Museums, meh; Filet of Soul, awesome

Our first stop (other than for some hot chocolate and croissants!) was St. Michael’s church, which is a Hamburg darling. It was pretty awesome, with extensive history in the crypt. Apparently it burned down several times but people keep building it back up. I’m glad they did – it’s very pretty inside and the view from the top (accessible partly by elevator with built-in you-can-buy-these-souvenirs-at-the-gift-shop panel!) is neat. Unfortunately the weather was dreary and foggy that morning, but it was still cool. More interesting still was the walk down (instead of taking the elevator), where you get to see the actual clock-turning mechanism, full of flywheels and gears and ticking things. That was a treat! Plus you see the spare bells as you go down and various other storerooms. Worth it!




The subsequent museums we visited were perhaps less worth it, however. Peter was excited to visit Spicy’s, with the history of spices – germane since it was in the Hamburg harbor – but apart from getting a packet of peppercorns as an entry ticket and being able to smell lots of spices, there was no English in that room at all. We decided they needed a “you must be this German to enter” sign…

I also wanted to see the miniature museum, since Dad had sent me the video a while ago and I though it looked cool – like a train set on steroids. And it WAS cool, with highways and aliens and train stations and plane terminals and three-level dioramas and all sorts of stuff, but it was SO busy. It also was kind of expensive and felt a bit repetitive after a while, oh well.



The grey day was weighing on us, especially after somewhat disappointing (for the cost!) museums, so we went back to take a nap. Refreshed, we gave another one of Sarah’s recommendations a shot – she said Filet of Soul was one of her favorite restaurants. It did not disappoint! It reminded me a lot of Salt back in Pittsburgh, with fancy chalkboard-written specials – except this time it was all in German, so they had one of the staff come over and translate for us. It was amazing! My favorite was the honey thyme greens salad with port-poached pears and walnuts, PLUS phyllo-encased goat cheese. Amazing!! The rest of the meal was also excellent, and we ordered a Graf Adelman trollinger wine to go with. Jokes about “Ol’ uncle Graf” abound, plus we came up with “thoughtsy” – a term somewhere between folksy and thoughtful, meant to be used to describe the pseudo-intellectual anti-science speak we’d been hearing from the Republican primary race lately. Hee hee! A very good end to a somewhat lukewarm day.

Hamburg and fog

This was kind of a lazy day. We hit a bakery on the way to the train station, and then it was time to get to Hamburg! I’d convinced Peter to stay at a Generator hostel very near the city, and it was WAY fancier than I had expected for the price. The rooms seemed like they were very cookie-cutter – the bathroom especially, since everything was tiny and molded together – but it was clean and convenient and had a lot of amenities downstairs.

But first! We had to walk around. Going off some of supper club Sarah’s recommendations, we tried to hit some of the more artsy sides of town, around Karolinenstrasse and Marktstrasse. There were plenty of funky shops and a really good place to get hot chocolate and some soup too. More than anything, the primary attraction in that area was the copious and very interesting graffiti on the buildings.



Eventually we wandered back to have some happy hour cocktails (3.50E in your own hotel? Pretty fancy) before setting out to see The Artist in Streit’s, a cool filmhaus. We had tried to see the English version in Berlin but had just missed it, and since it was a hot award winner, we wanted to see what the fuss was about. We got there early enough to reserve the best, center seats in the balcony, which were actually duo/loveseat seats. Very neat! The film itself was fairly cool, although the characters weren’t quite as fun as, say, the Thin Man.


Walking through the fog that night to get back was really cool and yielded a bunch of good photos. We also were just hungry enough to stop somewhere, and since it was quite late ended up in the train station (I’m telling you! Fancy!) for a knacker at Wurst & Durst. Of course we needed to eat a hamburger in Hamburg, and after seeing their burgers cook and the butter just oozing out of them, well, that was decided. Their burgers are made of pork and beef, and they serve it to you without the bun unless you ask, which was interesting. It was really good though!

OMG FOOD

This I did contribute to the planning: I looked up where the best doners in Berlin were, and then we went there. Turns out several websites seemed to agree on Mustafa's Gemüsekebap at Mehringdamm 32, which was kinda close to where we eventually wanted to wander. And indeed, the doners were good! Their rotating meat spit was the largest I’d ever seen, the veggies were very fresh, and the meat was excellent. Hooray, internet!


From that somewhat odd breakfast we visited Checkpoint Charlie, a huge labyrinthian museum full of historical articles and items about the Berlin Wall. It seemed very poorly organized but the material was interesting; I hadn’t known much about it at all before I visited, so it seemed fitting. Apparently even the East German crossing outline guys are different.



We had also intended to go to the very ugly TV Tower, but its restaurant was closed for renovations and the lift was expensive. Instead, we hit the Berliner Dom, a gigantic cathedral with, interestingly, the original architect scale models and some other history which was fun to read about (when we could find the English translations). They also had a walkway at the top, a great view if you could stand all the stairs!




