Herta Heuwer is attributed with the invention of Currywurst when she obtained some ketchup, Worcestshire and curry powder from British soldiers just after WWII… it’s a staple on menus all over Berlin, so I found a recipe in German cookbook and translated it. Yale and I might have to try this out when I get home:
A spicy Currywurst Sauce that can be used for all types of dishes
2 large red or yellow onions chopped very finely
2 × 400 gm can of tomatoes with juice
250 ml ketchup
1 tablespoon mustard
2 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon paprika powder
2 tablespoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon oil
Warm oil over medium heat
Add the onions to pan and cook over medium heat until soft, 8 to 10 minutes
Add curry powder, paprika powder, chili powder and continue to cook while stirring, for 1 to 2 minutes
Add tomatoes and juice to pan, crush thoroughly and stir through
Stirring add ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, mustard, salt and pepper to taste
Bring to boil and lower to simmer, stirring occasionally until thickened. 20-25 minutes.
Puree mixture in blender and strain through a sieve.
The recipe makes at least 500 ml of sauce.
Grill some sausages, slice and cover with warm sauce.
Add to the sauce covered sausage you can add some additional Paprika powder, Salt, Pepper, Chili Powder, Curry Powder, Mustard, or finely chopped onion, to taste.
Serve with Fritten, or on a bun*
Guten Appetit!
* Quite a lot of places seem to serve their Currywurst with Asian fried shallots on top – Icelandic hotdog style!
Train stations in Berlin are nowhere near as deep as London, New York or Kyiv and definitely not as pretty as Moscow or St Petersburg – but some of them make a striking statement. At the Checkpoint Charlie end:
And copies of golden mosaics representing historical rulers of Saxony, Prussia and who knows where else, at the other end.
I haven’t managed to photograph many Berlin Bears – whenever we see them, there are usually annoying tourist standing with them for ten minutes or more trying to get that elusive perfect selfie, so we have mostly just passed by them.
Charlottenburg Palace was originally built at the end of the 17th century, and then expanded upon enormously following century. It is done in extravagant baroque and rococo styles as of course was fitting for the woman who commissioned it, Sophie Charlotte, the wife of Friedrich I who was Elector of Brandenburg at the time.
Friedrich crowned himself as King Friedrich I in Prussia in 1701 having two years earlier appointed Johann Friedrich von Eosander to be his royal architect on the extension project. Von Eosander spent a great deal of time in Italy and France studying places like Versailles, and I think that influence is fairly evident. When the royal architect returned in 1702 he put into place his plans to extend the palace to have two large wings and a courtyard in the front, and to also extend the entire length of the main building as well. Poor Sophie Charlotte died in 1705, long before it was finished and Friedrich named the palace, ‘Charlottenburg’ in her memory. Mind you, that’s him up there on that horse right out front of the place… not her.
The Orangerie off to the left side of the palace.
The dressing room to the ‘Mecklenburg Apartment’ which comprises of three rooms that were used to receive relatives from the House of Mecklenburg. The relief images above the doors are all original as are the parquetry floors, the fireplace and wooden panelling.
The Old Gallery – this was damaged considerably in 1943, so the oak panelling and the paintings are all copies. 
There is a pair of these candlesticks, but they are in vitrines so far apart that it’s nearly impossible to photograph the pair together. They were made for King Frederick William I from the Silver Buffet at the Berlin Palace. The candlesticks were entirely cast in solid silver and are the last items remaining of the Prussian royal palaces’ silver setting. Friedrich apparently placed extensive commissions with the south German master goldsmiths of Auber (more than any other German Prince) and his orders for just three years from 1730 to 1733 included 85 silver objects with a total weight of over 8 tonnes. Only six works have survived including these two (of ten) candlesticks. All the other works were melted down in the mid 1700s and early 1800s. They’re enormous – all monograms and Prussian eagles.
The aptly named, Mirror Panelled Bed Chamber was part of Sophie’s original five room apartments. The mirrors were to reflect the lavish gardens outside.
This section of the Palace too, was badly damanged in WWII and has been recreated to be a fair approximation of what was here earlier.
One of Sophie’s antechambers.
Cupid and Psyche are kinda evident everywhere.
The Long Oval Hall was an entrance and recption area before the palace was extended, after which it became one of Sophie’s private rooms, it has exceptional views out to the gardens. But again was severly damaged in WWII so has also been recreated.
