The breakfast market: every breakkie lovers daydream!

Hi guys!

What an eventful weekend I had! 

On Friday we had a little office party at work and later that night Ben and I got some friends over. Saturday started with a lovely brunch, where else than at Zuckerfree. Afterwards I headed to the opening party of e3 -gym that has a new interesting concept of concentrating on holistic health; mind, body and energy! If you're thinking of joining a gym in Berlin, I recommend you to check them out! They had interesting presentations and the most delicious raw food. In the evening we celebrated Fanny's birthday and we had so much fun!

Sunday's highlight was the breakfast market at Markthalle Neun in Kreuzberg. The idea is that people can buy their breakfast there from different street-food stalls. They have everything from green juices to Korean porridge to all-time breakfast classics, like pancakes and eggs benedict. You gotta love whoever came up with this idea. I was truly in a very happy mindset while hunting down the most delicious-looking options.

Ben had a toast with buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes and I had nachos with guacamole. And green juice. And samosa chaat (an Indian street food treat). And a cake. Oh well.

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Summer-to-dos in Berlin

Hi guys!

I had lovely guests visiting from Finland and we had lots of summer fun! If you're planning to visit Berlin during summer, here's some of the things you can do...

1. Go to a Biergarten. 

We went to Prater in Prenzlauer Berg which is one of the biggest in the city, but there are plenty to choose from!

2. Go to a lake.

 The biggest ones are Wannsee and Müggelsee. They're a bit outside of the city but there are smaller ones near the city center. We went to Weissensee.

3. Go sightseeing by bike. 

Berlin has great biking roads. Renting a bike for a day normally costs 10 €. You can find bike rentals all around the city.

 4. Go to an open air party.

There's lots of these in summer. Check out the facebook group  "Open airs in Berlin". There's an open air at Badeschiff every weekend. We went to Bite Club, a street food party in Mitte.

5. Eat brunch + veggie food

There's no better way to start your day than by eating at one of Berlin's brunch places! We ate a delicious vegan brunch at Veganz. Here are more vegan & vegetarian restaurants listed.

6. Go to an open air flea market

One of the most popular ones is of course the flea market on Sundays at Mauer Park. Here a few more.

7. Check out the events.

This weekend there was Karneval der Kulturen. We went to see the parade and enjoyed the sunny weather. There's a lot happening here during the summer so make sure to google "events in Berlin" when you're visiting ;)

8. Go rollerblading/skating/walking/biking in Tempelhof

Tempelhof is an old airport now open for everybody to have a picnic or BBQ. The runways are perfect for rollerblading or skating!

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Berlin tips for visitors

Hey guys!

I thought these tips might be useful for some of you if your're planning to visit Berlin. I originally wrote these tips (except the bars & clubs -part) for my sister and her family, so now I just translated it into English. If you have ANY questions about Berlin, I'm more than happy to help! 

My favourite Restaurants (and many others' favourites too, so make a reservation :) )

• White trash: "Berlin’s best steaks plus German-Asian-Mexican-French-Swiss-Army Fusion, with guitar". A BIT like Hard Rock Café… See the link
• Yumcha heroes: so good dumplings, SO good. See the link
• Bird: The best hamburgers in Berlin for sure. They also use very good, fresh ingredients. For many this is a MUST when visiting Berlin See the link
• Schwarzwaldstuben: German food. Especially food from Bayer. Take maul tachen mit kartoffel salat (my favourite!) See the link
• For lunch grab Berlin’s traditional dish, curry wurst or döner. the best Döner place is Mustafa’s Gemüse Kebab, but be prepared to line up for half an hour or so. It’s totally worth it though, I’ve done it three times, no regrets J

A lot of restaurants where to choose from in Kastanienallee and Torstrasse

Other things to do (than to eat…)

• Berlin Zoo in Tiergarten (My sister said there was sharks too, unlike in Sea Life :p). There’s also another zoo called Tierpark.
• The lakes! (see my previous post for these…)
• Shopping: in Kürfurstendamm, or "Ku'ddamm" Also a huge department store KaDeWe is there. See the link
• Take a river cruise in Spree, you can catch one almost anywhere in the city (next to the river Spree of course). At least in Friedrichstrasse there are many…
• Museuminseln: An island with museums, the buildings itself are very pretty. At least Pergamon museum is good, I heard. See the link
• Potzdamer platz/Tiergarten: in this area there are all the most important sightseeing stuff, like the Holokaust memorial, Brandenburger tor, Reichstag and so on. Also Museum Inseln and Checkpoint Charlie are in a walking distance. Here’s more about the landmarks in berlin See the link
• Alexanderplatz is the center of the city, I suppose ;). Also the hallmark of Berlin is located there, the TV tower. Btw, don’t eat around this area, it’s expensive and the food is not that good…
• East side Gallery. The longest remaining piece of Berlin’s wall. Decorated with graffiti by various artists J
• The flea market in Mauerpark on Sundays, definitely worth to experience!
• Berlin’s street and graffiti culture: take Alternative berlin city tour. I really recommend this tour, I’ve done it twice! Takes around 3 hours, it’s free, but you might wanna give some tip. Starts from Alexanderplatz every day at 11:00, 13:00 and 15:00. See the link
• Potsdam (outside the city, Unesco world heritage) See the link

For something special (both are good for non-German speakers):

• Blueman group: errm, blue men play drums and make a mess with blue paint ;D See the link
• Show me: Dancing, acrobatics… See the link

Clubbing & Bars (seriously, there's so many that I'll just mention few...):

Be prepared to line up…

• Berghain (the most popular, almost legendary I’d say, not an easy task to get in)
• Katerholtzig

Bars & clubs in general you find in:

Torstrasse

Friedrichchain….

