We have been here for a few days now and have been exploring the ‘hood. We are leaving the heavy duty tourist stuff till Zach gets here tomorrow.

We are staying in Prenzlaur Berg which used to be on the “other side” of the Berlin Wall. When the wall came down, rents were cheap so this area was quickly populated by artists and hippies. So it feels very much like Surry Hills. Cool with a veneer of grunge…

Needless to say we both feel right at home. Berlin (well the tiny, tiny little bit we have seen) rocks!

The best way to describe what it is like is to take you on a short trip down our street Schliemannstr. It is only about 300 metres long and unremarkable as much as we can tell. The street is all residential with the ground floors leased out to business. It’s the variety of shop fronts tells a much better story than I could write.

This is our street – Schliemannstr

 

On the corner is the organic food store BioFrische. Everything is Bio here (except cigarettes.)	Rechtsanwalt means lawyer. This is probably the best it gets on the street…
…and as a nice touch some of the windows have intricate borders	On the opposite corner is an all night kebab place and white goods re-conditioners
The mandatory bike shop. There are as many cyclists as pedestrians – with bike lanes on all the major streets. This is definitely Clover’s town…	The mystery shop with a single painting in the window…god knows what this place sells when it’s open.
eigen werke means“own work”. From the shop window it seems they sell a fine range of cones made out fabric?	The local tailor shop with  single sewing machine and desk lamp
Dr Wood! This one of my favourites. And if you look closely you can see Kurt with the makeshift nana-trolley as we head off to the supermarket.	Next to Dr Wood – but unrelated – is Leathers. They make finely crafted leather bondage apparel and have “parties” 2 nights week. We have not been invited yet.
In building right opposite ours they have tried to combat the grafitti with a mural…	…cause if you don’t… it can look like this…which is the entrance to our building.
In our building we have 3 guys on Macs doing “acoustical interface design”. I do not know what that is but they have a funky office.	Another retail mystery is SCHAUKELPFER. Which translates to rocking horse. All the windows are covered so who knows…
My local cafe were i practice my German. “Kaffe Schwarz bitte – to go”. It is also kid friendly – in the back they have a complete IKEA style gym for the kinder. And coffee is good and cheap. in NY we were paying around $4.00 for takeaway…here it is $2.50	“Massages to go”. I do not think this is a subsidiary of Dr Wood.
And finally at the end of the street is a park which has fixed table tennis tables. Kurt and I saw these guys playing a game, drinking “tallies” at 11:00 this morning. Not sure if they are homeless..it’s hard to tell.