As we moved through the Palace we noticed quite a few chinoiserie ceramics. There seemed to be quite a lot of them for a palace of this style/age… little did we know.
The Long Oval overlooked the formal gardens.
After Sophie’s death, Frederick used her second antechamber as a small audience chamber. The tapestries were added in 1740 by his grandson, however, all in here was also damaged so is copied or reconstructed. One of the placards I read in here said all the fireplaces had been deliberately built to have consoles for displaying porcelain.
Another audience chamber, also demonstrating their particular fondness for ceramics.
And a third audience chamber… there was little to indicate whether all these audience chambers served different purposes or were for people of varying levels of acquaintance (well nothing I saw in English anyway). However, this room indicated that it was for private audiences with intimate members of the family and the King and his guest would have chairs of equal size. It also had the most amazing ceiling that is painted on canvas and survived the war, so it is the original art.
and more porcelain of course.
Which then led into ‘the Porcelain Cabinet’
“The Porcelain Cabinet is the magnificent highlight of the 140m long flight of rooms on the palace’s garden side. However, when Sophie Charlotte died in 1705, the construction works were by no means finished and were not in fact completed until 1706. The walls have been designed in a way that shows the porcelain and figural motifs off to their best advantage. The ceiling murals painted in 1706 by Anthonie Coxie, are allegorical images glorifying the rise of the Prussian royal dynasty. The Cabinet was heavily damaged in 1943 and restored in 1967.”
My how our sensibilities of what is ‘beautiful’ has changed.
Next to the Porcelain Cabinet is the Royal Chapel – lavishly gilded and heavily ornamented.
With its own miniature pipe organ.
Portrait gallery on the way out.
You exit through a servants entrance cleverly hidden under the stairs. The tour is supposed to continue on through the upper apartments, but there is a rope telling us it is closed. This is most likely due to the fact that it is October and they don’t want to staff the entire Palace for the winter, so we missed out on another 140m of lavish apartments upstairs.
The weather had turned ‘moody’ while we were inside.
One for Leofric that I saw in the gift shop. 🙂 
We walked around the back of the palace to see the formal gardens, but without an elevated viewpoint – it’s difficult to see the impressive design.
Wild boar sausage with pierogi :
Last Russian honey cake until we go back to Russia or maybe do trans-Siberianan rail trip. 😛
After lunch, we did some masterful navigating of Berlin’s bus and train systems to go see the East Side Gallery. The East Side Gallery is an open-air art gallery which consists of a series of large murals that have been painted directly onto a remnant of the Berlin Wall. 
The paintings on Mühlenstraße started in 1990 and is over 1.3kms long making it the largest open-air art gallery in the world. There has been a lot of grafitti put on the artworks over the years, and some piece have been restored, but there is controversy over this with many artists refusing to re-do their artworks.
Today, it seems most of the art works are being left alone and not being grafitted, but there are areas of the wall where it seems grafitti is encouraged, as this is a living used space.
I love this: Moscow…walls; China… walls; Everywhere… no walls (with kangaroo!);, Berlin… walls.
This section of wall is all grafitti… the big stenciled work is not an official piece.
So we thought this was a good place to leave a small mark.
I know my photos make it look all peaceful and orderly – but of course, it wasn’t.
And it was about this time that our beautiful day with it’s 17C higher in temp then yesterday started to literally rain on our parade. So we hightailed it to the nearest train station and head back to the hotel.
And so ends our last day in Europe… for tomorrow we fly from Berlin to London to Singapore to Brisbane and all things going to plan, we arrive two days from now.
Checkpoint Charlie or what was really just, “Checkpoint C”, was what the Western Allies took to calling the most well known Berlin Wall crossing between East and West Berlin throughout the entire period of the Cold War (1947–1991). For any young whipper-snappers who can’t remember why the Berlin Wall existed here’s a TL;DR didn’t study history version:
By now, we could access the hotel and went back and went splat. We have a huge room with a separate powder room, two TVs and a living room, which means I obviously booked something way more swish than intended. You never can tell by the photos online. So be it. Slept like a dead thing and had a great breakfast at the hotel before heading out via the underground towards Alexanderplatz to start some serious touristing for the day… the only downside to our plan: it’s fucking MONDAY and nothing in Europe opens on MONDAY.
