At Wannsee. The weather was very dark and overcast but not actually raining.

German hot chocolate :)

At Sanssouci in Potsdam. The weather was still so dramatic! I’ve been to Sanssouci in the winter but really it’s great to see it in the summer when you can really appreciate the plants.

The Botanic Gardens. The glasshouses are enormous, the past few years when I visited they were working on the top ones, this seems all finished now.

On Museum Island.

The Reichstag, I don’t like to walk up the dome because it makes me feel vertigo because of all the glass and mirrors and the slope of the walkway.

The Soviet Memorial in Treptower Park.

Holocaust Memorial.

Our friends had not been to Berlin before so we went and visited more touristic sites than usual, it was good to go back to these things,

I went to Berlin and now I’m back! The picture above is of my breakfast one day. I was with a small group of people on this trip but as I don’t require that much sleep I always had a few hours in the morning by myself to have a cup of tea and read my book on the balcony :)

Simon K asked me if I had any non-obvious Berlin tips so I had a think and here is a quick list of the things…

S and U Bahn tickets
Berlin is a very good value city, drinks and food seem quite reasonable compared to other European cities, and many of the sites are free. One of the first things I do is get a pass for the S and U Bahn which are the integrated system of overground and underground trains. You buy the tickets from machines on the platform, there is no barrier like we have on the London Underground. There is a tourist pass that you can buy for different lengths of time such as 72 hours and 5 days which is really useful as it means you can hop on and off whenever you like without having to keep buying tickets. Make sure whatever ticket you have to validate it by poking it into the small red box that should be next to the ticket machine, this will date and time stamp it.

Soviet Memorial In Treptower Park
There is another Soviet Memorial on Strasse des 17 Juni, that is not the one I’m talking about. The one I think is very interesting to visit is over in Treptower Park, for some reason none of the guide books ever mention this one. It is however really amazing to see, not only is it historically interesting but also from a visual perspective. It’s so HUGE and now it has been restored it is pristine, which makes it feel all the more unreal. To get to it take the S-Bahn to Treptower Park, take the exit out to the Park, walk along the river for 5 mins or so until to your right you see fountains and flowers, walk through this area, cross the main road. There should be a large arch with hammers and sickles on, go through this and carry on straight until you see the memorial to your left.

East Side Gallery
A section of the Berlin Wall painted by artists (including the painting of the two kissing communist leaders). The nearest station is the U-Bahn Warschauer Strasse.

Museums
I read that there are something like 150 museums in Berlin so really just select your particular interest and go to that. Personally I like the Bauhaus Museum and also I think that the Jewish Museum is very memorable. For a lot of ancient world treasure type things all in one swoop the Museum Island handily groups things together, if you are planning on going to more than one museum on the island then the best value ticket is to get the 1 day ticket for 14 Euros that enables entry into all the museums on the island. I think make sure to check out the Pergamon in particular.

Boat trips
Going on a boat in Berlin is a nice thing to do. There are either short trips of about an hour that go up and down or the 3.5 hour trip that circles the centre of Berlin. Lots of boats leave from near the Friedrichstrasse S-Bahn stop. They usually serve beer, tea, coffee etc and may do some food too.

Prenzlauer Berg
It’s handy to know a general good area with lots of nice restaurants of different sorts, you can find this in Prenzlauer Berg. Get the U-Bahn to Senefelder Platz and then walk up Kollwitz Strasse towards Kollwitz Platz, all those roads around there have lots of restaurants and cafes, just potter about until you find something you like the look of. It’s worth noting that at the moment the other U-Bahn stations (Eberswalder Strasse and Schonhauser Allee) in that area aren’t open at the moment.

Kebab
If you want to try the famous German Turkish Doner Kebab then around the Schlesisches Tor U-Bahn is the area. Note: this is more of a rough area.

KaDeWe cake
We have a tradition to always go to the KaDeWe wintergarden restaurant to get a piece of cake and a drink, they have a great selection and the pieces are HUGE, the food floor below is also really fantastic with every food that you could imagine, so eat some cake and then go get high from the cheese fumes by the cheese counter.

Beach Bars
In the summertime all along the river beach bars spring up with sand, deck chairs, and a relaxed manner. We went to one that’s in the middle of the East Side Gallery. Well worth knowing is that included in the price of your drink is a deposit on the bottle and glass so if you take your bottles and glasses back to the bar you’ll get this back, it’s well worth doing as this could be a couple of Euros.

Berliner Weiss mit rot
Germany of course has a great deal of excellent wine and beer but one drink I make sure to always have at least one of is Berliner Weiss mit Schuss (means Beliner Weiss beer with syrup). It’s kind of a funny tacky kind of drink but I love it, I don’t think you’d want to be downing loads but maybe one in the afternoon after a big burst of touristic activities is very refreshing. There will be a choice of a red syrup (himbeersirup) which is raspberry or a green syrup (waldmeistersirup) which is woodruff. I always go for the raspberry as the green tastes a bit odd to me really. They are often referred to just by the colour so when I want the raspberry I just say “Berliner Weiss mit rot” (Berliner Weiss with red) which is very easy, you can also buy it pre-mixed in supermarkets.

Bread and cheese
If you are on a shoestring budget or even if you have money to spend I recommend making yourself a picnic lunch at least one day. The German bread is so excellent it must be tried, go to any German bakery and pick up a few fresh rolls, get some excellent German cheese and you have a lunch or breakfast of champions.

