PlanetEye

This weekend is one of the largest street festivals this city experiences - and it expereinces a lot of them. The Carnival of Cultures (Karneval der Kulturen) is a huge event of music, performance and partying. It's one for all age groups and denominations and whether you want to salsa in the street, caipoiera in competition or parade with pride, you'll find something to tickle your fancy.

The biggest attraction of the festival is the Street Parade. This year it's being held on Saturday May 11th, from 12.30pm until 9.30pm. This year the route runs from Hermannplatz to Mehringdamm along Gneisenaustrasse/Yorckstrasse. About 4500 performers will be taking part, presenting every form of traditional ethnic costumes, dances, music and shows. 

Aside from the brilliantly coloured and noisy parade, the festival continues on Blücherplatz for the long weekend. There will be around 350 stands selling exotic foods, clothing and knick-knacks with stages at every corner offering a wide variety of performances.

Getting there is easy: the parade starts at Harmannplatz (U8/U7)  and finishes at Mehringdamm (U6/U7), while the festival is between Mehringdamm and Hallesches Tor (U6/U2). Don't rely to heavily on buses as a number have been redirected or cancelled around the blocked roads of the festival.

If there's one thing that is predominant in the suburb of Mitte, it's art galleries. Every second shopfront seems to have one in it and nestled in every other garden house is an artist's atelier. Every technique is available: painting, sculpture, installations, audio, visual, interactive... you name it, there is someone in this area doing it.

If you are more likely to drop in on the local shoe shop or record store than to brave the doorway of an apparently empty gallery, the task can be daunting. Of course, that may just be me, but I find myself too insecure in the arts to risk making a fool of myself in front of people wearing individually designed clothes and neck scarves. So I tend to glance in these windows, raise my eyebrows in query or gasp in delight, but rarely set foot in them.

Which is, of course, silly. Artists want people to look at their work. 

This weekend galleries all round Mitte are having openings. In fact, I have even been told that the Australian Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett (formerly of Midnoght Oil fame), will be in town checking out the scene - although rubbing shoulders with him is apparently an invite only event.

But with so many places actively opening doors and encouraging people in this weekend, it's a good time to go get your Art on. I'd suggest starting on Auguststrasse, and just work your way through the streets, stepping into any which appeal. You may just find that painting which perfectly expresses your state of self at the moment, or that disturbing cartoon which will really upset Mum when you take it home.

Now it may be that in this blog I have so far mentioned a large number of ways and places to enjoy a drink or four. Well, sorry to say but here comes another one.

This weekend in Werder, a small town about half an hour outside Berlin, is the  Baumblütenfest (Tree Blossom Festival), a lovely, if kind of old-fashioned, sounding festival. It brings an image to mind of blond pigtailed children prancing through the streets, tossing cherry blossoms or recently flowered magnolia's from hand woven baskets.

While it is apparently a celebration of spring - where a cute girl is crowned the blossom queen and fruit may be plucked directly from the orchards - it is more noticeably a celebration of fruit wine. Now in it's 129th year, they've had some practice in getting these locally created alcoholic masterpieces right. In an area covered in fruit trees these guys can make wine out of anything that will ferment. 

A word of warning though: fruit wine is not to be taken lightly. It packs a punch you don't notice until you're already floored. In fact, the numbers of extremely intoxicated youth has risen beyond comfortable levels, causing local authorities to consider banning alcohol from next year on. So this may be your last chance to witness this fest while sitting in the sun and supping on strawberry wine.

I may risk being cut out of the young and hip scene with this admission, but I occasionally like to sit down in a cafe which isn't young and hip, overflowing with armchairs and artists. Sometimes I enjoy a different ambience, a hint of the twenties and thirties which can be found existing sedately in the Café Odeon near Friedrichstrasse.

Underneath the S-bahn line, heading east along Georgenstrasse in the direction of museum island, are nestled a variety of restaurants, cafes and an antique market. While the other cafes cater mostly to the student crowd of the nearby Humboldt University, the Café Odeon lies cocooned in the antique stalls. The curved ceiling formed by the S-Bahn line running overhead is entirely covered with old advertising and street signs from the early 1900s and classic music of the era is piped through in a quietly restrained manner.

The café is always peaceful. I've never seen more than a dozen people in it at any one time and it is the perfect place to sit back and reflect. To soak up the refined air of an earlier age. You can't help but yearn for a time when men could be called dapper as a compliment and women were wearing lace gloves and enameled brooches.

Lunch is reasonably priced and filling. Potato soup with sausage, quiche and large salads grace the menu, while a cabinet at the bar houses a selection of cakes. If you want to be daring try the Germknödel, a very large and sweet yeast dumpling, which I take whenever I find it. It isn't that common around this city and is well worth the experience.

The Odeon is a slice of an earlier time and one which is rarely recreated in modern Berlin, unlike the fifties, sixties, seventies, and now (rather unfortunately) the eighties. If do you stop by, have a look for me. I'll be the one in the corner wearing a fur stole.

Underneath the Reichstag a U-bahn station lays dormant. The building of the western extension to the U5 to run from Alexanderplatz to the Reichstag (Bundestag), was put on hold several years ago due to lack of funds. If there is one thing this city understands, it's shortage of cash flow. Berlin's 60-billion Euro debt leaves California looking like it's lost a bit of pocket money down the back of the couch.

So the U5 was put on hold, and the Bundestag station left to wallow in dust in a pristine condition.

Until now.

Throughout May the station will vibrate to the sounds of The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte). The train platform itself is the stage, while audience members will be arranged on both side of the tracks and the gallery levels. The mysterious network of tunnels we view only fleetingly in the warmth of a train carriage form the basis for the director's Kingdoms of Light and Dark.

I've never set foot into this train station, and this looks like a fantastic opportunity to do it.

If you'd like to check out some photos of the station and the show, they can be found here and tickets can be booked online.

The show premieres 26.04, and runs through to the 25.05, with shows every evening except Monday and extra matinees on the weekend. I'd suggest booking soon: most Berliner's I've talked to want to see it also.

If you've never tried asparagus before, now is the perfect time to jump right in. The season has just opened and shortly you'll find every single restaurant in the city is serving this slightly rude looking vegetable.

Now, I'm not talking about those green, attractive stalks of succulent looking asparagus that we from the antipodes (and presumably other less-European destinations) are familiar with. The German asparagus stalk is long, fat and white. It is grown under piles of earth specifically so that it stays long, fat and white. It is an albino phallic symbol.

And it is taken extremely seriously here. No snickering, thank you.

The area around Beelitz, south of Berlin, is renowned for their asparagus, and the first of the season's Beelitzer Spargel hit the local supermarkets last week. One thing that is highly loved here is seasonal specialties, and asparagus rates right up there with pumpkin, Christmas cookies and summer holidays on Mallorca. When I said every restaurant is serving it, I wasn't joking.

Cold asparagus salad, warm asparagus salad, asparagus soup, ham and asparagus, boiled, stewed, sautéed, blanched.... the list is endless. I haven't yet found an asparagus dessert, an asparagus wine, or an asparagus-based cocktail, but I'm sure that's just because I haven't been looking hard enough.

If you have access to a kitchen here though, I would recommend trying the basic: peel the asparagus and chop the bottom ends off, boil for 20 minutes and serve with melted butter or Hollandaise sauce and slices of ham. You'll find yourself wondering where you can get white asparagus back home.