Adventures in Berlin: the Liquidrom

There are a few places in Germany I never got around to blogging about. I went to the ruins of Anhalter station on my own, and later with the Fat Tire bike tour, and both times I wondered what the heck this building was:

I asked our tour guide, and he said that among other things (offices and a movie theater), this futuristic building contained the Liquidrom, the coolest spa he'd ever been to. There were hot and cold baths, a bar, and a chamber where you could listen to music underwater. Kelly and I resolved to go there before she left, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip. We went along with two Aussies we'd met in our travels, Hinn and Brie, and it was so much fun chatting with them while we kicked back in the outdoor pool.

Needless to say, I didn't take any photographs on the inside, but man, this place was amazing. Everything was modern and immaculate, and aside from a few Australian guys at the bar we were the only tourists there. The locals didn't seem at all disdainful of us, either—most people were just chilling (in the buff, or near to it) on beach chairs reading books or the newspaper (which seemed kind of strange to me, considering the entrance price, but I suppose they had seasonal membership).

You pay about €18 (plus €3 for towel rental, if you need one) for two hours, and I think it's a couple euros more for every half hour you spend thereafter. The whole place smelled wonderful—I can't recall which scent, it might have been eucalyptus, but it was really soothing. There was a courtyard with a wooden deck and a warm pool, the sound chamber our tour guide mentioned (it was fairly small, and being hogged by the same couple every time we tried to use it), a steam room so steamy you couldn't see your nose if you crossed your eyes, and freezing-cold pools you could hop into after the sauna (if you were feeling brave enough).

The sauna was the best part. It had three tiers of wooden benches, so if you sat at the top you'd practically burn your skin off. At the top of the hour the spa dude would come in and pour fragrant essential oil (sandalwood or whatnot) on the red-hot coals, then flap the heat around with a towel. He was very gracious, repeating the instructions for us in English, and making jokes as the air got hotter and hotter. It was the most intense heat I've ever experienced—I had to remove my gold necklace quickly to avoid burning myself—but I was determined to stay sitting on the top tier. The lovely man came up to me afterwards and told me he was impressed that I'd stayed put!

Later on we ordered smoothies at the bar, and the same guy who ran the sauna served us. You were given a key-fob at the beginning for your locker, and this also served as a credit card of sorts (so you could leave your wallet in the locker). I was so tickled at how futuristic this seemed!

So to anyone paying a visit to Berlin in the future (this means you, Kate and Elliot—you'll love it), be sure to spend an evening at the Liquidrom. Top it off with a good meal and you have the perfect last night of vacation.

(One more thing: the entrance is a bit tricky. When you come up the subway steps, you'll see the building to your left, and the entrance to the movie theater and a restaurant is on that side. Walk past that side of the building, make a right, and walk down the block until you see the door to the Liquidrom on your right.)

And with that, my Germany blogging has come to an end. Over the next few months I'll be doing research for the second edition of Moon Ireland, so there'll still be plenty of new photos to share!

Adventures in Berlin: Potsdam

More info on Potsdam here. Top photo: the charming brick townhouses of the Dutch Quarter. The rest of the pictures are from Sanssouci—that's the 18th-century Chinesisches Teehaus (Chinese Tea House) in the second and third photos.

Adventures in Germany: Schloss Charlottenburg

Photos from a morning at the Charlottenburg Palace:

Adventures in Berlin: Where to Eat

I didn't have any trouble eating out in Germany as a vegetarian—even the restaurants in Wernigerode had surprisingly good veggie options. Here are a few recommendations (I dunno, maybe you can bookmark this post for when you plan your own trip to Berlin?)

If you happen to stay in Kreuzberg, try Amici Miei (Mehringdamm 40), a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria with very friendly service where we got this humongous (and delicious) spinach pie for €11.80 (cheap by Irish standards). Hard to believe, but we eventually polished it off.

But our favorite eatery (we ate there twice) was Malete, on Chausseestrasse 131 in the Mitte neighborhood. The Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern-inspired dishes there were absolutely to die for—even something as simple as fried eggs over sauteed veggies with a side of roasted potatoes. Or order anything with eggplant/aubergine in it. Our meals came with a basket of the tastiest fresh toasted bread spread lightly with a parmesan/red pesto sauce. Just writing about it now makes me want to scrap the Bavaria plan and return to Berlin instead!

The last spot to recommend is in Potsdam, where I happened upon a terrific little vegetarian café close to Sanssouci called Café KieselStein (Hegelallee 23). Roasted pumpkin stuffed with feta and veggies, Asian-inspired soups made with coconut milk, homemade berry pies, organic local beers...great all-around, though the service was a bit slow. There seemed to be a lot of cute restaurants in the Dutch quarter too, but KieselStein was perfect after a long stroll through the park.

Adventures in Berlin: the Kunsthaus Tacheles

Guess what—I'm going back to Germany next week! Just for a week this time, to Bavaria, and I am really excited for the Christkindlmarkt in Nuremberg. I have five or six blog entries left for the first trip, so I'd better finish it up already. I'll schedule the last few to appear while I'm away. (I'm also trying to wrap up a draft of Petty Magic to send to my agent, so most of these last entries will be pretty much photos only.)

