving west along the south side of the Tiergarten, the largest green space in the heart of the city. That section of the Tiergartenstrasse is embassy row. We drove past half a dozen embassies in quick succession, and as you can see, my attempts to photograph them from the moving bus were only moderately successful.

At the left hee is the Austrian embassy, all curved green glass and steel, not at all in keeping with what I think of as Austrian architecture. At the right is the Indian embassy, built of red sandstone from Rajasthan.

Next was the Turkish embassy. I don't know whether the seemingly random irregularity of the windows' size and spacing means anything.

The Italian embassy was pink and white, with a yellow entrance.

This rectilinear white building with square columns was the Japanese embassy, and I'm pretty sure the one at the right here is the Danish embassy, which Stephanie said was still under construction.

We also passed the Saudi Arabian embassy, which I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of. Stephanie described it as reminding her of a elegant oil tank designed in a moorish style. Its facade was a large cylinder screened by a perforated metal sheet reminiscent of the perforated screens on the outside of the Arab World Institute in Paris.

Next, we drove a circuitous route to view the Victory Column, which is 67 m high and commemorates Germany's victories against Denmark, Austria, and France between 1864 and 1871. It located in a large rotary on the axis that runs through the Tiergarten and is defined by the boulevard called Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg gate, and 17 June Street. We drove back and forth past it several times during the tour, but as you can see, I still couldn't get a good photo of all of it.

At the left here is most of the shaft and a little of the figure on top. At the right is a closer shot of the base. The section of column behind the pillars is covered with a mosaic mural.

The rotary is surrounded by memorial statues. I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of the one of Bismarck, but I captured the one of Albrecht van Roon (1803-1879), which is next to him. Roon was Minister of War, active in wars that led to Germany unification under Prussia. Unfortunately, the image is too small to bother presenting here. Just picture a mustachioed Prussian general with one hand on his hip and other holding his pointy helmet against his thigh.

"Tiergarten" means "animal garden" or "animal park," but it was never a zoo. It was a fenced royal hunting preserve, which the kings of Prussia would have stocked with deer, which they could then shoot. Now that it's a park, though, it does have a zoo, in its southwest corner.

As a park, the Tiergarten is described as an English country-style garden, including large lawns and areas of well-manicured woodland.

Other landmarks Stephanie pointed out included Bellvue Palace, shown here at the left. It's the official residence of the German president (currently Frank-Walter Steinmeier). The palace dates from the 18th century. When the federal flag is flying on top, as it is in this photo, the federal president is in the country.

This handsome Japanese gate, called the Elephant Gate, is the entrance to the Tiergarten zoo.

This tall, narrow ruined church is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, preserved in its ruined state as a war memorial. It's sometimes called the symbolic heart of the city. Its replacement as a working church is next door, a concrete octogon, whose outer surface looks like a waffle iron. But the guide assursed us that each cell of the waffle pattern is embedded with blue glass, so that indoors, the result is beautiful.

At the right is the Café Kranzler. It opened in the 19th century on Unter den Linden, was several stories high, and became an iconic Berlin destination. But after reunification, it was displaced by an extensive redevelopment program and was reopened on just the upper floor of a modern shopping mall at the Kranzler Eck (Kranzler Corner) at the head of the Kurfürstendamm, a shopping boulevard originally laid out by Bismarck.

I couldn't get good photos of either the "dancing spaghetti" monument or the "Arc de 124.5°," both of which we drove by. The first is a stainless steel arrangement of four standing cylinders that bend and twine around each other without touching. It is intended to express the "separate but together" status of the four sectors of Berlin. The second was a gift from France, a huge metal arc lying "on its back" as it were. Its curve is supposed to be that of the path from Toulouse to Paris to Berlin; I'm note sure why.

Another feature I saw but didn't get a good photo of was a delicate wooden footbridge, the Hiroshima Bridge, that was a gift from Japan to Berlin on the occasion of some major birthday of the city. It leads over a canal to the Japanese embassy.

On our way to our first stop, Checkpoint Charlie, we passed "Trabi World," dedicated to a truly dreadful little East German car called the Trabant (Trabi for short). East Germans saved for years to buy one, as they were the only car available. They were notoriously flimsy, ill-equipped, and unreliable. But they became a symbol of freedom when hundreds of them were driven into the western sectors when the wall came down.

