Woohoo welcome to my holiday blog!! Last week I had the joy of visiting Berlin, and Germany, for the very first time and it was damn good! I stayed with my lovely friend Anthony who now lives out there and kindly put me up on his very comfortable sofa bed for the week – THANK YOU ANTHONY!!! Whoring oneself around friends floors/sofas is definitely the way forward in terms of holiday accommodation/choice (thanks again also Yael!). I intend to scab floor space in New York next – maybe I will never have to pay for a hotel again!!?
So Berlin, what a fascinating city! So much history!! So many crazy things have happened to it!! First though I will start, as always, with the food. Having never been to Germany before I was obviously keen to sample the local cuisine, the most important element of any society/culture, and started with the key element to the German culinary tradition – Kinder Surprise!! Over there though they have about 10 times the number of kinder products and the best by far seems to be Kinder Joy – looks like a Kinder Surprise but is in fact made of plastic and one half is filled with this weird gooey white chocolate concoction with 2 ferrero rocher style chocolates in it and you eat it with a little spoon that comes with – EXCELLENT.
Then I has currywurst – a sausage covered in tomato sauce and curry powder – not impressive frankly – and a schnitzel, yum. I also had a German croissant which is dark brown and made with some sort of savoury element so it’s kind of like having a normal croissant with salted butter – excellent. The best meal by far however had to be that which Anthony’s delightful girlfriend Lea cooked for us (yes it was she who lured him out there with her Germanic-feminine whiles). Annoyingly I meant to send her a message asking her to forward me the name of the dish and a good online recipe but haven’t done that so THINK she made us Kohlrouladen, or cabbage roles, which I THINK the below may be a recipe for, but this also may be wrong!! Either way they were dumpling style things made of cabbage stuffed with meat and baked/roasted and served with yummy sauce and mashed potatoes and more cabbage and were DEFINITLY the nicest thing I had out there – they were delicious. I clearly have Germanic routes as really do love cabbage. It was ace – thank you Lea!!
http://www.recipegoldmine.com/worldgermanI/kohlrouladen.html
Other than that I was delighted with all the beer drinking that goes on out there, and am particularly impressed with the prices – bottles of beer being no more than about 1 euro usually!! Also Anthony introduced me to the concept of walk beers – he claims that it’s more than normal to walk along the street drinking bottles out there, but in fairness it is here too just the people who do it are usually skanky alcoholics. We went to a couple of cool bars – one on a barge sort of thing and one on the 16th floor of a tower block that obviously had amazing views across Berlin – definitely better than paying to go up the Reichstag or whatever. Had a yummy lychee martini.
Right, that’s the culinary aspect out the way – now for the art. I got a little overwhelmed when I got there and actually bought a guidebook (had left the one the lovely Justin had leant me at home but that’s probably a good thing as it was from 2004 or something and clearly would have been miles out of date – that city is changing fast!), there is just so much to do! I ended up spending a small fortune on admissions and as ever was made to truly appreciate the free element of London museums. Also postcards over there are 1 euro EACH!!! What’s that about??? Must have sent about £25 on them alone and was truly horrible having to limit myself in the gallery shops – made me realise that they are always worth it though as basically every other painting I have forgotten about already. My first port of call was clearly the Alte Nationalgalerie, as this is where all the 19th century stuff is. It wasn’t until I got home by the way that I realised I have a whole book called ‘Masterpieces from the Alte Nationagalarie’ which I picked up cheap in a National Gallery sale about 8 years ago and do look at occasionally as has so many pretty pictures in. I have never noticed the name of this book or where it came from before. This is worrying. Anyway, they have some truly fab stuff here and was definitely my favourite of all the many museums I visited. However, I would like to discuss just how shit German audio guides are. They would spend at least the first 4 minutes, which in a gallery is a long time, telling you what’s in the painting, the painting you’re standing in front of – its like ‘yeah I know am looking right at it’. They then tell you how you should feel when standing in front of the painting, again – ‘thanks I’m standing here you don’t really need to tell me that and frankly it’s not only patronising but also highly presumptive and plain irritating’. Then you have to put up with some mindless gush about nothing – and then there is no bloody real information at all at the end of it! I gave up after the first few galleries.