I had also heard from the internet (and Theresa) that the KaDeWe, or the largest mall in Berlin, was actually quite cool. Specifically it was in context of having chocolate cake, so we were of course game. Turns out this is the fanciest mall I’ve ever been to, and floor six is exclusively for food. A place the size of two Giant Eagles hawking the fanciest, most gourmet food you’ve ever seen! IT WAS THE SHIZ. There were no fewer than three counters with complicated baked goods, plus huge sections for cheese, dairy, soups, frozen waterfowl, canned things, breads, liquors, strange meats, and a whole prepared food plaza. Plus I’m surely leaving things out. My favorite section, other than ALL OF IT, was the Ridiculously Overpriced American Things section. For 8E (let’s call it $10.50), you could buy one of the following: one jar of Jif, 16 fl oz of Karo syrup, one Betty Crocker warm delights package, or six Pop-tarts. A stupendous, hilarious markup! Needless to say, we spent, um, a lot of time – almost three hours! – there, just walking around gawking at all the weird stuff they had. I personally purchased pork chips and a single pickle in a can, hahhaha. I’ve never had this much fun in a single floor of the mall, ever.


(click through - it's worth seeing those larger!)

We attempted to leave the mall, thinking it was lame to spend so much time there, and did walk up the Ku’damm shopping avenue. This was also fancy, and had no fewer than three H&Ms in a five-block radius (or so it seemed). We passed the Kaiser Wilhem Memorial Church, which was supposed to be a bombed-out symbol of strife but was under renovation so we just saw the new blue-tiled building instead (which is also cool). There was also a two-floor Lego store we spent some time in. Eventually, however, we started to get a bit hungry, but didn’t really find anywhere we wanted to go. So…back to the KaDeWe it was! Except all the prepared food places were closing up, whoops! We hastily grabbed a fancy bread loaf called “pain au lard” which we figured would be good, then hustled across the street to a plainer (ie cheaper) supermarket for salad fixings. This supermarket also had a suction tube system much like you put your change in at bank drive-thrus, except it was for Coke bottles! Neat.



Anyway we grabbed our prizes and headed back to the hotel, picking up some wine along the way. Luckily we had a kitchen and a bunch of basics at our disposal – knives, salt, pepper, plates, glasses – which was really nice. The best surprise was when we cut into the bread we’d bought – turns out it had little pieces of bacon baked in, which was AWESOME. With this fancy dinner, we played some cards and planned our Hamburg train and hostel. Great day.

Museum Island and seeing Theresa

We woke up a littler earlier than we had intended, given our late (and awesome!) night before, but my friend Theresa had called so that was okay. Theresa had been a German exchange student at CMU in my research group two years before, and I’d also gone to NYC to tour it with her family. She said then that if I ever found myself in Germany she’d show me around – I hadn’t thought then that it’d be so soon! We planned to meet at Museum Island, which is a little bit of land where a ton of museums are in Berlin.

It was too late to hit the big Mauerpark flea market as we’d planned, but was enough time to just head out and see where we could have brunch. Brunch is apparently a big thing in Berlin, and we picked the Einstein café on a fancy street – expensive, but got tons of bread, jam, a super rich hot chocolate, and a huge “farmer’s omelette” with tons of potatoes, bacon and cheese. We had also initially ordered “eggs in glass” just to see what would come, but she forgot – which was fine, because we were super full. Noms!!


It was a beautifully sunny day in Berlin, uncharacteristic and totally lovely. We met Theresa and her friend and toured the Pergamon Museum, which we were told was the best. It had a TON of stuff from the Athens Acropolis, including a painting of how it would have looked at the time and a full-size recreation of the temple, which was neat. There was a lot of Islamic and Egyptian art as well. It was smaller than expected but still impressive.




Afterwards we grabbed a coffee and chatted with the girls. We got to ride in Theresa’s bright yellow Bug as they gave us a driving tour of the city, past some towers and memorials we wouldn’t have seen, and then it was time for our 5pm appointment at the Reichstag. You have to have reservations for the Reichstag because it’s the seat of the German Parliament – and they background check you! Or so I’m told. For once, I did almost zero planning and Peter did it all, which felt awesome, hehe. Anyway, he had timed it perfectly for catching the sunset, which was perhaps the first time we saw the sun do anything interesting during the trip! I was obliged to take a ton of pictures, of course. It really is a neat building, with a spiral walkway up to the sky, and the fact that they reuse the rainwater it collects and use green techniques to heat and cool the building makes it even more awesome.






After the sun was sufficiently set (Peter said we weren’t allowed to leave before then, haha), we caught back up with Theresa to say goodbye. They very kindly dropped us off at Potsdam Platz, a neat plaza enclosed by a kind of fan design that changes colors. They also recommended that we get dinner at Vapiano, which is a chain but it also strives to serve fresh food. You get a card upon entering and they swipe it at the different food and drink booths, and then you pay on the way out. The pizza was awesome and the décor of the place was extremely neat for a chain. I love recommendations!