Wedding walls

Last year some artists painted on old walls in Wedding (see this link for more info). I thought it would be a good idea to go and see the paintings live. Not like I'm in Wedding every day, so it was also a good chance to get to walk a little bit around the district.

Unfortunately, my favorite painting (first picture) was hidden inside a private building (or maybe I got the direction wrong).

I have created a public Google maps collection if you want to locate all them (there are six paintings).

U-Bahn: U9 Leopold Platz.

A bizarre park at Winterfeld Platz

This is one of those totally unexpected random things you find walking around your neighborhood.  "Winterfeld Platz" is yet another great area of Schöneberg full of great cafés and restaurants, south from the well-known "Nollendorf Platz". At Gleditschstraße, you can find this bizarre park full of kind-of, more-or-less-modernist figures that made me remember about my so-beloved Barcelona.

Snow & sun on Viktoria-Luise-Platz

This is my first winter far from the always-sunny Spain and it's been a bit though so far. Not so much because of the temperature, but specially because of the lack of sun. I remember one sunny day in December and not much more in the last two or three months.

Last week the sun came out again and I went for a walk around Viktoria-Luise-Platz. I really like this place, specially on summer. On winter the fountain is turned off and there's not much to do there. But this day, the combination of snow and sun felt refreshing, there was a kind of magic around.

By the way, the area is full of nice café and restaurant places. You can walk here from Wittenberg Platz.

Yorckstraße advise

This week is about drinking so I can't help but recommending two places I love in West Kreuzberg (the so-called Kreuzberg 61), which are always in my way home to neighboring Schöneberg. Both are side by side. The area, which is before Gleisdreick Park and after Mehringdamm is probably one of the less gentrified parts of the "hip" Kreuzberg.

So the plan is to have a beer at "Rat Pack" and then move to "Yorckschlösschen" for dinner and live music.

"Rat Pack"

"Yorckschlösschen"

Heinrich-Heine-Straße: Drinking in a bus

First thing you notice when you go outside Heinrich-Heine-Straße if you come from the West is that you already entered East Berlin. Soviet buildings and factories surrounding Köpenicker Straße recalling older times. (If you can, walk down Michaelkirchstraße until you reach Oranienstraße. You need not to know where the former border of the wall was: you'll notice by just taking a look around).

I like to think of Heinrich-Heine-Straße as the gate to East Berlin. From there, plenty of interesting things arise (if you are into big parties, you must already know about Kater Holzig). But this blog is about "hidden" things and so I want to talk about a bar that was "hidden" to me until for some reason I realized that "it was just there". The bar is called Republik Frank und Frei and it's more than a biergarten: it has a fully functional, double-decker, drinking bus where you can chill out while drinking your favourite thing. Rather small at first sight, but don't be shy: the ambiance is always very nice, and the barman in there too.

A journey into Asian cuisine, in Schöneberg

It is well-known that Berlin has many Asian food places, and that some of them are really good. Today I will show my favorite Asian places around where I live, and I truly recommend visiting each of them if you really like Asian food, even if you don't live close to the neighborhood.

"Chay Village": The "healthy Thai". This is my favorite place. Food which is always prepared with care, the intimate ambiance of a small venue which makes you feel like home. No meat here, only "healthy food". Dishes between 6 and 8 EUR.

"Flying fish sushi": The "intimate sushi place". In Berlin you can eat sushi almost everywhere. However, myself, being a demanding sushi freaky, have only eaten at a couple of "proper" sushi places... This is one of them. The nice and friendly guy in there will prepare you one of the best sushi you've ever eaten. And with just a bunch of wood tables you'll feel like home too.

"Yogi haus": Looks like a "typical Berlin Indian" place, but it is actually a typical Indian place in Berlin. Indian food which really says something. Food gets even better for dinner, specially if you ask for special menus.

Tip: All these places are around "Eisenacher Strasse" U7.

Garage: "Kilos" of second-hand clothes

This is typical Berlin: a unique, hidden place in a street where there's literally nothing. A fresh alternative to flea markets or typical second-hand clothes shops such as Humana, Schöneberg's Garage provides second-hand clothes that can be bought at a fixed price per kilo.

As an example my girlfriend bought a hat, a leather jacket and a vest for less than 20 EUR. Carefully cleaned afterwards, of course .

Tip: These are the coordinates. You can reach this by Nollendorfplatz U-Bahn.