More bars & clubs here...

There you go! As I said, I'm happy to help if you want to know more :)

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My favorite outdoor activities in Berlin!

Hi guys!

For the sake of Sunday I'll tell you some of my favorite ways to spend my weekends in Berlin. In Finland my weekends normally involved going out, but I think I've calmed down a bit here ;). Mostly because it requires way too much commitment to go out. Here it's quite hard to get in to the most popular night clubs, like Berghain or Katerholtzig. To Katerholtzig I've managed to get in once, the other time I just went to see the length of the line with my dear friend Heini but we gave up and went for a falafel instead ;). Before that we were standing in Berghain's line for one hour or so, until Sven with a smooth nod gestured; "not tonight, girls". I guess we didn't look lesbian enough. But at least we saw the most iconic bouncer ever, Sven -->

...What a friendly looking guy he is... a real teddy bear that u just wanna squeeze.

I used to go quite often to Würzburg during the weekends to visit Ben and I've also visited other cities in Germany and nearby, like Prague (Czech Republic), Frankfurt, Nürnberg, Hamburg, Munich, Koblenz, Lübeck, Poznan (Poland)... However, this summer and since Ben moved here in August I've been concentrating more exploring Berlin itself ;).

One thing I like to do during the weekend is to be outdoors discovering the parks, gardens or lakes in Berlin. And there's plenty! So here are some tips, do them while you can :D!

Here are my tips what to do outdoors:

1. Gärten der Welt (World's gardens)

I went here some weeks ago with Ben and loved it! There are typical gardens from all over the world, like Bali, Korea, Japan... It's a great place to chill out when the weather is nice. The entrance was few euros..

Here are some pics found from Ben's Blackberry:

Dunno what this garden was :D

Korean garden

Balinese  garden

Learn more here

2. Botanischer Garten Berlin (Botanical garden)

This garden you can visit even though the weather wasn't perfect since they have a huge greenhouse with the weirdest plants ever (like the ones that "eat" meat :p). Here I really felt like I was far away from the city cause the outside area is like a forest... felt like back home :p. Again the entrance was just few euros.

Learn more here

3. Lakes

There are a lot of lakes in Berlin. The most popular ones are Wannsee and Müggelsee where they have also nice beaches. I would just pick a lake and go kayaking or paddling. It's also nice to go there by bike. I also did a sailing course with Lieke in Zeuthener see (See the map), here's the proof:

This lake was quite far away from the city but really nice, calm and CLEAN. Lot of activities to do; sailing, wind surfing, stand paddeling....

Wannsee (see the map) and Müggelsee (see the map) are close enough to bike yet far enough to feel like you've done a bit of exercising there.

Biking trip to Müggelsee

I'd also recommend Plötzensee (see the map). Its quite small but it's near the city and has a beach (also a nude one as usual) and you can rent paddling boats from there.

In case you're a city girl (or a boy, lets not be discriminating here) and you're ok with having no personal space, lying between random people, go to Badeschiff (see the map):

My hot summer day visit to Badeschiff...

4. Parks

Berlin is also known for its many parks. Tiergarten is big enough for you to get lost there. As you might know, Berlin wall was actually two walls, the space between was called the death strip. When the wall went down in 1989 they made parks in many of those places where the death strip was. Mauerpark was also once a death strip. Nowadays there's a popular flee market every Sunday and a lot of other things going on, like karaoke, basket ball, some artists playing music and people making graffiti on the wall... A nice place to do people-watching!

Chilling at Mauerpark

Mauerpark

Schiller Park (see the map) in Wedding, also worth to visit! A lot of rabbits there...

5. The other stuff...uncategorized ;)

* Go to alternative berlin city tour, 3 hours of walking and learning about Berlin's steet culture, graffiti and history :). I've  done it twice, I really recommend everyone to do it! It's free (but of course you wanna give a tip).  See their website here

Do the tour and you'll learn more about this tree house made by a Turkish guy on no man's land

They'll also teach you about Berlin's street art 

*Go to see FC Hertha. They are so bad you'll feel sorry for them.

Watching Hertha game with Ben

* Not-so-active things to do; Go to a biergarten, or to an open air! The pics that I had from these activities were not presentable enough for this blog...

So there you go! This is not of course all I do during the weekends, but enough for one post :D. 

Until next time (club) mates!

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