PlanetEye

I met a friend for lunch in Kreuzberg last week. One of those 'let's sit around in a cafe during working hours with our laptops and make out we're having a business meeting'. I'm always impressed at the amazing number of people in this city that do spend their afternoons in cafes and thought I'd like to join them for once.

I don't think I had anyone fooled. Of course, that may be because we were playing comedy clips on YouTube and laughing excessively loudly.

The café of choice was Mir, one that was new to me and just a quick walk down the road from Görlizter Bahnhof (U1) and directly across the street from Görlitzer Park. Like a lot of streets in this part of town, it feels fairly rundown and dead unless you know behind which doors the cafes, bars and funky shops lurk. They're there, just be brave enough to venture in.

The cafe itself was fairly quiet, the lunchtime crowd consisting of a number of single men reading the paper, a group or two of English speakers and of course us and YouTube. Which is another big point in it's favour: free WiFi.

The daily stew special at 4.30€ is pretty good value and judging by my friends moans of pleasure they do a mean scrambled egg. If you want to check it out before hand the entire menu is available on the website, but our waitress was also quite happy to speak English with customers. One room is full of cosy booths and for some reason the hallway to the toilets looks like the inside of a submarine. Go figure. We settled into some comfy armchairs with a view of the park entrance and it's various graffiti and didn't move for several hours.

Well, except for doubling over in laughter at those YouTube clips. Hey, they were funny, and all part of legitimate work-related research. Really.