A Weekend in Berlin
We started a little tradition last year. I was too pregnant to fly home for the festive season and there was no way that I fancied braving the North Sea in December so the ferry back to the UK was not an option. So as an alternative we decided to go for a weekend away and last year we went to Paris. This year we decided to keep the tradition going plus as it's the Wee Man's first Christmas it avoided any potential arguments regarding who we would spend Christmas with if we did go back to UK!
We flew which is always an interesting experience with a young child and not really the sit back, relax and read a book time that it was before you had a child. Still Wee Man was actually pretty well behaved. One question I would like to ask the airline is why they clustered all the children together toward the back of the plane? Was it because a) it is the secretly the safest part of the plane to be in in case the worst happens or b) they want to contain you all as far away from all the people who pay the extra money for the first 4 rows of the plane. I want to think it's option a but let's be honest it's far more likely to be b. On the way there this meant that he was wide awake and wanting to play with the little girl who was sat across from us. On the way back he slept, thank fully, somehow sleeping through two other children having mini meltdowns for half the flight. I have to admit I felt a little bit smug enjoying my glass of wine (albeit a little awkwardly holding a sleeping child) whilst they held their crying wriggling children. Wee Man had got that out of his system screaming for most of the bus journey to the airport!
If I was rating airports Berlin Tegel Airport would get a 2. It's probably the worst laid out airport I have ever been to. It's long and narrow so people have to queue into the walkways so it's then really hard to make your way through to get anywhere. Security felt a little low tech which in this day and age I'm not sure is so reassuring and was one scanner per gate which may sound lousy but at least you're only queueing with the other people also on your flight. We were lucky on the way back that we got sent to the front of the queue because we had a baby with us. It was probably a little annoying for the other people in the line but great for us. When you are flight side there is very little to do and it's about as exciting as a doctors waiting room so unless you enjoy reading the ingredients on a Toblerone bar in duty free make sure you bring something to entertain yourself with! What is handy is that they sell the travel tickets from the information desk near the main exit. We bought the Berlin WelcomeCard. A 72hr card will set you back €28,90 and it covers you for travel on all buses, trams and U-Bahn (underground) and S-Bahn (overground) trains in the AB zone which is the main city limits (check the map on their website for details). The one important thing to remember with this ticket is that it is valid from the time you stamp it (when you first get on a bus to the city centre) for exactly 72 hours and don't make a mistake, but more on that later.....
First stop was a Christmas market for a bratwurst and a berliner. The bratwurst was cooked over a large grill suspended over a wood fire which gives it a delicious smokey flavour, served in a crusty roll with spicy mustard and sweet tomato ketchup. The berliner, a doughnut by any other name, was light as a feather, pillowy soft, filled with a sweet fruity jam and covered in a snowdrift of powdered sugar.
I had wanted to try some new things whilst we were away and was pretty excited when I saw these Rothenburger Schneeballen. They look quite promising at first glance and the variety of flavours all sounded delicious. A globe of sugary goodness with a tasty filling but they were a little disappointing. They turned out to be a bundle of very plain pastry scraps with a fairly tasteless icing over the top and no filling. I can only guess the filling bit was lost in translation and they actually meant the icing but when you think you're going to get a tasty hidden centre and there's nothing there it's hard not to be disappointed. Still with a cup of coffee it was tasty enough.
We had schnitzel twice whilst away. The first time was at Berlin Zoo. We were lucky to actually eat that day as the wifi was down in the restaurant and so the card machine wasn't working. Living in Amsterdam it is rare that you actually carry cash as so many places are now PIN only but in Berlin it was the opposite. I definitely recommend having cash on you at all times just in case. Thankfully the lady at the till let us have the meals which was lovely of her! Here it was served with a mushroom sauce and some roast new potatoes with feta and olives. It wasn't fancy and certainly felt home cooked which was just what we wanted considering it was freezing outside!
