All posts tagged: berlin

A Harry Potter night train from Berlin to Venice

The worst smell ever, is what hits you when entering the six people cabin at the night train from Munich to Venice. Martin disappears into another cabin after meeting an entire Indian family and not making it through. How odd start of a train trip. The train departs Thursday the 11 th of June and me and Martin are an hour early at the Berlin main train station. After an announcement of ”tricksters” in the station we are told to look out for our bags and take extra precautions and notice anything odd we depart in DB- bahn train ICE 1515 from Berlin to Munich at 16.40. After 6 hours in train, flying pass German villages and old industry cities, wine yards and train station upon train station as Nurnberg we arrive in Munich around 23 in the evening. Picking up a late snack we head for the night train and it is dark around the tracks by now. Entering the train it is like time travel. The carriages that are used are much older …

 Pauly Saal – how it feels to eat a star in Berlin

To please the mr in the family a visit to a one star Michelin restaurant was necessary. The choice fell on the restaurant Pauly Saal, a Beelin restaurant situated at the street Auguststrasse close to Oranienburger Tor. We visited the restaurant Wednesday evening after a long day of doing touristy stuff.  Before going we booked a table for 21.30 and the restaurant actually called to confirm the table. Maybe that was good since we had a time accident on the way. When going we added a 30 minutes to the schedule to be sure to make it but when getting to the station where we were to change tube the purple line was closed for maintenance. Oh no, we ran for the extra buses but no bus came so we ran back into the subway and had to go around to get to a station close by Auguststrasse but on the other side. This took forever. 15 minutes late we stumbled into the old jewish girl school and into the restaurant (the old gym hall) …

Hotel Rheingold – cute cats, big windows and a cool bar

The small old hotels are generally those who holds the biggest heart. When Martin choose the hotel for us when going to Berlin my first thought was that it looks fresh but has no own bathroom, and I like my own bathroom. So we continued to look and found hotel Rheingold. With varying reviews it didn’t look that cool to begin with, typical Berliner was one thought about the hotel, but since it was cheap and we got our own bathroom we went for this hotel anyway. The bathroom was fairly newly renovated, not by any means high standard but sufficient. And was it typical Berliner? Oh yes it was! but is that such a bad thing?  For typical Berliner I give you a old early 20 th century house with 4 m to the ceiling rooms with double doors that didn’t even fit into my 40 mm lens. The shot of Martin standing by the door is a shot of him looking out on our own balcony, like a boudoir dream.  The restaurant or …

the berlin wall.

After doing the classic round we ended the tourist day by visiting East Side gallery, which is street art on the eastern side of the Berlin wall. Here you can find the crying Einstein (probably have fancier name) as well as Picasso look a like street art and locks with names in them in many colors.  Walking from the S bahn station Warschauer Strasse to Ostbahnhof – you find the street gallery on Muhlenstrasse. We liked it so much that we returned the second day, Thursday the 11 th of June, so we could scout some more art but mostly just hang with the other cool kids by the water. During the day the sun was intense and what better than to find a nice spot in the shadows and just hang, feeling Berlin grow on you and making imaginary plans to move here some day. The best thing about traveling must be to dream.   Katarina Shot with canon eos m3 and 40 mm pancake lens ed in lightroom                                                                 

the classics in Berlin

Im not sure what the classic tourist places really are nowadays, it is not the 70s anymore when all tourists traveled to the same remote location to get red like a tomato and occasionally went on a guided tour to the city centre. The tourist buses still exist and frankly a bit tempting. I can see myself sitting there on the top with my sunglasses with a bit to much sunblock on the noose, just going round and around all day. We didn’t go in these buses but anyway, took the tour around on foot on what I guess is some of the classics in Berlin. (Due to the vast amount of photos an entire photo post will be dedicated to the Berlin Wall and East Side gallery.)          > Crossing the boarder at Check point Charlie  Martin and I were aiming at getting to Potzdamer platz but ended up close to checkpoint charlie so thats where we started our classics walk. We jumped of the subway by Kochstrasse and walked from there to the …

Ein currywurst in Berlin

Arriving in Berlin I told Martin that he had to have a currywurst, the true Berliner food. So first thing after dumping our stuff at the hotell we went for a currywurst, that and also walking down Kufurstendamm and checking out the Gedächtniskirche. The first wurst Martin was handed was over fried, so not a good start. The second thing was, the curry isn’t in the wurst but actually cheap old curry spice pored over the sausage. What? Not the best first impression. Or as Martin put it ”Germans seem to love yellow, the food is flavoured with turmeric, curry or mustard and the buildings including the subway is painted yellow”. Yesterday Martin gave the currywurst another try. It was better, but still, cheap old curry sprinkled over. A bit off a disappointment. But, still, the little sausage houses looks cute on photo, like a french old dancers house with red light lighting up the neighbourhood. Katarina Photo shot with Canon Eos M3 with 40 mm pancakelens and edited in lightroom app converting into black …