Trabi World has bought up a raft of them and painted them in all the colors of the rainbow and patterns of the world—from zebra stripes and leopard skin to psychedelic wildflowers. Photos on their website even show a Trabi pick-up truck and a Trabi stretch limo! Today, Trabi World organizes "Trabi safaris," where you and others get to drive Trabis in a guided convoy through the streets of Berlin.

In the right-hand photo, silhouetted against the sky, you can see a sausage being held aloft by a cartoon bear. Bears are a popular symbol of Berlin, and the complex includes a little restaurant where you can order the ubiquitous currywurst.

Right after Trabi World, we passed the Federal Ministry of Finance, which was formerly Goering's Air Ministry. It's gray and fenced and just looks like a prison.

This is the replica of Checkpoint Charlie that marks the spot where the real one stood. Stephanie told us that the real one was actually much larger. It must have been shrunk so that it didn't take up too much of the street and block traffic (as the original was intended to do).

Two of the front windows have star-shatters in them, but I don't know whether they are replicas of real ones or just the result of more recent vandalism.

We were able to get out and walk around the area.

The forbidding sign at the left here warned everyone who passed through that they were leaving the American sector of Berlin. And yes, the big red K in the upper right corner of the photo is part of a KFC sign. There's a McDonald's across the street. Several of the buildings surrounding the site now house a museum of the wall.

Throughout the city, the position of the wall is indicated by double courses of paving stones set into the streets and sidewalks. This section is also more explicitly labeled with a bronze plaque reading "Berliner Mauer 1961–1989."

Nearby was this elevated sign with a photo of a young U.S. soldier (left). He's Jeff Harper, who was 22 when the wall came down (he even wielded a hammer). He was here as a tuba player with the U.S. forces, and the photo was taken in 1994, as part of a project to photograph the last U.S. soldiers to leave Berlin.

At the right is a young Soviet soldier. I don't know who he was or when the photo was taken. When you stand at Checkpoint Charlie and look toward the former Soviet zone, you see the right-hand photo. When you stand on the other side, looking back toward the American zone, you see Harper.

Many of the nearby walls (some of them remnants of the wall, I think) displayed historic photos and explanations of phenomena associated with the division of Berlin.

At the left is a historic photo of the (Berlin) Brandenburg Gate looking decidedly the worse for the wear.

At the right you can see John F. Kennedy at this spot in 1963.

Other panels explained the phenomenon of "ghost stations," subway stops closed to all traffic because they were on lines that would have crossed the boundaries of sectors.

The memorial was placed, quite pointedly, both quite near the wall and within easy sight of the Reichstag. The nearby Russian embassy is the largest embassy in Europe.

Written 28 July 2024

Our next stop was Pariser Platz, the open square in front of the Brandenburg Gate. In the left-hand photo, the French and American embassies are just out of sight to the left. Behond the gate is the eastern end of the Tiergarten. The white "elbows " sticking out to the right and left of the gate are the corners of a ginormous soccer goal erected just on the other side of the gate, in prepration for the huge upcoming soccer tournament. Part of the reason Berlin's traffic pattern was so badly disrupted is that the open area between the gate and the park, and a solid mile of the broad, six-lane boulevard that leads from the gate straight through the park to the Victory Column and beyond, had been closed, carpeted in astroturf, and lined with giant video screens to serve as the public viewing area for the games. In fact, if I blow the photo up, I can actually see the Victory Column in the distance, near the left edge of the central space between the gate's columns.

The bright turquoiose spot you can see just below the Viking lollipop is a costumed mime, in what I think is supposed to be a soviet military uniform but painted entirely turquoise, as was his skin. He was posing collecting tips for posing with tourists.

The gate was built in 1791 by Frederick William II and was considered the most most beautiful of the 18 city gates; it's now the only one left. On top, Victoria, goddess of victory, drives a quadriga, a four-horse chariot. When Napoleon came through, he took took the whole chariot, horses, and lady as a trophy and sent it to Paris, where he never even unwrapped it. In 1814 she came back, and the Prussian eagle and the iron cross were added.

We had free time to walk around the area and through the gate, though the astroturfed area was fenced off, as the surface was still being adjusted and fastened down. But in the photo at the right, taken from the far side of the gate, you can see the Victory Column (through the fencing, construction trucks, barricades, etc.), complete with the golden figure on top. Did I already say the column dates from 1871? The figure on top is Victoria, the goddess of victory, again. The sculptor used his daughter Elsie as a model, so the figure is known locally as "Old Elsie." She reportedly wears size 92 shoes. You can even climb the column via a 280-step staircase inside. We didn't.