The second serving of schnitzel was at Berliner Marcus Braü, Münzstraße 1-3. We'd past this place on the way to a craft market and it had caught my eye for the fact that it sold big steins of beer and advertised pork knuckle which was on my list of things to try whilst I was in Berlin thanks to SORTEDfood's Mike. It doesn't look like much from the outside. But they appear to brew their own beer and when we visited the lighting was low and cosy and the waiting staff lovely. On the way back we went in and ordered the schnitzel and pork knuckle. I shouldn't generalise, it may well be just the case with the places we visited, but the German's have a home style of cooking. What you eat could quite easily have been cooked in your mothers kitchen. It lacks pretension and in some cases the wow factor but it is good wholesome food. The schnitzel here was served with salad and some of the tastiest potatoes I have ever eaten that had been fried with bacon and were crispy on the outside, soft in the middle and infused with smokey bacon.
The main star of the show that night was the pork knuckle. I don't have a photo that does it justice (because of the lousy light) but let me paint you a word picture.
For me the best part of a joint of roast meat is the outside slice which has the crisp exterior and some of the best flavour. Growing up there was always a fight for these slices off the Sunday roast between my mum and me. All of the outside of the knuckle was like that crispy meat whilst the inside was melt in the mouth tender. Soft, delicious and perfectly fatty. Like everything there is wasn't fancy, it was served with a beer gravy, also delicious, and bread and butter. It was quite plain, and potentially my only critiscism, a little under seasoned but it was fantastic. I would go back to Berlin just to eat that pork knuckle and drink a stein of their dark beer.
I mentioned earlier about the travel card and paying particular attention to how long your ticket is valid for. We learnt the hard way. On our last day we decided we would go to the Sea Life centre before we went to the airport. Kid friendly, indoors (and by that I mean warm!) and it would kill the couple of spare hours we had. We knew our 72 hour tickets ran out that morning and we would have to get a new ticket to travel to the airport but we gave ourselves enough time to get to where we were going before they ran out. Or at least we thought.
At all the stations around Berlin there are no gates to pass through so travel is quicker as you can dash to your platform. We innocently thought that there must be a certain level of trust (or Big Brother watching) that everyone buys a ticket before traveling as we had wondered how they check. A couple of stops into our journey we found out. This huge man mountain gets on and takes a seat near Mr R. As the metro doors close he stands up, the badge and electronic reader appear and he asks to see everyones tickets. I hand mine to Mr R who shows them to this guy. We're starting to pull into the next station and he turns to Mr R and says you need to come with me. Our tickets had run out by 3 minutes and we were 3 stops away from where we were getting off. We get off the metro and Man Mountain's colleague appears. He's smaller but still has the swagger of a bouncer and his English was better. Our tickets by this time were 6 minutes over and had we stayed on our metro we would have reached our stop and been off and away. I'm thinking OK they're going to pull us up on this but when we got on they were still valid and we were nearly at our stop, we can apologise for our ignorance, buy a new ticket for the rest of the journey and be on our way. NOPE. It is black and white in Germany. Either your ticket is valid or it is not. You should not be on a method of transport when it runs out. A minute or two before it runs out you should be off no matter what. You don't get told this when you buy a ticket, there are no signs or posters and there is no sympathy if you are a tourist and you don't know the rules. We were given an on the spot fine of €60 which should have been €60 each but because we had Wee Man with us (who slept innocently through the whole thing) they were lenient. For Gods sake don't ask how you can appeal the fine it's futile. These guys are judge, jury and executioner and they don't like being challenged. It's not like the UK where you can appeal your parking ticket or whatever and get around it. Their response was if you appeal you pay €120 and you cause trouble for us because we're only giving you the one fine, you want to cause trouble for us? HELL NO! We of course didn't have the cash on us and there was no chance of being allowed to send them a cheque so Man Mountain escorted Mr R to the nearest cash machine to get the money out whilst I sat with Wee Man and the other chap and waited for them. We were then escorted by them on the next metro to our stop. In fairness these guys were nice. They just don't mess around. When we got to our stop we said Goodbye and they were occupied as they had caught someone else on that metro but Man Mountain saw us waiting for the lift which was taking forever and offered to help us carry the buggy up the stairs to get out. He left us at the top with a smile and a wave and a sorry. Just doing his job. The whole thing cost us nearly an hour of our day and €60 for being 3 minutes over.
My impression of Berlin. It's not a beautiful city. To be honest its actually fairly ugly, full of concrete buildings from when it was rebuilt after the Second World War and there is still a Soviet feel to some parts of the city even 30 years after the Wall came down. Visiting in December was probably didn't help as everything is greyer and a little bleaker in the winter months. I would like to visit again during the summer months to see what it's like when the sun is shining and it's not 0°c!
