Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - Berlin Travel Guide: What to Eat and Where to Go in Europe’s ‘Poor but Sexy’ City

Episode Date: May 6, 2018

Photographer, potter, and globe maker Chloe Dalrymple fits right in with Berlin’s creative scene. A native Brit, Chloe has lived in Berlin for three years and spends her days guiding visitors around her adopted city as a freelance tour guide, primarily with Insider Tour.    There’s so much to talk about, so I’m breaking this episode up into two parts. Today, you’ll learn more about Chloe and get her insider trips on the best places to eat and hang out in the city. In part 2, we’ll dive more into Berlin’s Nazi and Cold War past, which is a big part of tourism here.    Visit postcardacademy.co for a list of Chloe's great Berlin travel recommendations.     If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and forward this show to a friend. If you’re feeling especially kind, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. This helps people discover the show. 🤗   Instagram, Twitter, Facebook       Thank you to Six Miles High Design for creating the brilliant Postcard Academy logo.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to the Postcard Academy, your weekly travel and culture podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Megatel, talking to you from Berlin, one of my favorite cities in Europe. There is so much to see and do here, from the incredible museums and local art scene to the nightlife, and of course the history. Today I'm speaking with Chloe, a freelance tour guide who works a lot with insider tour, which offers really fantastic walking towards around Berlin. I highly recommend those guys. You can just show up for a four-hour tour. They cover museums. They even go outside of the city.

Third-right Cold War. They cover just about everything. There is so much to talk about today that I'm actually going to break up this episode into two parts. Today you'll learn more about Chloe, who is from the UK, and get her insider tips on the best places to go in Berlin. In part two, we will dive more into the history of the city. Berlin's past, especially its Nazi in Cold War history, must be remembered.

And it's also a big part of tourism here. So we really need to dedicate some more time to that. Now on to part one, my first conversation with Chloe. Welcome, Chloe. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Well, thank you for having me. So you are from the UK, I believe. Where did you grow up?

So I would associate myself really with Bristol, but I was born in North Wales. And I lived there until I was about eight years old. And then with my mom and my three siblings moved over to Bristol. So yeah, I was there until I was about 18, 19 before I moved to London. You worked as a photographer and an artisan globe maker. Tell me about that. Yeah. So I moved to London.

I just turned almost 19. And I started working in photography. So I never, I didn't study or anything like that. I didn't go to university. I just wanted to get out there and start working. And I went to work in Philadelphia. photography studios. First of all, started in studios, then went on to start assisting photographers. And these were kind of, you know, it was freelancing. So it was on and off here and there. And then

I ended up working with a photographer for about six months. That was a full-time assisting job. Then I went back to freelancing. And after that, I met this globe maker in a bar. He was a friend of a friend. And I was telling him, oh, I love working this in photography, but it's not really what I was hoping for, you know, I've been doing this for five years now. And I said, you know, I love the arty side of the photography, but there's so much, it's becoming very, there's a lot of digital work out there and you have to keep updating with Photoshop and things like that. And I just couldn't keep up with it. And I said, I preferred it in a dark room, you know, and all of that. And I said, I want to go back to the kind of artie, my artie roots. And he, and he said, hey, I'm trialing

people to become a globe maker at the moment. Are you interested? And I said, okay, I'll give it a go. and came in a week later and did a trial day and he said, yeah, so if you want, you have to learn in your own time. You come in whenever you want, you use the materials and once you've made a globe and you, and it's sellable, then you've got the job, basically, and that's how I did it.

And it took a long time to learn, actually. But yeah, I was working for that company for almost four years. They're a company in the north of London in Stoke-Newington, a little small company. When I first started with them, there was about three or four of us. There was one painter, two of us are globe makers. There was also Peter who owned the company.

And now that I've left, I think they've expanded quite a lot. What's the name of the company? Bellaby Globes. Okay. Bellaby is the name of Peter. And then his last name is Bellaby. So it's like the Bellaby Globe and Co. Or something like that.

That sounds like a very charming place. And you sound very artistic. I think you make furniture and pottery and things like that as well. Yes, exactly. I do a ceramics course, which I've actually stopped recently because I've been quite busy with work. But every Monday I went to a ceramics class and it was amazing. Just throwing on the wheel and trying to speak German because not many people spoke English there. And it was quite good for me to learn that way as well.

But the furniture making and things like that is something I do as a hobby. just for fun on the side, restoring furniture as well. Before I left for Berlin, I moved back to Bristol basically just for a short while before I came to Berlin and I took part in a course doing upholstery and loved it. So I'm trying to carry on with that out here on the side as well. And so how did you end up in Berlin and how long have you been here? So I've been in Berlin going on about three years now or just under three years. And I had been here before on holiday and stuff, and I loved it here.

