Street art, vegan food & the Cold War... it can only be Berlin

 

And my year of travels continued, with an end-of-May trip to Berlin.

 

The Boy and I spent four days pounding the streets, avoiding thunderstorms, hunting out cider, eating amazing vegan food, discovering the Cold War history of the city, getting on and off seemingly infinite U- and S-Bahn trains, walking in the Mauer (Wall) Park in the sunshine, finding lovely brew-pubs, visiting the Mauer Memorial in the pouring rain, enjoying the DDR Museum despite the hordes of tourists crammed in, and exploring the bars, shops and restaurants of Prenzlauer Berg, where we were staying.

 

I had expected Berlin to be a sort of European Portland, and I wasn't much disappointed.  It's a fascinating city with thriving sub-cultures (in fact, counter-cultures seemed to be the foremost cultural forces, at least in the east of the city.  Can they still be considered sub- or counter-cultures if they are the dominant ones?!).  I didn't immediately fall in love with the city - it's too vast, too colourful, too scrappy - but I can imagine going back again to discover more.  In four days, we barely scratched the surface.

The Boy sneakily took a photograph of me while I was photographing the graffiti at the East Side Gallery: a stretch of the Berlin Wall which has been retained as a gallery of street art .

Marx & Engels, both looking very serious.  I think The Boy had beard envy.

 

 

At the Stasi Museum - on the site of their former headquarters in Friedrichshain - I was most taken with the propaganda posters and an insight into the bureaucratic face of a dictatorship, while The Boy admired the retro 60s fittings and furniture.  His dream is now to renovate a house to look just like the offices.  Because who wouldn't want to live somewhere redolent of the Stasi?!

 

 

And we found cider!  Sheltering from the rain in the Mauersegler Beer Garden, we fortuitously stumbled upon a local Berlin-brewed cider.  And very tasty it was too.