At the left here is the giant soccer goal. The building to the left of it is one end of the gate. The woods to the right of it are part of the Tiergarten.

And to the right, the line of the wall, marked with the usual double course of paving stones. The Reichstag building was in West Berlin, and the Brandenburg Gate, about 100 yards away, was in East Berlin.

If you walk through the gate from where we started in Pariser Platz, turn right (toward the Reichstag), and cross the street, you come to this fence, the eastern boundary of the Tiergarten, bearing white crosses commemorating people shot trying to cross the wall.

At the right is the Reichstag building. It was built in the late 19th century by architect Paul Wallot, but the recent renovation by Norman Foster (same British guy who designed the Viaduc de Millau in France!) added the glass dome. The renovation also preserves historic red army graffiti inside. You need to present your passport and to go through airport-style security to get into the building.

In 1933, Hitler became chancellor, and four weeks later, there was a fire at the Reichstag. A Dutchman was sentenced to death for setting the fire, but historians are almost sure that the nazis did it themselves (to generate a reason to arrest more communists), coming and going through a tunnel from another building.

After WWII and the division of Germany, the government was moved to Bonne. The Reichstag building hosted concerts in that era. Residents of East Berlin coulddn't attend, but they could listen from behind the wall. In 1999, the capital was moved back to Berlin, and the first meeting was held in the Reichstag.

After our stroll around, we rendezvoused back a Pariser Platz, where I got this photo of a building inscribed "Bundestag." "Reichs" means "imperial," and "Bundes" means "federal." Now, I'm told, the Bundestag generally refers to the governing body and "Reichstag" to the building where it meets. The bust is of Matthias Erzberger, German Minister of Finance, who was assassinated in 1921 by a member of a forerunner of the Nazi party.

At the right here, Daved poses with another of the ubiquitous Berlin bears. The spire starting at the bear's left knee and ending at its collarbone represents the East Berlin TV tower. It's 368 m high and has a panoramic viewing point and a rotating restaurant. The elevator gets you from ground level to the restaurant (660 feet up) in just 40 seconds. The tower was a point of prestige for the DDR, but the shining cross that appeared on the ball in bright sunlight was a source of embarrassment. Several schemes were tried in an attempt to alter the reflections and eliminate the cross, but none of them worked.

Back in the bus, we drove along the famous boulevard called Unter den Linden ("Under the Lindens," meaning "under the linden trees"). It leads a long away from the Brandenberg gate in the direction opposite the Victory Column. The photo at the left is of the Berlin State Opera building, on Unter den Linden.

Our route led across one branch of the Spree River onto Museum Island, an island in the middle of the city between two arms of the Spree. It's home to five major museums, built between 1824 and 1930, plus the city's cathedral, shown here at the right, carrying ornateness to extremes.

At the left here is the Teachers' House, whose exterior wrap-around mural is one of the world's largest works of art (27 m high and 127 m long). It was built after WWII to replace the previous building, which was demolished in the war. The mural is called Our Life and is supposed to portray the many aspects of life in East Germany. As we paused at a traffic light, our guide pointed out a couple of small rectangles incorporated into the design that are supposed to have been windows through which agents could secretly watch the activities of the people below on the street.

From there, we drove southeast along the Spree to our next top, the East Side Gallery, a first shot of which is shown here at the right.

Along the way we spotted a most unusual vehicle, which I wish I'd been able to get decent photos of: a mobile pedal-driven bar. It consisted of a long table with space in the center for a bartender, six seats on each side, and a canopy over the top, all mounted on wheels. The dozen passengers were also the source of power; as they quaffed their beer (a barrel was mounted on one end to provide a plentiful supply), they pedaled, causing the vehicle to zip along smartly, keeping up with the urban traffic. I assume the bartender was steering.

The Museum of the Wall is located on the banks of the Spree, and next to it is the longest surviving segment of the Berlin wall, running along the banks of the river. After reunification, the east side of that section of wall (the side away from the river), was painted white and divided into panels. Each panel was awarded to a noted artist to decorate. And that's the East Side Gallery—a long series of artistic statements commenting directly or indirectly on the wall.

Here are another couple of shots from the bus before it stopped to let us out.

