PlanetEye

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.

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.

Wohnzimmer is exactly what it's name portrays: Living Room. With the fantastically odd layout that typifies most of the bars constructed out of apartment layouts resulting in tiny rooms that were once entrance hallways, there are plenty of odd corners to nestle into. In that room it could be a cheesy seventies lounge suite, while over here it's a fifties formica kitchen table you gather around. It's laid back, popular and has a tendancy to be noisy and full of an evening.

There is a small selection of food, including some pretty good baguettes, but it is cafe fare - don't expect a great variety. They have a vegetarian breakfast served until 4pm or when they run out of fresh bread rolls. Order and pay at the bar, but make sure you don't lose that armchair you've hijacked because it could be a long time before another one pops free.

I must admit I’m not the world’s biggest fan of KaDeWe (pronounced Car-Dee-Vee). I know that the Kaufhaus Des Westens has the reputation for being THE big department store here, the one where every visiting American would run to to grab those tax-free bargins before their return flights. I know that in the hey-day of the early department stores, when Macy’s in NY and Galeries Lafayette in Paris were huge and unique and something worth trekking to, then KaDeWe held it’s own. But now? With all the other mega stores around the place does KaDeWe have much outside the usual to offer?

Well there are in fact a few specialties, and not just for those with pockets lined in gold who can afford to browse the designer labels. I’m talking about the food level. Here you can find a couple of American food brands tucked away in a corner near the fish. It’s where I sneak too whenever a Reese’s Pieces crave gets too much for me to fight, or an expat has put me on pumpkin pie duty for their Thanksgiving celebration. 

For the English, it stocks Christmas Puddings and marmalade. And, a tip from me – when you’ve given up on ever finding some really thick cream in this country, go over to the dairy section, scrape your pennies together and grab yourself a little jar of clotted cream. They have it, and sometimes your freshly baked scones deserve the best, especially if a little bit of homesickness has struck.

One final suggestion, and this straight from the lips of a Frenchman I dined with the other night: the oyster bar on the food floor has the best oysters in the city. So if you’re looking for a little action, maybe cruise your date through KaDeWe to get the evening rolling.  

If you’re in town at the moment and want to take part in a bit of political demonstration, the Chinese Embassy next to Jannowitzbrücke may be a start. And if after a couple of hours of standing around in the cold, you’d like a warm, filling meal, then wander a few hundred metres down the road to Mittmanns.

Like the other restaurants and cafés in the area, Mittmanns caters to the office lunchtime with a great midday menu. For 5.50€ you have the choice of a few meals with a drink included, and the atmosphere is fantastically German. 

The corner restaurant is full of dark wood, the walls lined with old advertising signs. Customers range from retirees with small dogs to young artists with studios nearby and the atmosphere is full of old-fashioned charm. A sign on the front proudly declares it as one of the best 400 pubs in Germany. Considering how many pubs there are around the place, I figure that’s not too bad at all.

The lunch menu is written on a blackboard out the front and you need to make your decision there. The almost daily changing offerings mean there is no menu inside for you to peruse in peace. The top two are usually the specialties, and at that price, well worth it. Make sure you have your dictionary with you though as there’s certainly no English version pencilled nearby.

The weekend has come around again and Berlin is alive with the sound of chewing. The German breakfast takes a certain getting used to and when I was first faced with a Sunday brunch at my ex-boyfriend’s house I thought his parents were overdoing it in the hope of marrying off their eldest child. But no, a weekend breakfast in this country means emptying the entire fridge contents onto the table, garnishing lavishly with a variety of breads, croissants and cakes, and grazing through it at a sedate pace accompanied by endless pots of coffee.

Berlin has turned this family tradition into a city-wide phenomenon. Most cafes open up a weekend brunch buffet for around 8€. Starting at 10am and running till 4pm, you can park your backside in a cool café and work your way through eggs, pasta, seafood, salads, yoghurts, cheeses, meats, fruits, breads and cakes. Each café has its own particular smorgasbord and in summer those with outside seating are invariably full. My current favourite is Istoria in Prenzlauer Berg, but I am planning on touring brunch locations throughout the year. I’ll let you know how it goes, and how successful the subsequent diet is.

The only thing to beware is that drinks are not included and it is all too easy to go through multiple coffees and juices. And once the sun hits the highest point? Well then maybe a beer or wine – it’s LUNCH then after all, and perfectly acceptable. The best brunch I ever had started at 10am and when they packed up the buffet at 4pm we slipped into evening mode. It was 3am when we finally left that table… now who wants to join me for the next one?