Sociable Berlin

The last four days of Berlin have been full of social activities, bike riding and watching talented people do creative things. Shoneberg is full of artists and artisans working from small workshops-retail at the front and work areas at the rear. In one morning we watched a jeweler who uses sterling silver and glass blow her beautiful creations. For the dinner party we have been invited to we decided to take hand made chocolates-we watched as the delicious morsels were created in the store. A short walk down the street a tailor was making a suit-they smiled at us as we watched. All the shops had large plate glass windows perfect for viewing. Watching people so good at things is very rewarding.

We caught an S Bahn to Potsdammer Platz and rode down Unter Den Linden-a major thoroughfare of Berlin. We caught up with friends for drinks and then rode to Transit. Transit is a Thai Indonesian fusion tapas restaurant in Mitte-with a very interesting menu. Items like Duck in Pajamas and Chicken Little adorn the menu. The bonus of bike riding is there is always parking right out front.

Tall willowy girls in leather served the food. Drinks were cocktails such as caipirinha- rum, lime, lime juice, cane sugar and maitai- rum, cointreau 1, pine apple juice, coconut. The food and the drinks were fantastic as was the location filled with a young and well dressed crowd. After dinner we rode through Mitte in misting rain to B Flat, a jazz and acoustic lounge and listened to the Andy Winter group. Riding home at 2pm via museum island with the mist falling was quite beautiful.

The club has a huge window at the front where you can view the band area and see the interior from outside. The view is very enticing. The club has a great ambience and excellent acoustics and serves great quality beer.

In the morning we rode to the markets via the back streets behind Karl Marx Allee, breakfasting on Turkish flat bread filled with spinach and freshly squeezed juice. The market is a kaleidoscope of fresh food, specialty goods, flowers and Turkish food. The middle of the platz was filled with water fountains and sandpits for the children.

We rode back via the remnants of the Berlin Wall, Wendall café that was not open this week and an Italian Deli for goods for dinner.

In the afternoon there was a talk from the Berlin Historical Society at the historic Schloss Schönhausen. It is a palace in Pankow in northern Berlin. Under "Frederick the Great", the palace was turned into a royal residence for his wife, who used it as her summer residence from 1740-90. While the building history was quite interesting-it was not a particularly grand or opulent or well-kept palace and the renovation missed the most important tenants. There were two extraordinary things about the palace though. Firstly there are plane trees over 330 years old. The garden is beautiful. Secondly it was located in East Berlin and became the centre for the GDR and then the official guesthouse. The list of people staying included Fidel Castro, Gaddafi, Ceausescu, Gorbochev, Indira Ghandi, Kim Jong-Il, and the last visitor was the Queen of the Netherlands in 1990. And of course Carlos the Jackal. Ok that was maybe fanciful. The bathrooms have purple tiles. The reunification treaty in 1989-90 was in the main worked on here.

In the evening we were guests at a dinner party. The food, wine and company were excellent. There was much discussion on a range of issues, gastronomic, political, literary, cinematic, architectural, historical and artistic. Books discussed included Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, Somme Mud by E F P Lynch, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell and Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr. Films and docos included The Fog of War, Wings of Desire and the Darjeeing Express. Food topics included the best coffee-which everyone now knows is the Double Eye when in Berlin.

In the morning we cycled back to Shoneberg via Orienstrasse for coffee, only getting lost once. In the afternoon we rode through the new park created on disused East German era train tracks, very near to our flat, to the Tiergarten. We meandered back in the warm 28-degree day, stopping at the Brandenburg gate, the Soviet memorial and the Teehaus in Tiegarten for a well deserved German beer.