Several people asked about this glass and steel structure that looks as though somebody has been playing Jenga with it. It's called "The Edge" and is basically an office building, but it's apparently got some restaurants in it, too. It's on Alexander Square (named for one of the Russian tsars), which is where, in 1989, a zillion East Germans assembled to protest in favor of democracy and precipitated the destruction of the Berlin wall. The tall TV tower is also on Alexander Square.

At the right is the Uber Arena. I didn't ask, but I assume it's a sports venue sponsored by the ride-sharing company. I can't imagine anyone in Germany calling anything "Uber" for any other reason.

Once we stopped and got out, I could get some better photos. This one has a Picasso-y look to my eye, though it's by Rosemarie Schinzler.

This one is a reference to the Phaiastos Disc, an enigmatic fire-clay disk from the Minoan Bronze Age found by archaeologists on Crete. This one reads in symbols of peace rather than the mysterious syllabary pictograms of the original. (See my blog entry of 16 July 2008 for a version reading in mysterious meiofaunal organisms.) If I've read the attribution right, it's by Irina Dubrovskaja.

The whole gallery was recently repainted, because the colors were fading and graffiti were accumulating. Once it was prsitine again, they coated the whole thing in weather-resistant lacquer so that graffiti can simply be scrubbed off.

And here are images of the notorious "Ampelmann." An "Ampel" is a traffic light (cognate, I wonder, with French "ampoule," light bulb?) and "mann" is "man"; these are the images used to control crosswalks in East Germany before reunification.

They're cute, yes, but a bit silly? But after reunification, when the authorities set out of standardize things by changing them all to match the ones used in West Germany (which look a lot like the ones we use in the U.S.), a terrible uproar arose. Why, the East Germans asked, must everything be changed to Western standards! We like our Ampelmann; why don't we get to choose for once? As a result, all traffic signals in Berlin (maybe all in Germany?) are being changed to use the Ampelmann images. They're not all done yet—we saw a few of the western style ones outside Berlin—but eventually all the walk signals will feature the little green man with the jaunty boater hat.

More things we learned in the course of the day:

• Although Frank-Walter Steinmeier is the president (head of state), the chancellor, head of the executive branch, is Olaf Scholz.
• In 1920, Charlottenberg, long a separate town and the residence of German royalty, was incorporated into Berlin proper.
• The Landwehr canal connects the upper and lower Spree rivers; we crossed it in the bus.
• The Kaufhaus des Westens ("KaDeWe") is Berlin's premier department store, located on the Kurfürstendamm shopping street (locally called the Ku'damm); its 6th floor is a food hall.
• Berlin is about 30% greenspace (NYC is 14%). The Tiergarten, of course, is huge, and because Berlin's city limits are so expansive, they take in a lot of green space around the edges.
• Claus von Stauffenberg tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944 but failed and was killed. We drove along the avenue named for him.
• The Berlin wall went up in 1961 and ran through Potsdamer Platz, quite close to the site of our hotel, which is built on land that was on the western side.
• The Sony Center, part of Potsdamer Platz, boasts a 6-m-tall giraffe made entirely of Lego blocks. It was recently rebuilt, as the old one was getting a little decrepit.
• Hitler's old headquarters is now a kindergarten.
• We drove by the site of Hitlers bunker, where he committed suicide and Goebbels and his wife killed their six children and then themselves.
• We also passed the third largest national library in the world, after Tokyo and Washington, but I didn't get a photo.
• Our guide assured us that the founder of modern immunology worked at the Charité hospital in Berlin, but I didn't catch the name. When I tried to look it up, I found half a dozen different people who have been called the founders of modern immunology.
• Humboldt University is the oldest in Berlin. The nazis burned 20,000 books there.
• The oldest building on Unter den Linden is the National History Museum, but it's currently closed for renovations.
• I finally managed to pin a guide down about what Kennedy should have said instead of "Ich bin ein Berliner," which people have made fun of ever since, claiming he said "I am a jelly donut." Every guide up to now has misunderstood the question and just proceeded to explain that a "Berliner" is a jelly donut. This guide said that he should have said "Ich bin Berliner," without the article "ein."

Back at the hotel, we had lunch in their informal eatery. David wanted to try currywurst, i.e., a mild sausage with curry sauce on top. The curry sauces vary widely from establishment to establishment, sometimes red like this one, sometimes creamier or yellower. He let me taste it, and it was pretty much what I remembered last time I had it—not such a much.

I had a salad with steak on top.

Very yummy, and not too large.

