Lotus Eating On The Hill

Berlin / Go See
en av Susanna Forrest /  Susanna Forrest, 21. mar 2009


Boetzowviertel Photo: Chriggi

There are no big-draw museums or landmarks in Prenzlauer Berg. You venture up the mountain (well, in Berlin it’s a mountain) just to breathe the latte-scanted breeze and to hang out, browsing markets or checking out the boutiques. Now that most of the altbauten from the late 19th/early 20th century have been restored, there is only the odd crumbling façade with missing balconies and old flag holders, but if you want boho atmosphere, there’s a zone of Prenzel’berg that most guidebooks skip, where the air is even more rareified: the Boetzowviertel. It’s not just the tourists that pass by. Brennendeautos.de, which keeps track of all the luxury cars torched by anti-gentrification protestors in Berlin, records only one BMW and one Porsche being sacrificed to the anti-Mammon in the genteel streets near Volkspark Friedrichshain.


Have your photo taken on Marienburgerstrasse Photo: evy produkties & konstrukties

Technically Boetzowviertel begins east of Prenzlauer Allee, on Marienburgerstrasse, but if you carry on and cross the less-than-lovely Greifswalderstrasse, you get to a leafy street of freshly restored, pastel coloured altbauten with carefully maintained plaster-work.

Around Hufelandstrasse you can find pagan goddesses tangled in vines, trees-of-life sprouting under balconies and fat putti pouting over doorways. Look up at the eaves of a dull brown stucco’ed building on the corner of Esmarchstrasse and Hufeland and there’s a frieze of diaphanously robed goddesses prancing with naked athletes.

It’s pottering territory on Hufelandstrasse. Who knows how long the chi-chi shops selling ‘Scandinavian living’ (ribbed glass jars and paisley dolls) bio-composting toilets or 12€ ‘vintage’ H&M skirts will last; they’re nice for window shopping. Kunstschule has novel Berlin souvenirs, Fernsehturm-shaped cookie-cutters, soft toys and bird feeders, and Corsarini sells its own printed wallpapers with Tord Boontje-style foliage. In Schneewitte I found a fragile, lacy Sixties wedding dress with a photo of the original owner and her groom in 1969.

The eating is good too: you can pick from Pakistani, Portuguese, Indian, Thai or get a magazine from one of the best-stocked cornershops in the city and spin out a coffee in a bakery or cafe. Chez Maurice on Boetzowstrasse has stayed the distance: excellent French bistro food for twelve years. Down Niederkirchnerstrasse there’s the Kunst und Teehaus Tschaikowsky, where an earnest young man with curly hair is strumming an acoustic guitar.

Does anyone here do any work, you might wonder? Listen and you'll hear the sound of lotuses being ruminatively chewed.

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The Call Of The Wild

Berlin / Go See
en av Susanna Forrest /  Susanna Forrest, 13. jan 2009

Knut's not Berlin's only polar bear and the Zoo isn't the only zoo. Most visitors don't realise that east of the Tiergarten, in Lichtenberg, home of the Stasi and much ugly DDR housing, lies the Tierpark Zoo, created in 1955 by the Ossies after the Berlin Wall cut off access to the world-famous Zoologischer Garten (home of Knut). It's a microcosm of the reunification of Germany: both zoos are now yoked together under one management, but the eastern side is out-dated, criticised and a drain on dwindling funds, and no one can agree on its future.


This is not Knut

The Knut controversy was only the tip of the ersatz iceberg. The animals are the stars of every local paper: they get born, they die, they're being conserved, they're being jailed. They're a Berlin obsession. I picked up BZ and the front page asked, "Why so many dead zoo babies?" The Tierpark had just lost a giraffe, another Eisbaer cub hadn't made it and two lions were gone-zo.

On a freezing Sunday, with barely any customers, the Tierpark  is a strange place to visit. You get lost – sign posts and maps are scant – and ramble along twisty woodland paths between the cages, past a memorial to a labour camp, and contemplate the animals in mutual silence, noting that the tiling indoors looks like an East Berlin subway.

The collection of creatures and the breeding programmes are impressive, but it's not just the décor of the enclosures that's old-fashioned. The elephants' indoor areas are barely large enough for them to turn round in. One of the jaguars was pacing a groove into the floor. The prairie dogs cowered nextdoor to the leopard pen.

It's also A-OK to take your pet dog, so Fido can harass the caged animals like this spaniel, barking at the boar. It lost its nerve at the tiger pavilion though, and shat itself. Which didn't improve the smell.

I did like the dugong tank, where four ponderous sea-cows swim through a soup of lettuce and carrot, and I noticed that the paths, enclosures and woods were covered in rabbit tracks. Rabbit party time! At least one species was having fun at the Tierpark.

TIERPARK ZOO; Am Tierpark 125, Lichtenberg, Berlin.

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Kreuzbergy Fried Chicken

Berlin / Go Eat
en av Susanna Forrest /  Susanna Forrest, 7. jan 2009


Photo: Vkthorp

Things we know about Berlin institution Henne: (1) there is only one thing on the menu, and that's milk-fed, organic, deep-fried chicken halves and (2) JFK was meant to go there for a meal on his whistlestop tour of the city in 1963, but he couldn't make it so he sent a letter of apology that hangs over the bar. At least, that's what I'd gathered from the guidebooks and a friend who's a long-term resident. Turns out they're both urban myths. Not that it matters, because I had a great night at Henne swapping stories, eating chicken with my fingers and building pyramids with beer mats.