Last week I posted a video clip of the unusual disco ball at the Kunsthaus Tacheles, definitely one of the coolest/weirdest spots in Berlin. Artists moved into this bombed-out department store after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it has bars, a café, and a nightclub as well as artists' studios.

You walk through an archway (handmade jewelry for sale beside an old van covered in graffiti, and set into the wall above are majestic stone figures dating to the building's first act) and out into an open sandy space with car seats set around picnic tables as well as random sculptures, all from found materials, like so:

There is graffiti on almost every surface, especially on the stairwells that lead to the studios and galleries upstairs. Alas, none of my interior or nighttime photos are good enough to show you.

This courtyard space felt like a playground for those of us who will never consider ourselves grown-ups.

Something else I didn't get a picture of was a huge rocket-shaped metal thingie in the yard that had a metal ladder (like you'd see inside a submarine) leading up to a dark round opening near the top. I told some of the people on our pub crawl (I had been there earlier in the day, and so could speak with authority) that it was known as The Vomit Rocket, and that they should climb up the metal ladder and do what they must, but fortunately nobody had had that much to drink.

But my favorite part of all was in a hallway upstairs: a full-sized "photo booth" fashioned out of cardboard, with space for both the artist and his subject to sit. Along with a very modest price list, a sign read (in English):

Choose Your Master:

—Cranach
—Michelangelo
—Picasso

(And there might have been a couple more, I can't remember now.) I only wish the artist had been in attendance.

Adventures in Berlin: Kunsthaus Tacheles, pt. 1

It's a ruin. It's a squat. It's a studio. It's a gallery. It's a playground. It's a café/bar. It's a club.

It's a disco, baby.



Proper entry soon.

Adventures in Berlin: good times at the beer tent

I forgot to include this little video Kelly took in my Fat Tire entry the other day. It was so much fun watching people of all ages dancing on tables.

Adventures in Berlin: the Holocaust Memorial

Kelly and I visited the Memorial to the Murdered European Jews two times, on our own and then the following day with the Fat Tire bike tour. Both times we found ourselves really frustrated by the hordes of teenagers who showed zero respect for the monument or the millions of Holocaust victims it memorializes.

This is not an amusement park. This is not a novelty. It is not appropriate to laugh loudly, play hide-and-seek, or chase each other on your bicycles.


At least they had enough decency to look sheepish when Kelly admonished them.

I know I'm sounding like an old crank here, but it's because I remember what it was like to be fifteen that I felt so justified in deploring their behavior. If this monument had existed when I was fifteen and I visited it on a school trip, I would have walked through it on my own, in silence, feeling both sad and hopeful that the atrocities of which this monument is a reminder will never be repeated.

Adventures in Berlin: Fat Tire (and Happy Birthday to Me!)

Right: the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

Seanan beat me to Berlin by a couple of months, so he was able to point me to a few things of particular interest. He recommended a biking tour of the city with Fat Tire, and let me tell you, it was definitely one of the highlights of our trip to Germany. The tour guides at Fat Tire are brilliant—they all have degrees in German history, but they certainly know how to have a good time (as you would expect, they tend to be ladies' men). Our tour was supposed to last four hours, but it took almost six—I was so impressed that on top of a tremendously informative and entertaining tour, our guide wasn't rushing us back to the starting point so he could get on with his day. If you're going to Berlin, London, Paris, or Barcelona anytime soon, definitely check out their website to see if any tours fit your schedule. Thirty bucks (€20, and we also tipped €5 each) for a six-hour bike tour is a great value, no?

We stopped for lunch at a really nice beer garden/restaurant, and Kelly finally sampled the bratwurst. The veggie options were surprisingly yummy too. Another credit to Fat Tire that they didn't take us to a place that felt like a tourist trap.

There were a lot of cool people on the Third Reich tour, and we met up with them again in the evening for the Fat Tire pub crawl. I'm not a big drinker, so I was probably the soberest of the lot, but gosh was it fun. I'll post separately about some of the places we visited on the bike tour and pub crawl (there's a famous artists' squat in a bombed-out department store I want to tell you about, and the Holocaust Memorial warrants its own post as well).

(On the Bebelplatz, site of the infamous Nazi book-burning. Yes, I'm taking notes. I'm a nerd and I'm not ashamed of it.)

I got plenty of photos of drunken debauchery that night (other people's, not ours, mind you), but I think I'll just show you this one:

And a few more landmarks we passed on our bikes:

The ruins of Anhalter Station, once Berlin's central train terminal.

Obama made his July 24th speech at the foot of the Siegessäule, the Victory Column, which is at the center of an enormous roundabout. Hooray for digital zoom! (There's a much better close-up on the Wikipedia page.)

Adventures in Berlin: The East Side Gallery

More information on the East Side Gallery on Wikipedia.