My brother and his wife were in Berlin for a professional conference so we flew over to meet them. Kevin has been going to Berlin since 1990 (a year after the wall came down), so he has a historical perspective and is a great tour guide. Yes! It was really cold!
All of us in a certain age bracket remember studying about Berlin after WWII and then in 1960 when the wall was erected. So here we were staying in the Mitte which is smack dab in the middle of former E. Berlin!
My impressions of Berlin are that it is a vibrant and modern city. Due to the damage of the war, many of the old building in the area where we were staying had been leveled. So on a street you might see one obviously old building surrounded by these fabulous modern buildings. It had a totally different vibe than Budapest.
The first night we took a cab to where some of my brother's coworkers were having dinner. The cab let us off at the curb of this narrow street. We had to walk carefully (due to thick ice) through what appeared to be an abandoned lot toward what looked like an empty old building. We found some stairs which we presumed led to the entrance. Sure enough on the second floor of this old building (we were later told that it had been a post office) we found a dimly lit hallway and a hostess! She led us into an area at the end of the hallway that opened up into a dome with an intricate ceiling and about 15 long tables. What a venue!
The menu was in German but the waitress translated to the best of her ability. I ended up ordering the vegetarian menu. It came as the most beautifully presented dish that I had seen in months. The Hungarians are not into presentation. And the meal. . . fabulous! It was paired with some great wines of my brother's choosing. Since my brother works with the international community, that evening I had conversation with people from Taiwan, India, Brazil and Scotland. It was quite the eclectic group.
Our 3 1/2 days flew by and were filled with lots of sightseeing. We would go back to Berlin in a heartbeat, but, so many places and so little time!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wow! That restaurant sounds like a secret find. And an internaitonal community to have dinner with - nice!
ReplyDeleteI loved Berlin, too about 13 years ago. I fell in lust with a cute poetic Berliner on a train and ended up staying with him in his uber cool East Berlin flat for a romantic week. Ah, those were the days...
you are (were) a wild woman!
ReplyDelete