You know, there was some really ugly parts to Berlin, right? And I remember looking at my window of where I was staying in the Airbnb, and I was like, oh, wow, this place is interesting. It's so great. It was a November, and it was really rainy. And I said, wow, you know, there's some really ugly parts of the city. And then we discovered some really beautiful parts. And I said, now that I live here, I was like, those ugly parts

to the city are actually part of its charm. That's what I love most about it. It's still very, you can still see how it's really recovering from the war, and also the Cold War period as well. And that's why people call Berlin. It's kind of like poor, but sexy is what they say about Berlin. And that's part of its charm, and that's what drew me to Berlin. I could see that there was a place for everybody here.

What I noticed is that, you know, you get people that come to Berlin and they want to go clubbing all weekend. And you can actually do that. You can go clubbing sometimes from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And when there's a holiday, sometimes they're open on Thursdays and Mondays as well. And also, if you like the countryside, you can go cycling, you can go to the lakes and all of that. You can get involved in history as well. You have, you know, all these free museums to go to, which is really amazing.

And that's what drew me to Berlin. And I wanted to kind of change up my career. Working as a globe maker was really, it was amazing. And I don't regret it one bit, you know. It's apparently at one point there was 12 of us in the world making these globes. and the only thing is is that I felt a little bit like, where do I go from globe making? You know, once you've learned to make some globes,

you make some more globes, and then you make some more. And I said, you know, I want to change up my career again. I want to go and go and explore a little bit. And I decided to choose Berlin because, like I said earlier, you know, you've got a mixture of everything here and I could see myself really fitting in and not getting bored, which is really important, you know, because I like to keep busy all the time.

And that's exactly the life that I was. hoping for is what I found out here. What are you doing for work in Berlin? I have been for the just, well, over two years now working as a tour guide. And they are historical tours. I mainly focus on Third Reich Cold War, so like the 20th century history here in Berlin. And I work now full time doing that, but as a freelancer. Have you always been interested in history? I have. Mainly World War II history. But the Cold War history is, the Cold War period is something that I got really into after living here. I knew a bit about it before I came out here. But actually with that kind of time in history living out here, you, you learn so much about it just from speaking to the people

that remember it, because it wasn't that long ago. You know, the Berlin Wall fell 28 years ago, well, over 28 years ago now, we're going on towards the 29 year mark. You know, and there's still, you go out to a bar here and you speak to people on the table next to you. And they just start telling you these stories of their time in East Berlin and, you know, and their friends who tried to escape and things like that. And that's how you just learn from these really personal little stories. And that's how I've got really into into that part as well. So you mentioned a little bit about what Berlin looked like. What did you say, really about sexy? Poor but sexy. Poor but sexy. That's what people call it. Yeah. So for people who don't know much about Berlin,

where is it geographically and what would the postcard look like? So it's in the northeast of of Germany. It's quite close to Poland, actually. And it's, it's a bit run down. It's still recovering. You can see from, it's constantly, it's, it's still really discovering itself, I would say. It's constantly changing. I've noticed so much change since I've been here in the last few years. And I'm sure that people who have been here for many years would say how much Berlin has changed, you know, in the last 20, 28 years since the fall of the wall. But it's, so it's kind of very rough around the edges. But right in the center, you've got missed. meaning middle. And right in middle in mita, you have all these beautiful grand buildings around.

Okay. But that's that's it when we're talking about kind of the kind of old history of Berlin. The buildings, they're not so, they're not that old, really. There aren't many buildings that are much older than the 1700s, really, that I know of. I mean, there's a few around. You know, you've got St. Nicholas Church from the 1200s. But, you know, it's still discovering itself. and this archaeologist friend of mine, they're still discovering more and more deep underground, you know, of Berlin. They're realizing that there were settlements here in Berlin from the sixth century. But it kind of, I would say, really, excluding Mitter, okay,

I would say that the postcard would look quite diverse. There would be lots of colours, lots of street art. Not many tall buildings. There's not much of a skyline in Berlin. You would probably see the TV tower. And that would probably be about it. And the TV towers in Alexanderplatz. And it's, yeah, and it's really the only thing that you can properly see.

If you're looking from a rooftop bar or something like that, it's one of the only things that you can really see clearly in Berlin. So there isn't much of a skyline. It hasn't really built itself up at all. And there's a lot of construction work going on all around the city. And yeah, I think in the TV tower, is there a restaurant up there? Yes, there is. There's a restaurant that rotates every half an hour.

And there's also a bar down. below if you don't want to go to the restaurant. There's, you can go. It's getting more expensive as time goes on. It's now 14 euros to get up to the top of the TV tower. And there's a lift that takes you up there. And the bar is getting more expensive, but it is worth it for the view.