Below is the Volksbühne which means, the “People’s Theatre” which was built in the early 1900s and was designed to promote accessible theatrical productions at prices that were affordable to the everyday worker – it is now considered to be Berlin’s most iconic theatre, complete with its integrated Franz Metzner sculpture out front. Like most of Berlin it was heavily damaged during WWII, but as far as I can find out – it never burned down, which is quite unusual around here.
Close to Alexanderplatz is the Fernsehturm Berlin television tower. It was built in 1965-69 by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) government and was meant to be a symbol of Communist power in Berlin. Today it has mainly become just an iconic symbol of the city (much like the Eiffel Tower is of Paris) and it can be seen from nearly everywhere in the central city. The ‘Toothpick’ or ‘Telespargel’ (TV-asparagus) as people often call it, is 368m making it the tallest structure in Germany.
Alexanderplatz is a large public square and transport hub and is mostly known for locating movies in Berlin – ie: you wouldn’t know that Jason Bourne or James Bond is actually in Berlin if they didn’t end up here at some point. Interesting factoid – it was originally a cattle market outside the old Berlin city fortifications and was named Alexanderplatz because the Russian Emperor Alexander I visited here in 1805.
Very Berlinesque fountain…
This mosaic (below) is Europe’s largest work of art (by area) and wraps around the entire
Naturally, being created under the Soviet government in the ’60s, the design is total propaganda, it is supposed to depict the ideal image of a peaceful, modern socialist state.
Nearby is one of Berlin’s most photographed pieces of political street art on the currently empty former Haus der Statistik (House of Statistics) is painted in letters three-stories high, “STOP WARS”. Very simple, yet effective.
The 16 tonnes of Urania World Clock is also located Alexanderplatz (Jason Bourne was here too!) Built in 1969, the Urania World Clock tells time in 148 major world cities.
We then walked not far to the Rotes Rathaus, which is the Red City Hall building, where the governing mayor and the Senate of Berlin are located. It’s quite the landmark with its red clinker bricks and relief sculputres.
Across the road from the Rathaus is Berlin’s Neptune Fountain (seems to be a thing). This one was built in 1891, designed by Reinhold Begas. The statue depicts the God, Neptune surrounded by four women who represent the four main rivers of Prussia at the time: the Elbe River (the figure holding fruits and ears of corn), the Rhine River (figure with fishnet and grapes), the Vistula (figure holding wooden blocks, symbols of forestry), and Oder River (represented by the figure with the goats and animal skins). 
There is lots of alligators and turtles and lobsters in among the fountain, yale found it very impressive, but I thought it was nothing compared to My Fountain in Rome. 😉 
The Berlin Cathedral has never been a ‘proper’ cathedral as it was never the seat of a bishop… sure looks like a cathedral though.
The inside is remarkable, my photographs do not capture how lavish it is with all its gilded carving, intricate mosaics and shiny marble.
The church on this site has a long history dating back to the mid 15th century. But at the time this version of the church was built, there was no separation between the Protestant church and state of Prussia, so Wilhelm II (who was in charge) also acted as the Supreme Governor of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia, and dictated that the state would pay for the entire construction cost of around 11,5 million Marks. With the building being 114m long, 73m wide and a whopping 116m tall, it was much larger than any of the earlier church buildings and was attempting to be a Protestant version of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican.
The pipe organ, built by Wilhelm Sauer, has over 7000 pipes was fully restored during 1970s reconstruction.
Like most things here, it was seriously damaged during WWII and restoration works didn’t start seriously until about 1975. The Soviet government decided to simplify the building’s original design and in doing so they wanted to demolish the entire northern wing, the section called the ‘Denkmalskirche’, or the Memorial Church. Many compared this chapel to the Medici Chapel, and it had somehow managed to survive the bombings during the war completely intact – however, the Soviet communist government wanted it gone for ideological reasons by the communist government given it was effectively a hall of honour for the Hohenzollern dynasty. So the sneaky bastards put the whole church under scaffolding for the restoration and then literally used detonation charges to destroy this undamaged chapel at the church’s rear. The communist government also removal of many of the iconic crosses as they could during the restoration process. So the restoration was only set to cost about 50,000 marks, but because the government decided to demolish a huge part of the church, the cost of the demolition works was way more than the actual restoration and it ended up costing closer to 800,000 marks.