After lunch, I was scheduled for the "flavors of Berlin" tour, but David decided to skip it in favor of a nap.

Originally, three couples had signed up, but one of the other husbands also decided to skip it, so we were only four, plus our guide. We met at the hotel lobby, whence the guide led us to the nearest subway station, where many of the walls were papered with historical photos and maps.

That's our guide, wearing the red Viking tote bag. After a brief lecture on just where the checkpoints were in this neighborhood, and the existence of "ghost" stations, he acquired tickets for us, and we rode two stops, initially under ground, to Friedrichstrasse, where we changed trains and continued on, above ground, to the Hackescher Markt, a historic market district.

We emerged from the Hackescher Markt station (left) onto a street solidly lined with café tables.

The guide led us directly to a cluster of outdoor tables outside an establishment that principally advertised its barbecue but that he assured us also produced some of the most authentically Berlin food around.

He started by ordering beer all around (except for the two of us who requested water instead), then disappeared inside to order a veritable feast of typical food for us to taste.

A fellow passenger obligingly held up the beer coaster that went with the beer we were served so that I could get a good photo of it.

Written 30 July 2024

Here's one of the mustard packets we were given. "Senf" (mustard) is one of the first German food terms I ever learned, on our first visit to Europe back in 1977. I'm guessing that "mittelscharfe" means "medium sharp."

First, we each got a currywurst with fries. The fries had that odd U-shaped cross section we first encountered in Burgundy some years ago. This version was a better one—the sauce actually tasted of curry as well as tomato, and the wurst was almost like weisswurst, very pale and mild, smooth in texture, a good foil for the sauce.

Then we each got half a "boulette." In shape it was midway between a meatball and a burger, and was a mixture of beef and pork, with bread crumbs, spices, and diced onion in it. It had been coated top and bottom with crumbs, then cooked in a skillet. This is apparently what the little half meatballs on the breakfast buffet were supposed to be!

Our guide then confirmed what I had heard in the past—that, like the widely popular chicken tikka masala, the Berliner currywurst is a recent invention, without any founding in tradition. Chicken tikka is a tandoori dish—skewers of marinated chicken roasted in a very hot tandoor oven. It has no tradition of being served with sauce. But Brits in India thought it ought to have a curry sauce and asked for one, so some Indian cook doctored up the contents of a can of Campbell's tomato soup with some curry spices and dumped it over the chicken chunks. The result went the culinary equivalent of viral and is now so popular that no one (at least outside India) remembers actual (nonmasala) chicken tikka. In much the same way, Brits in Berlin after WWII thought the same about unadorned sausage and wanted a curry sauce for it. Some cook (history disagrees about just who and where) produced one, also heavy on the tomato, and the same thing happened. So our guide rather resented that currywurst should be considered the quintessential Berlin dish. He grew up, before its invention, eating boulettes, which he considers to be a better candidate for the role—he said his whole generation would agree.

You can also see part of a bread roll of no great distinction that came with the currywurst.

While we ate, the guide went across the street to the Lindner shop for dessert—Lindner butter cake. Very yummy.

He said Lindner started out as a butter company, producing a very high-quality product, then gradually branched out into butter-based products like pastries. You can still buy just butter in their pastry shops if you want.

After our repast, we set off for the next set of sights, passing on the way through the street market.

As we walked, the guide told us that the Huguenots that came to Brandenberg from France in 1685 brough with them asparagus, cauliflower, and meatballs of minced meat, i.e., boulettes.

The stall at the right here sold all kinds of fruit, especially berries, plus both white and green asparagus. Across the front of it were plastic cups of watermelon, pineapple, or a combination, each stuck with a bamboo fork, ready for munching as you shopped.

All the restaurants along the whole street had posted spargelzeit menus.

Several stalls were grilling bratwurst and onions, which they would stuff into one of the bread rolls lined up across the front if you wanted to eat it as you walked.

This stall next to the one at the left was grilling what looked like slices of meat—pork of lamb shoulder, maybe? They were only half cooked, and the vendor had just scattered raw onions over the top to cook with them.

This more elaborate bratwurst stand had added fries to its offerings, the European word for which has come a long way since introduction of the potato. The French started out calling them "pommes de terre" (apples of the earth), that proved unwieldy, so when the word "fried" was added, the earth was dropped, and fries started to be called "pommes frites" (literally fried apples). Now both in France and apparently in Germany, you can just call them "pommes," though the French tend to use "frites" to mean fries and "pommes" for other sorts of cooked potatoes.