When I went there three years ago, it's a four euro for a point two glass of wine, which is kind of okay. And now it's nine euro for that same glass of wine. But it is worth it if you want to go just up to the top, if not the restaurant, you can go to the bar bit, walk around. You've got an amazing view of a Berlin. So if you go

to the restaurant or a bar, can you skip the fee to go up to the top then? No, you always, you have to pay the fee of 14. And then if you want, you can buy drinks as extra. But it's usually you would spend, I would say normally people would spend about an hour up there. Okay. 14 euro. I thought you said 40. 14 I can do. That's okay. Oh, one four, one four. Yeah. Let's say I am coming to visit you for a long weekend. Where would you take me? I would probably take you to first of all, Templehof, which is actually very close to where I live. It's an old airport. It was built by the Nazis. It wasn't so heavily used for the Nazis, more for parades and things like that, but it was actually

really heavily used during the Cold War period. But now it's this disused airport that's used as a public park. And when it's sunny, people have barbecues up there. People cycle around. They fly kites and things like that. You can go along the runways as well, which is really amazing. and on the east side of Templehof, you've got all these really beautiful little allotments as well that you can go around and you just have to, you can wander on through these allotments and have a beer or something,

just always make sure that you clean up the mess afterwards. But yeah, so I would say Templehof is a really good place. I took my sisters there when they came, and they absolutely loved it. And another place would be, I mean, it's a little touristy, but it's still where the locals would hang out, would be Mauer Park. Mauer means walls.

So it's where the wall used to run through. And Mawa Park has one side of the park would be a flea market. It has lots of new stuff, but lots of old stuff as well. You can get some really good deals there. And on the other side of the park, you've got all these musicians playing really amazing musicians, you know, and lots of people busking and things like that in the afternoons every, I think it's every second week. I could be wrong, it might be every week. I think it's every second week from 3 p.m.

They have karaoke as well. And not in the winter, but in the summer it's a great thing. to do. Karaoke doesn't sound so appealing to many people. Karaoke in the park? Yeah, but it's so many people, yeah, I know. A lot of people don't like the idea of it. And I'm like, yeah, but you kind of have to just go and see what it's like. I would say probably about 1,000 people could be there watching.

And they have people walking around, giving beers and things like that, selling beers for like two euros and everyone's just listening to all these people singing away. And all these, some people get really drunk and they go up there on stage and start saying, it's really entertaining. It's great. Okay. What are some hidden gems you've discovered since living in Berlin? Prinzengarten is near Moritzplatz.

It's really beautiful. It's like this little, it's like a mini little allotment right in the middle of the city. And you wouldn't expect it to be there. And you go on through this little gate and there's all these trees and everything. And they sell like food and they've got a little bar there. It's best really from spring onwards and then through the summer. But yeah, you can sit there and it's really beautiful. They've got all these, like a beehive as well.

So there's all these bees floating around in the corner, which is really cute and butterflies and plants and things like that. And that's really nice to go when it's sunny just to go and explore around there. So that's, yeah, prinzing garden. Yeah, I walked through there the other day and it looks like they've got cinema nights and screen printing and all sorts of cool little activities. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also in the summer, in Marianas,

And Plyn Mnumplatz has outdoor cinemas as well. That one in Kreuzberg has shows films in English. But yeah, you can get your little like in a beach chair and get a beer and some popcorn and things like that and sit outside. That's really nice. Another place actually is it's quite close to Templehof, but you've got Victoria Park. And Victoria Park is like a really big hill. I actually go running there. And you go all the up to the top.

It's really steep. You get to the top and you've got an amazing view over Berlin. In the summer, though, when the trees, you know, fully blossomed as well, you've got the flowers and the leaves in the way you can't actually see the Berlin so well. But you can still get a good enough view. And then you've got a waterfall coming through the park which leads into the road and the waterfall kind of turns into the road. It's really cool.

That's a really nice place to go. Yeah, yeah, it's really amazing. You have to see it from the waterfall at the top and you look down and this big main road suddenly appears at the bottom of the waterfall. and it kind of looks like they're together. I think I actually think that's how they designed it, but I'm unsure if that was on purpose. But yeah, it's cool.

So what are some other must-sees if this is our very first time in Berlin? I would say a lot of people want to go to, say, like Checkpoint Charlie, a border crossing during the Cold War period, and it's right in Mitter. It's really touristy there, though, and everything there is actually fake. So I would say, go there if you really want to go,

go there really, really fast, see everything really quick, and then get out of there. And you probably want to go, I would say the memorial to the murder juice and tear garden, all around there. You can see all the memorials for the Holocaust. Did I hear that there was a controversy around that memorial? So there was a bit of problem, okay, because it was built over the new right chance of our gardens, and there we had some investors that wanted to build property there and things like that. But also, there's another issue with the memorial where they get sprayed of this anti-cafete protective spray. And which is great because if any of graffities over those kind of these, it's 2,711 stones kind of slabs.