Royal tombs…
There is a small museum full of models, sketches and pieces of the original mosaics etc.
yale for scale by a piece of a column… 
The crypts beneath the church.
Across the river from the Church is the Altes Museum or Old Museum which is a great name for an archaeological museum – it was built on Museum Island in Berlin and only recently restored in 2010/11. It has cool stuff in it like Greek urns, helms and paintings from old masters and all sorts of shit… but MONDAY!
Some sculptures on the Schloss Bridge near Museum Island.
A little further down the Bundesstraße 2 which goes straight through the middle of the city is the Neue Wache, or 
The Käthe Kollwitz sculpture, Mother with her Dead Son, sculpture is the only thing housed inside as a monument to Unknown Soldiers.
Next stop was the Berlin State Opera or the ‘Staatsoper Unter den Linden’, presumably the same opera house which, inconveniently located, caused the tank standoff at Checkpoint Charlie given that from 1949 to 1990 it housed the state opera of East Germany. It is the permanent home of the ‘Staatsoper Unter den Linden’ opera company. 
Humboldt University…
Beside the opera house is the Bebelplatz public square which is bound by the Opera House, the Humboldt University, and St Hedwig’s Catholic Cathedral. Today, the Bebelplatz is most famous for it being the site of the Nazi book burnings that occurred here on the 10th May 1933. The burnings were initiated and hosted by the nationalist German Student Association… seriously, the students were burning the books. They started collecting books on the 6th Mary and dragged the contents of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft library into the square before they invited Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels to come and give a speech before setting fire to the books. Also in attendance were members of the Nazi Students’ League, the Sturmabteilung (“brownshirts”), the SS, and members of Hitler Youth groups. They burned around 20,000 books. 🙁 
Monument to Reiterstandbild König Friedrich II von Preußen, or Fredrick the Great.
Berlin’s Microsoft offices.
In the foyer of Mercedes Benz in Berlin… a tiny mirror-balled Smart Car. No idea why.
Saw this ad for an internet plan and nearly cried… #fraudband #nbn #auspol
We stopped and had some lunch at a great cafe called, Nante-Eck for some typical stodgy German fare – there was soup and sausages and mustards, flammkuchen and yale sized beer!
Crayfish bisque for me
Charlottenburg mixed sausage platter for yale.
And some creme fraice, onion and bacon flammkuchen to share. Delicious.
The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical monument built by the Prussian king Frederick William II after the (somewhat temporary) successful restoration of state order during the early Batavian Revolution. Victory gates for the win! Build ’em while you can.
After the 1806 Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Napoleon used the Brandenburg Gate for an enormous chest beating triumphal procession, and apparently, he took the Quadriga (the four horse statue) from the top of the gates and sent them to Paris. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814 and the Prussian occupation of Paris by General Ernst von Pfuel, the Quadriga was returned to Berlin (probably with very poor grace) and it was redesigned by Karl Friedrich Schinkel who added the goddess, Victoria, and gave her a Prussian eagle and an Iron Cross on her lance within a wreath of oak leaves.
When the Nazis ascended to power, they too used the gate as a symbol of party power. Following Germany’s surrender and the end of the war, the governments of East and West Berlin restored it in a joint effort. The bullet holes were patched but were still visible. Today, the space leading up to the gate is used for public gatherings and even concerts (somewhat like the Washington Mall) as it can fit up to a million people. The gates looked really impressive but was hard to get a photo without the police presence in the way.
The other side of the gate – minus cops.
Not far from the Brandenburg Gates is the famous Reichstag Building, which was constructed to house the ‘Imperial Diet of the German Empire’ – which is an interesting way to describe the houses of parliament. It was opened in 1894 and parliament was housed there until 1933 when it was severely damaged during an arson attack. After WWII the building fell into disrepair.
According to Eisenman’s project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. Some people interpret the memorial to resemble a graveyard, though the creators say that was not the main aim.
The deeper you descend into the memorial, the more you lose visual contact with the outside world. You start to feel hidden from other people, you walk quietly alone, the stelae are smooth and cold and sound echoes through the stones. You will occasionally catch glimpses of people moving through the stelae in the distance but you feel ostracised and separate from them. It is easy to lose your fellow travellers as you wander deeper into the memorial, and it is apparently designed to evoke a sense of loss and separation as you can no longer see your companions – a feeling that would have been so desperate among the Jewish community during the Holocaust.