Other food
Other foods that are worth checking out are Flammkuchen (it’s like a very very thin pizza that is served on a board), chips (said ‘pommes’), cake of all kinds, currywurst (sausage with curry powder), all kinds of meat and potato type meals, lots of great fish, really good yoghurts in the supermarket, big pretzels, potato salad, sour cherry juice…. drool.

Hackesche Höfe
If you’re over near the Fernsehturm and Alexanderplatz it’s also worth going to look at the Hackesche Höfe, there are the cleaned up areas of the main Hackesche Höfe but make sure to also check out the alley and courtyard at Rosenthalerstraße 39, there’s lots of interesting graffiti there.

Potsdam/Wannsee
If there’s good weather and time to spare then Sanssouci in Potsdam is a nice place to go as it has very impressive grounds and palaces. It’s easy to get to on the S-Bahn. The grounds are free so it’s only the palaces that you need to pay to go into. The S-Bahn to Potsdam actually passes through Wannsee which is an area of lakes where Berliners go to do water sports and swim, if it’s good weather and on a weekend there are some nice beer gardens open here at Wannsee. An easy one to get to is if you come out of the station, turn left and walk for about 2 mins and it will be up some steps on your left.

There are of course also all the main tourist sight type things to check out, Brandenburg Gate, Holocaust Memorial, Reichstag but the guide books cover those well enough. All-in-all I think that Berlin has something to offer everyone with lots of different areas. We aren’t really shoppers when we travel so I don’t have particular shop recommendations apart from if you like experimental/sound-art type music then Gelbe Musik is the place to go. I’ve also found good records in the past at Mr Dead and Mrs Free but haven’t been in a couple of years. I have some more Berlin pictures to sort out which I will do over the coming week including some film ones hopefully.

Does anyone else have any Berlin tips to share?

A friend used to work here so I’ve been to Merton College several times and been shown around. I had forgotten that the main garden isn’t open to the public unless you are with a member of the college. I’d just remembered that the garden has a great view over Christ Church Meadow so had been saving going to this for last and therefore was rather crushed by the big sign that said not to enter in several languages. Ah well.

All over Oxford it seems like often little doors lead to big things and big doors lead to small things, this seems equally true here, the entrance to the chapel is a little door tucked away around the edge and it leads to the large splendid chapel with a beautiful ceiling. The college buildings seem to be from a mix of eras so it’s interesting to see how they have managed to fit everything together, you could have a comedy of errors with people popping in and out of different doors and archways, going in circles trying to find each other.

Merton College
Open: Mon-Fri 14:00-17:00 or dusk, Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00 or dusk
Admission: £2

(I don’t actually pay to get into Oxford colleges as I have a Bodleian Readers Card aka. a University Card so I’m usually allowed in for free. I am putting the price here for anyone else was thinking of going and also I think it’s interesting what the different colleges charge. If anyone IS thinking of going then the opening times are worth phoning up and checking as the colleges can and often do close early or shut for all sorts of reasons.)

I went to a party at the weekend where they handed out those bracelets that when you bend them and crack what is inside it lights up in luminous colours.

They also had a karaoke hut :)

Worcester College was a revelation to me, I LOVED it. I kept turning corners and saying ‘wow!’. I don’t think I had ever visited it before as I don’t think I ever knew anyone studying there. I was very much surprised quite how splendid the planting in the gardens is, they have these mixed borders that you could dive into head first and be hidden by a huge mass of green and flowers. I also was impressed at how much water there was, it really lowers the blood pressure to wander around such beautiful grounds. You’d never guess that this college is right in the centre of town very near the train station. The place was pretty much deserted when I was there, as you can see the weather was pretty gloomy and there was a light rain at times. The last picture shows the front of the college that faces the street, that clock is often very handy when hurrying to the station.

Partly what prompted me to go there is that I’ve long thought it might be fun to try to visit all the Oxford Colleges and take some pictures. I’ve already been into plenty of them but I’m going to start a proper list now. It might be a long-term project as some are harder to visit than others as either they aren’t open to the public or have difficult opening times but I reckon I will hopefully know someone at the college. Time was I’d know people who were students there but now my generation are either grad students or actually teaching things, so grown up!

Worcester College
Open: daily 14:00-17:00
Admission: free

I think it looks like I’m walking on the ceiling. That’s a week of daily posts, I’m going to go back to posting when I feel like it, it might be daily or it might not :)

1. Alien life form?
2. Lunchtime walk.
3. Looking up, looks like an Italian church maybe?
4. Was having a clear out and found this old scrap book from my teens, I don’t think my tastes have changed very much :) On the left I still like the curtain made from tea towels, the mixed chairs, and the old table. On the right I still like the fire, the long table, and the bamboo outside.

It would seem my Sunday pictures were mainly green and black.

1. Apple bounty
2. A friend was clearing out their old toys from their mum’s house. So much 80′s stuff! Including Fungus the Bogeyman.
3. Friend’s guitar

Random pictures from Saturday.

1. Best breakfast ever, pancakes and hot blueberries.
2. Friend’s house
3. Friend’s house
4. Pimm’s
5. Downpour, maybe not a good day to be wearing Toms.
6. Sunshine
7. Look who it is! BBQ cat!
8. BBQ cat (we actually were having a BBQ).
9. Many people out for a friend’s birthday.
10. Then on to another place. This would have been after midnight but let’s still call it Saturday.