And if any of graffiti is over it, we can wipe it off straight away. The problem with this is that the company that provides a service still today is called Degusa. And it's the same company that provided the gas cyclone B. Oh my God. For the camps. Yeah. So I think that probably is, yeah, one of the things, I think it led to a lot of complications. But it turns out that actually they gave back the money they charged in the first year,

and they've offered to do it for free every year. Another thing that Peter Eisenman, who designed the memorial actually said, he said he knew all along who they were, but it's actually really difficult in Germany to find a company that wasn't involved with the Nazis back then. So, yeah, when you look at it from that point of view, you start to really understand. You can pick it apart and say, actually, yes, they probably many companies were involved in one way or another. So there's that.

I mean, that is absolutely a must, I would say. But also, I think it's also really important to go to the other memorials as well. They're much smaller, but you've got the Roman Zinti Memorial near Tiergarten. You've got the one for the political prisoners of the Holocaust as well, the politicians. You've got the that's right next to the right stack, which is Parliament today. And then you've got the one for the homosexuals, the ones with disabilities, part of the T4 program, right next to the Philharmani. These are all near Tiergarten.

And the reason that I recommend to go to these ones is because it's really important to remember that, of course, six million Jews are murdered out of the 11 million during the Holocaust, but it's also really important to remember the five million other victims of the Holocaust and to spend time going to their memorials as well. And then while you were there in that area,

the Reichstag is a really good thing to go and check out. And you can book to go inside the Reichstag. You can actually do it on the road opposite. So if you're looking at the front of the right stack, okay, or today it's called the Bundestag, okay, it's official word, name for it, you would be looking at the right stack to the right of you. You would actually find a little shop where you can queue to try and get yourself a time slot, but you can also do it online. It's free. You need some form of ID, but you usually have to do it in advance. What will we like see or hear instead?

You'll go, so you can get tours around Parliament. You can go, but if you don't, they're often booked up though and it depends if it's in use at the time then they won't allow tours but you can go mainly the best thing to do is just to go to the dome of the ritesdag and you can walk to the top of the dome and if you get an audio guide that's the best thing to do because it will tell you about all the buildings around that's really amazing and then you get to the top you've got an amazing view over Berlin and the idea is is that with the ritesstag that went up in in flames in 1933 it was actually left in ruins until the late 90s and it was redesigned with this glass dome and that was designed by an English architect

called Norman Foster. And it's to show transparency so that you go to the top and you would see down into Parliament, there's a window that shows you into Parliament from above. And sometimes Angela Merkel could be down there doing his speeches. And it's to show transparency, to show that Parliament today has no secrets

like what they had during Nazi Germany. So it's a really good thing to do, but you do need to be organised with this one and just book a little bit far in advance, even try a week before. But sometimes you get lucky and if you keep checking the time slots, the cancellations come up and you can get one for the next day, for lucky.

That sounds good. Yes, that's one really good thing to do, the right stag, but you just have to be organized with this one, especially if you're going in more than two people. And yeah, and I would say East Side Gallery, it kind of gives you a little bit of a break from the history side of the Cold War period because you can go to the Berlin War Memorial,

which is, I would also say as a must, because you can see the two walls. You can see everything in between. You see where the tunnels used to run and things and where people managed to escape as well. That's free. And there's also a museum indoors, which is free as well. And you can see a preserved part of the death strip,

which is the strip of land, no man's land, in between the two walls. And that gives you a lot of the history side. But I think it's really nice to go to Eastside Gallery and see a mile long piece of the wall that's still left. And that's in Friedersheim. and you can see from the east side all this street art

from the 90s all along. So you can just walk along and see it's like basically that's what's called East Side Gallery. It's free. It's just a part of the wall. You walk along and you see all the street art from some of it famous artists. Some artists came together when the wall fell and they wanted to encourage people

from the east to come and paint at the wall to express how they felt about the wall through art. And actually my ceramics teacher was one of the artists that started East Side Gallery. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's his original piece from the 1990s, from the early 90s. And some of it's still there.

They just have to come and repaint it and touch it up because people graffiti over the artwork. But that's an absolute must. I would say East Side Gallery, 100% right-stack, if you can. Memorial, all the memorials, really, for the Holocaust. So how do you like to spend a leisurely afternoon on a day off? What's your favorite neighborhoods to wander around in? Kreutzberg and Neukon I would normally if I was meeting friends or something like that I would go along the canal and you've got Kopasa dam they have market a market there a Turkish market every Tuesday and Friday which is really nice to go and visit it's on until about five or six and if you go they start giving good deals and things like that towards the end of the day but they've also got nice kind of art stalls there as well and they sell jewelry and things like that and that's nice just to go and grab some Turkish food And all along that canal is just really nice to sit by in the cafe.