Photo: Kean Wong

OK, so the menu isn't much longer than "hühn", but you can get boulette (meatball-burgers) and currywurst, and there's a choice of two salads: sauerkraut or potato. And that letter from JFK isn't from JFK at all. The true story (as explained in Henne's own history book) is that the enterprising owner sent an invitation to Kennedy suggesting that he dropped by this typical Kneipe for a quick snack and a beer, and Kennedy's Public Affairs Advisor wrote a gracious note back saying alas, it wouldn't be possible, but here was a photo. That photo is still framed and on display, and John Fitzgerald is currently sporting a little santa hat, just to keep things festive.

I'd call the interior "extreme gemütlichkeit" and it hasn't changed since 1905: red tartan cloths on heavy wooden tables, enough antlers mounted on the walls to decorate a presidential log cabin, and black-and-white shots of the Wall, which ran just a few metres from Henne's doorway.

They prefer it if you drink a dense, fruity Fränkisches Landbier, almost like a Belgian brew, served with a frothy head in a chipped stein. The chicken was salty and crispy, and garnished with a plain hunk of bread, a single paper napkin and no cutlery. You just pick away at it, getting thirstier and thirstier until there's only bones left, and then you choose a fruit brandy (quince? pear?) or a traditional Berliner cinnamon liquor to follow.

HENNE; Leuschnerdamm 25; Kreuzberg, Berlin

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On Speck

Berlin / Go Eat
en av Susanna Forrest /  Susanna Forrest, 1. dec 2008

Crossing Bornholmerstrasse on Friday night on my way to meet friends, I found myself walking behind a young woman wearing a short, close-fitting plastic jacket, leggings and ankle boots. It was -3 degrees. I was muffled in a full-length coat resembling a sleeping bag, two tops, a giant cardigan, a thick skirt, thick black tights with socks over the top, wool gloves lined with fleece, a chunky scarf, a knitted hat and knee-length boots. I was still cold. What was this lady's secret? Her outfit left no space for a little Winterspeck, or "winter lard" – that soft, comforting layer of flesh best developed when the cold weather kicks in. Did she have anti-freeze in her veins? Or was she just very, very cold?

The quickest way to get both warm and speck'd if you're not impervious to frost like this lady, is to raid the local Imbiß. You go out, freeze, order some hot food and devour it as you stamp some life into your feet. A standard doener will do, but gentrified Prenzlauer Berg has a better class of lard.

Currywurst und Schampus in the Saturday Kollwitzplatz market have elevated Berlin's humble signature dish, a pork sausage with tomato ketchup and curry powder, into something ludicrously sophisticated. The pommes are served with truffle mayonnaise, and my pick, the "Spezial Currywurst" with creamy mayonnaise and raw red onion, is almost too rich to snarf. The ritziest wurst on offer is their 5€ Currywurst Gold, spiced with 22k gold leaf. Which is just silly. I don't dare eat it in case the next anti-yuppie demo in the Kiez lobs Molotov cocktails through my bedroom window.

For a more down-to-earth dessert there's a van that parks next to the supermarket at the corner of Winstrasse and Marienburg where the quarkkeulchen – balls of deep-fried curd-cheese dough – are perfect: crisp, not oily, and dusted with enough icing sugar to contrast with the sharp taste of the quark.
After that little lot, you're well on your way to a Speckmantel that'll last you the winter, if you don't try and sleep it off and end up hibernating till May.

Go further: Fancy snacking? John Rambow does and has a soft spot for Grand Street is New York. Find out why.

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Mummies' Little Helper

Berlin / Go See
en av Susanna Forrest /  Susanna Forrest, 24. nov 2008


Photo: Lipár 

ALL ART HAS BEEN CONTEMPORARY proclaims the red neon sign on the facade of the Altes Museum, as though the curators felt the need to tempt punters away from Berlin's modern art galleries. But what would you rather see? A bare white room with a tarmac floor – one of the exhibits on display at the 2008 Biennale – or a three-thousand year old corpse swaddled in decorated bandages? And maybe a piece of papyrus with Cleopatra's handwriting on it? No contest for me. The Altes Museum's collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman plunder is far more intriguing and full of life.

I went for another visit this weekend, to see Giacometti sculptures and sketches displayed alongside their Ancient Egyptian ancestors, his standing figures striking the same pose as a kouros from 1200BC. It's fitting – the mainstay of the museum's collection actually comes from the workshop of a sculptor called Thutmos, so there are maquettes and samples, including the most famous piece, a bust of Queen Nefertiti with one blank eye and a neck like a super model.

I like the smaller, weirder artifacts: a case full of little humanoids – votive figurines from Olympia – with their arms outstretched like zombies. Or an alabaster princess from Egypt, whose headdress has been smoothed into her forehead, making her look something they found at Roswell. These ladies, the Baubo, look like surrealist toys – Baubo was a nurse who decided to cheer up the Greek goddess Demeter, who had just lost her daughter Persephone, by lifting up her skirts and showing her her privates. Apparently it did the trick, and now Baubo is immortalised as a face on legs; the statuettes may have been gifts to make the goddess laugh.


Photo: Maria Flávia CN

Afterwards I tracked back up the Kupfergraben near the Pergamon Museum where there's a Saturday antique market you can browse for your own twentieth century artifacts to take home. Among the coins, stamps and comic books were bundles of vintage dirty postcards featuring ladies as shameless as Baubo. I think I should have bought a few to give future archaeologists some food for thought.

ALTES MUSEUM; Museumsinsel; Berlin

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Susanna Forrest