On the stall's back wall are signs advertising currywurst, which they apparently also produce, and "Steak im Brötchen," steak in a bun. That must be what those meat slices were—steaks being readied to be served in buns.

At the right here is a stall that was selling Thai entrés and, at the far end, ready-made, grab-and-go bahn mi sandwiches.

Here I was distracted from the market by this wonderful planter by a shop door. It looked like a rusted-out metal sphere (not some sort of surplus ordnance, I hope) with a plant inside. A closer look revealed that the sphere actually consisted of neatly cut panels welded together to form the sphere. The plant inside was fake, but I guess a real one would always be trying to grow out through the holes.

The deli counter at the right offered, in the column nearest the camera, ribs (wrapped in plastic to contain the bbq sauce), and a pasta salad. The next column started with boulettes in the front, then breaded and fried suckling pig rib cutlets, then veal schnitzels. Beyond that meatballs in some sort of sauce, individual portions of "bolognese" lasagna (each in a paper baking cup and further held in shape by a flimsy bamboo "strawberry box"), and pitas stuffed with salad and cheese.

Cheeses were also well represented. In the foreground of the left-hand photo a bin of prunes is sided by a tray of cream cheese beaten with minced green onions. Behind that is "London" cream cheese (beaten with raspberries and cranberries). Around them are arrayed Emmentalers of different ages, Appenzeller, aged Goudas, and sharp Gorgonzola.

At the right is an assortment of French cheeses, including Camemberts basted with whiskey and Calvados, and Chaource, a favorite of mine.

Nearby was a display of Camembert made from water buffalo milk (like that used for the most authentic Mozzarella), and balls of fresh cheese coated with crushed mustard seed.

Also nearby were vast arrays of sausages and other deli meats. Other stalls offered wide choices of olives, pickles, and other condiments.

A bakery's mobile unit was displaying this assortment of breads and viennoirseries, even soft pretzel sticks with cheese melted all over them.

And finally, pastries: strawberry tarts, pear tarts, small lemon tarts, even smaller blueberry and raspberry tartlets, and eclairs.

Wouldn't it wonderful to work in this neighborhood? I'd be there every day for lunch, trying everything.

But soon it was time to move on to our next destination, only a block away (and, now that I study a map, only a couple of blocks from the river and the museum island), a warren of interior courtyards lined with small shops called the Hackeschen Höfe. It's a subsidized start-up incubator for small businesses, where the entrepreneurs get subsidized living quarters above the shops, and its central requirement is that all the products be hand made!

Here's the first courtyard we entered, where the letters in the windows at the far end spell out "Chamäleon." Our guide had said beforehand that it would feature lots of Art Nouveau architecture, and he pointed out this courtyard as a good example, but it really looks a lot more like Art Deco to me—all those straight lines and angular geometric shapes.

One of the first shops we entered was making these multicolored fruit-flavored chocolate truffles.

We wandered through several of the courtyards, all different, all beautiful, and all lined with the most amazing variety of goods and services. At the left here is part of the display in a chocolate shop (Lawade, I think), and at the right, my sample with a bite taken out of it. Among the things we learned there is that marzipan comes from Lubeck and was original a food for poor people. Who knew?

We also saw a watchmaker's shop, a shop that made leather belts, a place that made and sold natural-bristle shaving brushes, a number of clothing shops, a shop called "Eat Berlin" that featured local food products (especially bottled sauces and honey), a shop called "Perlin" that made decorative beads, a nightclub, and a couple of restaurants.

In one corner was this bust of Chopin in Meissen porcelain.

In this particularly pretty courtyard was a shop called "Who killed Bambi?" I don't know what they sold.

This brightly lit little shop made marshmallow mice. Not the squishy, tender JetPuffed type but the tough, chewy kind, like those orange giant-peanut-shaped candies.

We each got to pick out a mouse to try. At the right here is the "peaches and cream" flavored one I chose. Nice flavor, but I'm not a fan of that style of marshmallow.

It was almost all mice, but they also made a few crocodiles and bears for variety.

In a large, particularly beautiful courtyard with a big shade tree in the center and a children's sandbox, we encountered the original Ampelmann store. A young man named Markus Heckhausen believed that to make a success of a new enterprise, you had to be either (a) rich or (b) famous. He wasn't rich, so he looked around for famous. At the time, the controversy over the Ampelmann was at its height—that's fame, right? So he bought the rights to the Ampelmann image and started printing it on t-shirts. Now he's both rich and famous. He now has Ampelmann stores in several other cities, but this one is the flagship.