You can even just go and sit by the grass part by Coppasa Dam. And if you go a couple of bridges down, you've got at Marabruca where there's all these musicians playing. You've got a pizza place next to it. You know, and it gets the sun all the way until, well, the last point. So that's normally where I would hang out. But then you've also got Veza Strasse, really beautiful. It's a Neukon. And it's all these cobbled little streets, which is,

very difficult to cycle along, I'll admit, but really nice to go and stroll along. And I would definitely recommend that sort of area because a lot of people would go straight to Mitre. They would go to Bruns-Lauerberg. They'd go to quite touristy areas. But if you want to kind of see what it's like for the people that kind of live here, I always suggest Noikon. Along Las Zastrasse, you have so many bars.

You can't go wrong. You can go down any of the side streets and you'll be able to find some cute little bars, some of them, like little dens that you walk in and things like that. What are your favorite ones? I would say there's one called Nathania and Heinrich, and that is definitely my favorite, because it feels like you're walking to a bar from the 1950s, and it's got this big bar, and it's got really nice wine,

and they do cocktails there as well. And they've got a smoking area and a non-smoking area, which is actually very difficult to find in Berlin. I don't know if a lot of people smoke here. I don't know if you might have noticed. So some people don't really like that side. So it's quite nice before 10 p.m. to go to a place that is smoke-free, but they have a smoking room as well.

But all along Vezer Strasser, the only thing is, many of them open after six, five or six, whereas Nathaniel and Heinrich is open from three most days. And on the weekends, I think even earlier, which is difficult to find. So you can have some day drinking and then. Exactly. I quite like that. If I finish a tour early, I'm like, oh, I fancy going and having a nice fresh beer. And there's nowhere to go around there.

So I'm like, let's get a Nathaniel and Heinrich. And when it's sunny, they open up the windows as well. And they've got these big, wide windows. So you can kind of sit like half in and out on the street, which is really nice as well. I mean, that's my favorite place. Where do you go when you're in the mood for some culture? So it could be theater, like music, whatever you're into. Open mic nights, really.

There's a lot of those, especially around Neukon and Kreutzberg, you'll find a lot of open mic nights. But I tend to, I like to go to concerts, which are various different places, you know, and these will be of musicians that I've heard before, or a friend is taking me there or something like that. One of my favorite places to go is quite close to Mitter. It's in the old Jewish quarter, very close to Museum Island and the new synagogue. And it's a place called Zosh. And you go every Wednesday evening, but it's not the weekend. That's the only thing.

But if you're in Berlin on the Wednesdays, it's a really good thing to do. Because you go down into the basement, and from 8.8.30, they have free jazz. And it's New Orleans jazz. And it's a band who have been, I think they've been playing for the last 17 years down there. and they were from East Germany. And they originally went down there because they wanted to practice, they wanted to do rehearsals down there where it was quiet. And people who heard them started to come and watch them.

And it became so popular. So many people wanted to come and watch them that they decided to actually make it an event. So it's every Wednesday up until about 11 p.m. And that's really amazing. That's one of my most favorite things to do. Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, I definitely recommend it.

And it's kind of like it's an old, I've heard from a friend it's in. It's an old converted kind of bunker, and it's like got these kind of archways and things like that, which is, that's really cool. What are some foods that we need to try when we're in Berlin? Oh, well, this is always a funny one, because it's, it's, uh, none of it is really that typical,

like, it's not very typical German food. CurryVurst is typical for Berlin. And, uh, curry versed is, you kind of love it or you hate it. It's one of these things that some people think it's absolutely disgusting. and some people absolutely love it. And also it depends where you go as well. It's like sausage that's chopped up in tomato sauce curry powder. It sounds gross, doesn't it?

I'm on too disgusting, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think some people would say it's pretty disgusting. Others love it. My friend who visited, he was obsessed. She was like, let's get another curry verse. But the only place that I really liked it actually was curry 36, and they're dotted all around. Another food to try, I would say, is not German at all, but it's very, it's very Berliner to get a kebab.

You get kebabs everywhere here. And Berlin's really famous for its kebabs. And you can get shawama and things like that and falafel. I had the best falafel the other day, yeah. Yeah? Some really good stuff. Where did you go? Do you remember?

I'm staying in the West End. And I can't even remember, but it was quite tasty. I was happy. There's one near Coppasa tour, which is the station. and it's called Marouche and they do really nice. They put it in like a pitter and you can get like Schwama and Halumi or if you're a vegetarian, falafel halumi is always a really good mix and they do it really amazingly and it's quite cheap as well. It's like three three or over 350. Most of them are around that sort of price. And I know that it's white asparagus season. I've had some white asparagus

soup which is my favorite and something that I've only seen in Germany really. I've never tried that. Oh my gosh, you have to. It's so good. Yeah. No, I will. White asparagus. Great. Are there any food markets that you would recommend, we check out? So the Turkish market. I would also say, Market Halle Noin is in, again, Kortzburg, and it's quite close to Gourlitzer Park or Koppas-a-Tor station. And on Thursday evenings, they've got an amazing food market and yeah all these different types of food it's not exactly on the cheap side i would say it's nice and affordable and can be a little bit fancy sometimes but also they've got little wine stores there and all these benches so you can go and grab some food and they've got a wine store that has uh you can