The Christmas markets are excellent but once you have seen one you won't find much different at the next five you visit but the food is good and the Glühwein is excellent!! The food at the markets is good and most of it is reasonably priced but walk around a little until you commit as some stalls near the entrances can be a little more expensive than the ones further in. Unless you want to come back with a dozen mugs from your Glühwein make sure you give back your mugs and get your deposits back. That said they do make nice souvenirs if you can fit them in your bags.
When travelling around check the maps and make sure you know the final destination of the route so you get on the right metro, make sure you know when your tickets run out and don't fuck with the German transport police!
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| Bratwurst - Yes I started eating before I took the picture. No I am not sorry. |
First stop was a Christmas market for a bratwurst and a berliner. The bratwurst was cooked over a large grill suspended over a wood fire which gives it a delicious smokey flavour, served in a crusty roll with spicy mustard and sweet tomato ketchup. The berliner, a doughnut by any other name, was light as a feather, pillowy soft, filled with a sweet fruity jam and covered in a snowdrift of powdered sugar.
I had wanted to try some new things whilst we were away and was pretty excited when I saw these Rothenburger Schneeballen. They look quite promising at first glance and the variety of flavours all sounded delicious. A globe of sugary goodness with a tasty filling but they were a little disappointing. They turned out to be a bundle of very plain pastry scraps with a fairly tasteless icing over the top and no filling. I can only guess the filling bit was lost in translation and they actually meant the icing but when you think you're going to get a tasty hidden centre and there's nothing there it's hard not to be disappointed. Still with a cup of coffee it was tasty enough.
We had schnitzel twice whilst away. The first time was at Berlin Zoo. We were lucky to actually eat that day as the wifi was down in the restaurant and so the card machine wasn't working. Living in Amsterdam it is rare that you actually carry cash as so many places are now PIN only but in Berlin it was the opposite. I definitely recommend having cash on you at all times just in case. Thankfully the lady at the till let us have the meals which was lovely of her! Here it was served with a mushroom sauce and some roast new potatoes with feta and olives. It wasn't fancy and certainly felt home cooked which was just what we wanted considering it was freezing outside!
The second serving of schnitzel was at Berliner Marcus Braü, Münzstraße 1-3. We'd past this place on the way to a craft market and it had caught my eye for the fact that it sold big steins of beer and advertised pork knuckle which was on my list of things to try whilst I was in Berlin thanks to SORTEDfood's Mike. It doesn't look like much from the outside. But they appear to brew their own beer and when we visited the lighting was low and cosy and the waiting staff lovely. On the way back we went in and ordered the schnitzel and pork knuckle. I shouldn't generalise, it may well be just the case with the places we visited, but the German's have a home style of cooking. What you eat could quite easily have been cooked in your mothers kitchen. It lacks pretension and in some cases the wow factor but it is good wholesome food. The schnitzel here was served with salad and some of the tastiest potatoes I have ever eaten that had been fried with bacon and were crispy on the outside, soft in the middle and infused with smokey bacon.
The main star of the show that night was the pork knuckle. I don't have a photo that does it justice (because of the lousy light) but let me paint you a word picture.
For me the best part of a joint of roast meat is the outside slice which has the crisp exterior and some of the best flavour. Growing up there was always a fight for these slices off the Sunday roast between my mum and me. All of the outside of the knuckle was like that crispy meat whilst the inside was melt in the mouth tender. Soft, delicious and perfectly fatty. Like everything there is wasn't fancy, it was served with a beer gravy, also delicious, and bread and butter. It was quite plain, and potentially my only critiscism, a little under seasoned but it was fantastic. I would go back to Berlin just to eat that pork knuckle and drink a stein of their dark beer.
I mentioned earlier about the travel card and paying particular attention to how long your ticket is valid for. We learnt the hard way. On our last day we decided we would go to the Sea Life centre before we went to the airport. Kid friendly, indoors (and by that I mean warm!) and it would kill the couple of spare hours we had. We knew our 72 hour tickets ran out that morning and we would have to get a new ticket to travel to the airport but we gave ourselves enough time to get to where we were going before they ran out. Or at least we thought.