Here are a couple of shelves in the store. Besides all the t-shirts, hoodies, baby clothes, tote bags, hand bags, ball caps, mugs, fanny packs, watches, wash mits, lamps, beach chairs, wooden pull toys, stuffed toys, zipper pulls, safety vests, Christmas ornaments, fridge magnets, ashtrays, cookie cutters, beer glasses, bathrobes, posters, book marks, pencils, pens, paperclips, ice cube trays, stickers, wine corks, lighters, glassware, wrapping paper, pencil erasers, dishes, nail files, kitchen sponges, rubber duckies, dish towels, thimbles, dishes, placemats, breakfast boards, pill boxes, lunch boxes, key chains, snow globes, notebooks, pencil cases, flatware, rubber stamps, matchbox trabis, sticky notes, do not disturb signs, bandaids, and pieces of the Berlin wall (!), I found these items.

Note in particular the round sticker at the right front. The Ampelmann is sitting (somewhat awkwardly because of his stiff posture) on a toilet seat, and his voice balloon says "Im sitzen pinkeln." I Googled it just to make sure it meant what I thought it did, and yes, it means "Sit down to pee." Apparently that is now a ubiquitous sign in men's rooms across Germany, though usually the word "Bitte" (please) is added. It's all part of a campaign to improve the cleanliness and sanitation of public toilets. It has apparently drawn considerable derision—Googling the phrase brings up many variations, including one bearing the phrase and an official-looking graphic of a guy shooting a high arc into the toilet from a chair across the room.

The right-hand photo shows bags of Ampelmann fruit gummies and sacks of Ampelmann-shaped pasta. Our guide bought bags of gummies and marshmallow Ampelmanns for us to try, and gave us envelopes of a Kool-Aid like drink with his image to take home. The green one was woodruff (Galium odoratum) flavored.

Written 31 July 2024

In the final courtyard, I spotted what looked like a pipevine on the wall, and sure enough, a little poking around among the leaves revealed this Dutchman's-pipe (or perhaps saxophone) shaped flower.

The Ampelmann store was definitely the climax. From there we started back through the maze of courtyards. We paused in front of Rosenhofe (an Italian restaurant, shown here at the right) long enough for our guide to point out its "dewdrop green" color, which he said was "the color of Berlin."

We made our way out of the complex of courtyards onto Sophienstrasse, where the architecture is predominantly Baroque. This area continues to resist becoming industrial.

The guide had a few more things to show us, for example this quaint little eatery, where he showed us a large wicker chair with a canopy. He explained that it's a beach chair, intended to protect the occupant from the wind that is a dominant feature of German beaches. I'd heard elsewhere, years ago, that Germans habitually dig themselves foxholes on the beach, also to get out of the wind.

Another brief side excursion led us to the view up this amazing oval staircase.

When we turned the corner onto Rosenthalerstrasse, suddenly all the international brands were there, less than two blocks from the hand-made-only zone.

We ended up at a beautiful old-fashioned restaurant for cakes and coffee (well, an eclair and mint tea in my case).

Here's one of their pastry cases, displaying cakes and tortes, custards and pastries.

Here, at the right, is part of our group, tucking into our dessert choices. You can see my eclair at the lower left.

Then it was back to the station to reverse our steps back to the hotel. We were running a little late, so the last leg, from the Potsdamerplatz station to the hotel, was kind of a forced march, because one of our party had to be back in time to join her husband on the bus for another excursion. The guide called ahead, so the bus waited a couple of minutes for us.

Frustratingly, I once again ran out of camera battery before I could photograph our main courses at dinner! Because I had so few shots left, I also didn't photograph the menu, so I'm not really sure what my first course was: smoked trout maybe?

The soup at the right, though, I remember vividly. It was probably the best lobster soup we've ever had!

David's main course was tuna tatake with tempura baby boccoli and shiitakes in broth.

I had hamachi (yellowtail) tataki with thin-sliced fennel and green onions, and a sprinkle of some kind f dressing. My slices of hamachi alternated with slices of lardo, which seems to be sort of halfway between bacon and prosciutto.

I'm pretty sure we got the fabuous mocha soufflé again for dessert.