buy a liter of wine i think for 15 euros dangerous what about haka sure market should we go there oh you mean the actual market yeah or yeah um yeah it's it's quite small it's on every Thursday and Saturday. Oh, is that right? Okay. Yeah, it's quite nice just to kind of stop by, actually. My dad brought a nice present for family members when he came here, and so they do have some really cute little stalls, but there isn't, there's not as much to see there, but I would say it's worth going there because you can also go to around Haku Shmark Station. You've got the Otto Vite Museum, and that's worth checking out, and it's open every day as well, because that's important to remember about museums, is that they're open every day.

apart from Monday, and there are just a few, so there are a few that are open on Monday as well, like the topography of terror, that's a must. All information from 33 to 45 about the SS and the Gestapo during Nazi Germany. The DDR Museum is also open on Monday. The Pergamon, which is the most famous in Berlin, and then you've also got the new museum next to it,

and the Otto Wept Museum will be open on Mondays. But if you were to go to the Otto Weat Museum, you would actually see along that kind of back alleyway. It's called Hauschfelsenberg. There's all this street art and flags and bunting and things like that. And it's really, really nice just to wander around there. And you've got a bar there called Cafe Cinema, which you can grab a beer or a coffee or cake or something and sit outside in the alleyway. And if you were to go, if you were to come out from Hauschfazenberg and turn right and then turn right again, you go down another alleyway.

And you've got all these kind of little side streets and things like that with little shops and a little coffee place as well. It's just really beautiful just to wander around. And then you can go and visit the new synagogue. So shopping, you mentioned your dad, got some souvenirs or some, like, gifts. What's a typical product to bring back from Berlin? And do you have any favorite shopping areas? It's quite difficult in Berlin because you don't really have, like, one center where you can go shopping. Because you might, with Berlin, you might notice that it has all these different centers around.

Like it's kind of like they all have each area. There's so many cute boutiques everywhere. Yeah, exactly. So my favorite, it's quite expensive area, but you do have some really cute shops down Bergman Strasser and restaurants as well also to go out. Like that area is really sweet. And it's, yeah, and it's got all these nice shops and restaurants

you can stumble across. But Hakushamart has some really beautiful shops as well. And if you're not really looking for, you know, these sort of big shopping malls or anything like that, then I would say those are the kind of the best places to go. In Friedrich High, you have some shops around there. But if you're looking for like a souvenir to take back home, there is one thing that people love here in Berlin

is the Ample Man or the Ample Mansion. So it's a little traffic light man. And it's the traffic light man who has the hat on. The little green man. Yeah, the little green man who's got a hat on. There's an ample frowl down in the same. south of Germany. There's one with an umbrella as well. And the Amplefrau has pig tails. And you can go and buy like a little t-shirt or a key ring or something of that. And to be honest, I would say that is the

most Berlin thing that you could bring back. But he was designed in 1961 by a traffic light psychologist. And he was only for East Germany. So that's what's really special about him. And they'd actually try to get rid of him as well. And people protested. They took to the streets. And one million people signed a petition to bring him back because they started replacing him with a normal man. So I think it's quite sweet to bring him back to your home. Yeah, I've definitely seen him around on the lights. And yeah, I heard about the protests about, yeah, wanting to keep him. And I also know that here they're quite serious about only crossing the streets when

the apple man is green. You can be fined if you cross on a red man. So 60 euro fine for jaywalking. I've never been fined for that. The only thing is I've never heard of anyone being fined for crossing on a red man, but I know that you can be. It's not that they will, but if they decide they don't like you and they're going to find you, they're going to do it and you can't get out of it.

You'll get some Netflix too. Yeah, and you will get shouted at as well. Yeah, I've certainly been shouted at. So I would say maybe just don't cross on a red man. Just be German while you're in Berlin. all across Germany really. What would you say the best thing is about living in Berlin? The freedom.

The freedom and the lakes for me and the history, that you can have such a mixture of all different things within one day. You know, I love cycling through the city and seeing these buildings around and being like, wow, so much has happened in that one building. And then you cycle on a bit further and then you can go out to the lakes surrounding Berlin, and go for a swim and things like that.

And the freedom as well, you know, there's not the pressure here like I found back in the UK. You know, this whole thing of buy a house, get a good job, you know, and work full time all the time. You know, and you don't have that pressure here. You know, people, it's a bit more, it's affordable, it's more relaxed. It's not as busy on the streets and things like that. And you just feel a lot more free and you've got more time to yourself. And that's what I really love about Berlin. Yeah.

