The agreement yesterday was to not get up before six thirty. I do wake up a few times during the night – unfamiliar bed, unfamiliar noises – but I feel rested by the time my mom shouts a good morning from the next room. The plans for today have changed after a brief review of weather and options yesterday evening. We’ll reserve the ‘cool’ activities like visiting the botanical garden or air-conditioned museums for Friday and Saturday, when temps are expected to rise above 30 deg Celcius.
Architecture today! There’s no opening times to look at buildings from the outside, so we don’t drag out breakfast. The fruit/yoghurt breakfast today is We rasp-, straw- and blueberries, as well as grapes and half a banana each, with soy yoghurt, a bit of chopped chocolate, some nuts and seeds. This more than covers the fruit ration for the day, don’t you think?
Having asked Google which rail line to take, we walk out around nine to see the Hanzaviertel, a neighbourhood built from scratch in the fifties by then-famous architects. The line is closed about halfway, which we only notice when everybody in the carriage ups and leaves at the same time. We can’t quite understand from the info signs about why and what alternatives they propose, so we decide to walk to the Hauptbahnhof (the main railway station), which is the next station on the line we want. It’s a blustery day, though fortunately not raining. It’s just about warm enough for a tshirt, but I have to hold on to my panama hat at times. We enjoy the walk by the Spree river, the views of the Reichstag, the bustle of joggers and commuters. A lot of this area is reserved for cyclists and walkers, really pleasant.
The Hauptbahnhof is a new building and this whole area has been upgraded since then. There’s an impressive modern building right in front of it, Google says this is the 3XN office building and their website has interesting info about the design, just fascinating. We visit the train station to use the toilets (1 EUR, but very clean) and check if we can continue our way by S-train from here, but no such luck, so we continue on foot, about thirty minutes still to our destination.
The Hansa quarter was built in one go in 1957 as an exhibition of modern architecture, in the West Berlin sector. It has apartment blocks, churches, schools and family homes, all designed by famous international architects, as well as German architects, from that era. It must have been a big contrast to the Stalinallee (currently the Karl Marx Allee) which had been constructed shortly before in East Berlin in the socialist classicism style.
We follow the online info and info panels to guide us through, making a first stop in the art academy café for an early lunch. The quarter is not big and it doesn’t take a lot of time to walk through it, unless of course you stop to look up the history, the architects, etc., like we do. The funny thing about modern architecture and art is that it’s an extremely subject experience. If you look at the buildings without knowing the history and the big name of the designer, then you might think ‘bleh’, nothing special. And then you’re surprised by the architect. So a good tip is to ‘taste blind’ – first look and judge if you like it, then find out who made it.
We end at the Hansaplatz subway station and hop on to go the the Potsdamer Platz. It has a long and complicated history which we’re completely ignoring now, except to note that after the fall of the wall there was suddenly a large, attractively located piece of land available. After the government approved a master plan in the nineties, the architect Renzo Piano made a high level design, delegated some of the buildings to other famous architects and designed one himself. The result is a light and open area busy with traffic, surrounded by modern high rises in different, but still somehow matching styles. There’s a lot of tourists, but also a lot of locals who work in one of the high rises, it’s a lively mix.
We ooh and aah at the buildings and then have some delicious sushi in The Playce shopping center. After evaluating the options for the afternoon, we decide to call it a day. It’s about two pm but we’re pretty tired from the long walk this morning, so after taking the subway back we chill out and read a book, until it’s time to leave for our dinner reservation at six pm.
Frea is a vegan restaurant with a Michelin green star, which is an award for sustainability. We order a five course menu – mom chooses accompanying non-alcoholic beverages – and prepare to be blown away. Vegan means no animal products whatsoever, so this excludes meat and fish but also eggs, butter, milk, honey, etc. It’s a completely different way of cooking because much of the chemical reactions in f.e. French cuisine rely on butter and eggs to make emulsions. So you need different techniques entirely.
The meal is simply delicious, it gets top marks for flavour, texture and presentation. Perhaps hard to imagine if you haven’t tried it, but there is no point in which I think a dish is missing animal products. The menu really proves gastronomy and veganism are perfectly matched. Interesting to mention is that this restaurant has a strict no waste policy. The cannelloni is made of yesterday’s bread, for example, and there’s a composting machine for all the green waste.
We walk out around nine, completely satisfied. We even managed to do something useful during the meal: we found a supplier of carton where we can pick up a box to ship mom’s trekking gear. It’s not expensive if you use freight transport and just so much easier to not having to drag it to/from the train.
Febe writes 