Berlin


Until last weekend I’d not been to Berlin before - a non-achievement that becomes more remarkable/incomprehensible given that I lived in Germany for half of 1999 and studied the language for years. However, being a lazy student I considered the mere act of moving to Munich to be more than enough upheaval, hence the idea of travelling around the whole country - which would hardly have been hindered by my near total lack of social life at that time - barely even occurred to me. I also spent far more time in internet cafes and Irish bars than in more culturally worthwhile establishments.

I didn’t go to any museums in Berlin either, but at this time of year there was a fine alternative in the form of the Christmas Markets. If you’re thinking it sounds slightly odd to spend most of a winter’s holiday shuffling around increasingly-crowded mazes  in sub-zero temperatures rather than inside toasty warm buildings, maybe a nice gluhwein or a good currywurst would change your mind. Back in my student days I actually worked a few shifts on a stall selling the former (hot spiced wine, for the uninitiated) in a selection of flavours, sold on its own or with the addition of a shot or two of spirits for those really cold days.


This was one of the first markets to try their luck over here, setting themselves up in Manchester city centre for a couple of weeks and doing a roaring trade. Now the markets have become a familiar fixture over here - Birmingham’s market (which comes from Frankfurt) being a massive draw, and the market on London’s South Bank has been steadily expanding each year.

Mind you, price-wise the latter has a distinctly London flavour. A gluhwein there in a bog-standard paper cup will set you back £4.50, whereas for the same price in any of Berlin’s markets it comes in a nice mug which you can return in exchange for a couple of those Euros if you don’t fancy keeping it as a souvenir. A much wider selection of beverages is on offer too. Eierpunsch (eggnog) is ubiquitous, and you can generally find the likes of hot Baileys or alcoholic cocoa, non-alcoholic punches for the kids and various combinations of spirits to act as stiffeners.

It being close to Christmas, these markets are not adverts for healthy living and abstention, as further evidenced by the vast range of sweet things on offer - waffles, crepes, doughnuts, hand-carved pieces of chocolate, all sorts of nuts and sugary sweets and liberal quantities of nutella, bananas etc to coat/fill them with. They are hardly lacking in hot food either, and depending on the location you can sample slightly more interesting fare such as goulash or even sit down to eat at a pop-up style restaurant.

Berlin doesn’t boast the same long history as other German cities’ markets, making up for this by stuffing itself to the gills with them instead. Each one has a certain character of its own. The one Euro entry fee at the Gendarmemarkt has drawn criticism, but you do get an element of sophistication for your money in the form of indoor craft shops and eateries, plus it boasts a picturesque location and a stage where you can watch bunches of young blokes doing acapella versions of Long Train Runnin’ and Somebody I Used to Know. (There were probably other acts too, in fairness.)

The market outside the Charlottenburg palace was similarly refined, definitely geared more towards the tourist market as evidenced by the large number of British accents in the air. The most notable thing to take away from walking through the palace was how much of it had been reconstructed from theoretical guesswork and materials from similar, less damaged homes. The spectre of war and destruction is never too far away in Berlin if you’re on the tourist paths. It was also hard to ignore the fact that, judging from the many portraits on display, the Princess Sofie Charlotte after whom the place was named was a somewhat strapping lass, shall we say. Also, fans of 18th-19th century dinner services will not be disappointed.

Alexanderplatz’s market was far more family-friendly. Sitting in the shadow of the city’s vast TV tower as well as one of its pretty churches, this market boasted a big wheel and chair-o-plane rides as well as a central ice-rink – not to mention what was presumably a nightly stunt where Santa and his sleigh traversed the grounds on a high zipwire. For all those reasons this was my favourite, although we didn’t have time to visit the Potsdamer Platz market with its toboggan run which might have taken the title otherwise (from laughing at other peoples’ toboggan efforts rather than attempting it myself, clearly).

By contrast, the headache-inducing market outside the Kaiser Wilhelm church was as supremely tacky as you’d expect from its location slap-bang in Berlin’s central shopping district, everything geared towards cheap food and booze and all the signage that little bit gaudier. Definitely a comic sans kind of place.

Meanwhile, the final market we visited on Unter den Linden (great street name, that) boasted a surprisingly large selection of wooden African animals. You’ve got to have a USP, I suppose.

The markets have definitely moved away from any overt religious connections of old, save for a token nativity scene at each which were conspicuously small-scale and generally ignored. Christmas itself isn’t even represented that strongly, the percentage of stalls actually selling decorations and suchlike being quite low. In other words, they're a pretty accurate reflection of both the dwindling importance of religion and the slow creep of eating, drinking, merriment and (most importantly) spending money to fill the void in Western society as a whole.

We did manage to fit in seeing some more of Berlin inbetween all the gluhwein. Definitely recommended are Sandemans New Europe’s free daily walking tours. Three and a half hours does sound like a long time, but our guide was lively and informative and we were taken around many of East Berlin’s notable monuments whilst being treated to a useful potted history lesson. Inevitably, wars loom large - not just the obvious Cold War fragments of the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and communist housing blocks but in the look and feel of a city whose architecture and air has been shaped by wars over the centuries.

I couldn’t help making comparisons to Paris, where I’d been a couple of months earlier. Berlin boasts no attractions as venerable as Notre Dame, partly thanks to being a more modern city and partly due to the toll or war. Nonetheless, many of its monuments are metallic and rusted, giving the impression of weathered age despite being hundreds of years younger than much of Paris’s stonemasonry. However, the pulsating modernity of West Berlin and the thriving nightlife scenes are then thrown into the mix. Cold war-era monstrosities like the TV Tower are contrasted with modern triumphs like Norman Foster’s new Reichstag dome - a battered old building restored to gleaming modernity. The overriding impression is that of a powerful city continually rising out of its own ashes. 

Well worth the visit. But bloody cold.

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