They take more time to just, you know, have breakfast, have lunch, not just work like to death. Work today. Yeah. I mean, I've heard of some people doing that in Berlin and I'm like, well, I mean, I'm guilty of it. I did it when I first moved here. I worked 50-hour weeks and exhausted myself and I did not have a good time. I was not enjoying myself. And then I quit that job.

And I was trying to become a tour guide at the time. And it was really difficult for me working 50-hour weeks and trying to, you know, to get involved with a tour. and start actually leading my own tours while working 50 out of weeks. So it was really challenging. And you have the freedom here to work as a tour guide, to not have to work six, seven days a week, just to pay the rent, which is what I found living in London.

And it just gives you that a lot more freedom. You know, here in Berlin, I have afternoons off sometimes. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to do some painting. You know, I'm going to make myself something random. I made myself a scrabble board the other day to take on holiday with it, to Italy with me. And who has time for that? People say, you've got too much time on your hands.

I'm like, I have the perfect amount of time for myself. People are like, well, you're so random, but yeah. I love it. So was it easy for you to meet people? How did you meet people in Berlin when you moved here? When I moved here, it was really easy for me to meet people. I actually met most of my people through work, some people through my German class. But it's really easy to meet people. The only thing with meeting people in Berlin is you can make so many friends here. It's quite a transient place. So a lot of people do move on within a year or something. So I find myself constantly making new friends, new groups of friends,

and then eventually a few of those people will go and things like that. But now my friends today are friends of friends that I met a few years ago, and I've continued hanging out with them. But it is quite easy. It's much easier than London to make friends. People are a lot more welcoming. And I think a lot of people are in the same boat as well. Even Germans, you know, I've met Berliners here and they're really welcoming.

The only difficulty is if you meet the German people out here, you have to speak German, really, if you're going to be in large groups. Because not everyone will speak English. And I think that's a real, that holds you back if you're not fluent. But, yeah, other people from all over the world who have come to live here, I mean, everyone's in the same boat. everyone's really friendly and welcoming and you can hang out in the parks here but in has so many parks in the summer and everyone joins in with each other it's really nice and that's how i've made most of my friends so very good before i let you go can we do a quick lightning round of your favorite places in the summer i love going to clunk of crannich it's a rooftop bar and it costs three euros

after four um but it's really really nice it's always really busy and you probably will find it difficult to get a table, but it's really beautiful just to, with the sunset as well, you can actually see how it gets really dark on one side and then you've got the sun setting on the other. It's really beautiful and it's a really nice atmosphere. And on Sundays, they have music from four often. They have, yeah, music sessions, which is really nice as well. Can you pronounce that one more time? Clunker crannich. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I'm probably not pronouncing it in the best German accent. That's better than nice. I don't know it. But that's how it would sound to people if you speak English, Clunk of Kranich. And my favorite restaurant would be Umami. You know the Japanese word? Yeah.

Yeah, it's like the taste that nobody else seems to have or know about. But umami, there's two of them. There's one in Prenz-Lauberg, and there's one also on Bergman Strasser, the place, the little street with all the nice little cute shops and the restaurants as well. and they do amazing food. It's Asian food, but the decoration inside is really beautiful. The food is really good. Every time I take anyone there, usually on the first or second night, they always want to go back before they leave. That's how good it is. Do you have a favorite coffee shop? I don't actually, but I really do like a Hallish's house to go and have a coffee. I wouldn't, I mean, my favorite, I like many. It depends on the area that I'm in, really, but that one is one that I would say,

a little bit of time to go and visit because it's just really pretty. It's like really, it's got really nice lighting and things like that. And you can go and read a book or on your laptop or something or you can go with friends and they do nice cake. So that's Hallish's house. How about museum? Do you have a favorite museum? My favorite museum would be the topography of terror. And the reason that I love it so much is, I mean, you know, of course the information, it's, we're talking about Nazi Germany here. So there's nothing enjoyable about it. But it's so education. They have downstairs a library and they have researchers downstairs and they put these kind of stickers over

the writing in the museum and it's because they're updating information. They're currently updating. They found out new information and I find that absolutely incredible that they are still researching, still finding new information from 80 years ago, you know, but it's free and it's open every day and it's one of the most educational ones you can go to. I would highly recommend that one. Another one, the Jewish Museum is really good as well. Eight euros to go inside.

But the Jewish Museum, I would say, is worth people's time. Yeah. If you were to do a day trip from Berlin, what would you recommend? A day trip from Berlin. There is a few places I would probably go to. Potsdam, it's about an hour from Berlin. And there are also tours that go there as well. And the company insider that I work for do tours down to Potsdam.