At all the stations around Berlin there are no gates to pass through so travel is quicker as you can dash to your platform. We innocently thought that there must be a certain level of trust (or Big Brother watching) that everyone buys a ticket before traveling as we had wondered how they check. A couple of stops into our journey we found out. This huge man mountain gets on and takes a seat near Mr R. As the metro doors close he stands up, the badge and electronic reader appear and he asks to see everyones tickets. I hand mine to Mr R who shows them to this guy. We're starting to pull into the next station and he turns to Mr R and says you need to come with me. Our tickets had run out by 3 minutes and we were 3 stops away from where we were getting off. We get off the metro and Man Mountain's colleague appears. He's smaller but still has the swagger of a bouncer and his English was better. Our tickets by this time were 6 minutes over and had we stayed on our metro we would have reached our stop and been off and away. I'm thinking OK they're going to pull us up on this but when we got on they were still valid and we were nearly at our stop, we can apologise for our ignorance, buy a new ticket for the rest of the journey and be on our way. NOPE. It is black and white in Germany. Either your ticket is valid or it is not. You should not be on a method of transport when it runs out. A minute or two before it runs out you should be off no matter what. You don't get told this when you buy a ticket, there are no signs or posters and there is no sympathy if you are a tourist and you don't know the rules. We were given an on the spot fine of €60 which should have been €60 each but because we had Wee Man with us (who slept innocently through the whole thing) they were lenient. For Gods sake don't ask how you can appeal the fine it's futile. These guys are judge, jury and executioner and they don't like being challenged. It's not like the UK where you can appeal your parking ticket or whatever and get around it. Their response was if you appeal you pay €120 and you cause trouble for us because we're only giving you the one fine, you want to cause trouble for us? HELL NO! We of course didn't have the cash on us and there was no chance of being allowed to send them a cheque so Man Mountain escorted Mr R to the nearest cash machine to get the money out whilst I sat with Wee Man and the other chap and waited for them. We were then escorted by them on the next metro to our stop. In fairness these guys were nice. They just don't mess around. When we got to our stop we said Goodbye and they were occupied as they had caught someone else on that metro but Man Mountain saw us waiting for the lift which was taking forever and offered to help us carry the buggy up the stairs to get out. He left us at the top with a smile and a wave and a sorry. Just doing his job. The whole thing cost us nearly an hour of our day and €60 for being 3 minutes over.
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| Currywurst from Andy's Diner |
I had my first currywurst whilst we were away and it may be criminal to say but I wasn't that keen. For me the sauce was a little too acidic, that cheap kind of ketchup. It hit my throat in the same way stomach acid does when it leaves that unpleasant burn. I had to scrape most of it off.
That said I would try it again as a. We had it in a restaurant and not from a stand at one of the markets and b. The sausage (you can see in the picture above) was a hot dog sausage and not a proper sausage.
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| Steak from Morélos - Grill Club & Bar |
My impression of Berlin. It's not a beautiful city. To be honest its actually fairly ugly, full of concrete buildings from when it was rebuilt after the Second World War and there is still a Soviet feel to some parts of the city even 30 years after the Wall came down. Visiting in December was probably didn't help as everything is greyer and a little bleaker in the winter months. I would like to visit again during the summer months to see what it's like when the sun is shining and it's not 0°c!
The Christmas markets are excellent but once you have seen one you won't find much different at the next five you visit but the food is good and the Glühwein is excellent!! The food at the markets is good and most of it is reasonably priced but walk around a little until you commit as some stalls near the entrances can be a little more expensive than the ones further in. Unless you want to come back with a dozen mugs from your Glühwein make sure you give back your mugs and get your deposits back. That said they do make nice souvenirs if you can fit them in your bags.
When travelling around check the maps and make sure you know the final destination of the route so you get on the right metro, make sure you know when your tickets run out and don't fuck with the German transport police!
Incase you want to visit some of the same spots we did -
- AquaDom and SEA LIFE Berlin
- Berlin Zoo
- The Spy Museum
- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
- Checkpoint Charlie
- Christmas Markets at Alexanderplats, Potsdamer Platz, Steinstraße, Rathausstraße, Weihnachtsmarkt an der Gedaechtniskirche (Budapester Straße)
For more images of my cooking adventures and sneak peaks of what is coming to the blog follow me on Instagram @_cooknoevil_
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