And you've got the palace from Friedrich. The second also known as Frederick the Great, and he was a very powerful military leader, and he came into power from 1740 for 46 years. And you can go to his palace down and Potsdam and wander around the gardens. And you've got the Dutch town as well, all these beautiful little houses. And it's just the architecture down there is absolutely amazing. And you'll probably find kind of there, these old grand buildings that you wouldn't necessarily find all around Berlin. But it's just nice to go there just to kind of take a break from Berlin.

for the morning or the afternoon. Another place that's good to go outside of Berlin would be Toysburg, which means Devil's Hill. And it's a hill that's made out of all the old rubble from World War II. And on top of this hill is a spy station. And it's an old American spy station where you have these white balls.

I'm not entirely sure what they were used for, but you can go inside and it's kind of been taken over by street artists. And you've got all this amazing street art, graffiti art all around. And it used to be, free, but now they are charging seven euros. It could have gone up since I last been to eight euros, but they're not exactly official, but they've randomly just set up at the entrance and they're charging people to go

in. Yeah, and that's, you can get there by bike or you can cycle. And I would, and if you were going to go to Toifelsberg, then I would recommend going to Toysburg, which is a really nice lake to go to nearby and you can go swimming if it's warm. Sometimes it can be quite busy, but you can actually, if you, if you like cycling, you can just go cycle to Toifersburg or cycle through Gunnival, which is a really nice forest area on the way down towards Potsdam. And if you cycled through all of that forest,

you're going to find all of these lakes that are really nice to swim in with kind of beaches or stone or something like that. Are there any culture tips we should know about? Yeah, I would say, I mean, it depends on where you're coming from. For me, coming from the UK, not really so much. that I would say tipping in restaurants and bars and things like that if you think the service was good you tip

if you didn't if you thought they were rude you don't tip you would normally round it up so if you you do they get a lot of you would get table service here in a lot of the bars so the best thing to do is if they came over to you and said your your drinks were 850 and you want to tip them you think well what's 10% of that and then you just kind of round it up to the nearest so that if it's like 870 you'd say okay I'll just tip 10 and you say we'll call it 10

that's how they do it they don't go exactly 10% give me the change you just round it up to the nearest and make it fair and the same and that's the same of restaurants as well and and I would say on Sundays you want to try and be as respectful in the place that you are staying in they do not allow you to use any drills lawn mowers or anything like that I discovered this. Actually quite recently, I was like, oh, yeah, Sunday's a day of rest, and they really mean it's a day of rest. So if you wouldn't want to be playing loud music or anything like that. But yeah, I can't think of so much else, really. Yeah. Oh, and I guess I'll mention that on Sunday, most things are closed. So if you're on vacation, don't plan to do your shopping

on Sunday because most of the shops are closed. Thanks for the reminder. That's exactly it. And on Sundays, the shops will all be shut. But then when they're open on the Monday is that's when the museums are shut. So that's something, yeah, thanks to remind me about that because, yeah, it swaps around. And today, May the first, it's May, Labor Day, there's going to be many people out partying as well. It's always a really good time to come to Berlin, but May is perfect temperature. Probably lots of people are going to be a bit hungover tomorrow for their work, because no one gets May the second off, which is really funny. So everyone goes out partying today instead. I think it's a really good time, yeah, to come to Berlin and experience today. I've spoken to

a lot of people who didn't know about this and they've actually booked flights out this morning and I'm like, oh no, you just missed it. It's so fun. So what would you say the best time of year is to visit Berlin? Other than May, I would say June, July, when it starts to get really warm and you can properly go out swimming to the lakes, but it does get a little bit too hot at some points for some people, especially if you're not used to it. But I would say other than the summer, the spring and summer, December, because you've got all the Christmas markets. And especially if you go down to Potsdam, they've got a really beautiful Christmas market there, but you've got Christmas markets and gendarmine marked right in the center of Berlin.

You have them dotted all around, the one by the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial as well, which is a very famous one. You've got one by Charlottemberg Palace. So December, I would say, and that's, it is probably the busiest time, especially for doing tours. And if you come in November, you're kind of getting a lot of the rain in October, November. but December it starts to get really cold but really crisp, clear, dry, which is the perfect combination, I say. Sounds beautiful. Well, thank you for being so generous with your time, Chloe, and for sharing such great

information. If we want to do a tour with you when we're in Berlin, where can we find out more information? You would be able to go to insider tour website and insider tours they do all these different tours, really amazing. and the ones that I will be doing famous walks, Saxon-Halson, and I do various times, various days. It just depends as I'm a freelancer. Thank you again, Chloe.

This has been really great. I really appreciate your time. Well, thank you. And it's been really nice talking to you. I hope you enjoyed this taste of Berlin. Visit postcardacademy.com for links to places we discussed. And make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can catch part two on the history of Berlin.

Right now I am headed out to a lot of, enjoy my last day in the city. Literally this morning, I wasn't sure what country I was going to go to next. I just booked Krakow, Poland, something that's been on my list forever. So tomorrow I can enjoy a seven-hour bus ride. I'll let you guys know how that goes. That is all for now. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet. sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.