Anyway, highlights of the Alte Nationagalerie have to be works by the amazing Romantic artists Caspar David Frederick and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the later being pretty new to me. Interesting works by him include Morning (below) which is a comment on Napoleon pissing off finally out of Prussia leading to the dawn of a happy new German era: 
Another interesting piece by this artist was Gothic Church as one thing I was able to glean from the hours of audio guide crap was that in this period, as everyone (wrongly) thought Gothicism sprang from Germany, any Gothic element included in a composition/narrative was a sign of German independence and pride, again mostly as a response to the Napoleonic invasion.
Caspar David is always good for a bit of paint and very much did not disappoint in the flesh. Images that particularly stood out were the fabulously gloomy Monk by the Sea and Abbey in the Oakwood which are intended to be viewed as a pair. Apparently Frederick envisioned many of his works as pairs like this as he viewed the world and his art as an ever repeating cycle of life and death – each image has an answer so in this case we have the solitary contemplation of a monk, alone against nature, and in the second we have the funeral of a monk, being guided slowly into the next life through the abbey which has 2 faintly glimmering light above the entrance, the only thing that guides us to the unknowable beyond, the journey we all take alone – etc etc. Anyway I think this is quite interesting.
Some other images I enjoyed from this gallery were those by Franz von Stuck, a symbolist artists who I hadn’t heard of before who not only paints damn well but was clearly CRAZY, having an ego the size of a planet and basically building himself a house to memorialise just how amazing he thought he was – his self portrait below depicts him within this building. Here we also have The Sin and Circe.
They had devoted most of the bottom floor to an artist who I hadn’t heard of but must be pretty important in Germany as, well, they gave him the whole floor! This guy had numerous official commissions, many of them HUGE, and painted an incredible variety of work: 
They also had the amazing Manet painting The Conservatory and apparently the first Impressionist painting by Monet:
The next gallery I visited was the Hamburger Bahnhof which is a bit like the Tate Modern meets the Musse D’Orsay as it’s in an old Railway station. I got slightly lost trying to find it (story of the trip) and stumbled upon what I thought was a terribly cutting edge contemporary gallery around the corner but then I realised it was the Haunch of bloody Venison and was a bit embarrassed/disappointed – god damn it!! Anyway, this gallery starts with people like Warhol (the famous and HUGE Chairman Mao) via all the greats of this era moving through minimalism, pop art, video art (a lot – snoar) and various other movements whose names I don’t know as well as a hell of a lot of stuff by Joseph Boys, who I can never really make my mind up about but definitely always makes me feel a bit sick.
While I was there they had a Bruce Nauman show on and it’s like yeah yeah whatever but I did very much enjoy one piece by him, recommended by Anthony, where you walked into a little room filled with bright green light and when you come out everything around you looks bright pink!! Amazing!! The stuff that in many ways interested me the most though was upstairs in these little temporary show spaces – one, Hans-Peter Feldmann was filled with little rotating carrousels covered with children’s toys with lights shining at them casting strange and sinister shadows on the walls:
The other space was filled with a weird collection of giant carved insects teamed with a collection of brightly coloured glass objects which I assume was something of a piss take:
The Gemaldegalerie was where I attempted to make the most of Thursday evening free entrance but fuck me it was a bit of an intense experience trying to get round there in 2 hours. It’s basically the National Gallery times 10 and was a pretty darn impressive collection of art from the Renaissance to about 1800 (I think). Stuff that stood out were the Frans Hals Portraits:
The Holbein’s were mind blowing in the flesh, such amazing painting really took my breath away:
They had some of the great Caravaggio’s including this one which frankly I have always thought completely grotesque:
What I was most excited about seeing though were the Lucas Cranach’s as I LOVE him, and they did not disappoint. What really surprised me though was the size of some of them; I have only seen the little ones in the past and didn’t realise he painted such huge pieces such as The Fountain of Youth which is HILARIOUS – showing old haggard saggy people getting into a big swimming poor and coming out the other side young and beautiful and then going off to a party to have fun and get laid – hilarious:
Earlier that day I went to the Neue Nationalgalerie which was meant to be showcasing artworks from 1900 until about 1960 but seems like half of the place was closed and paid 10 euro’s to go and see about 5 rooms of exhibition space. What they had in those 5 rooms was admittedly wonderful, but 10 euro’s was just a total rip off specially as in my guide book it said it was filled with loads of stuff that just wasn’t there. This particularly annoyed me as the entrance way to this strange place was the entire ground floor of huge museum space totally totally empty apart from some 70s style carpet and an enormous chandelier – what’s the point of that??? I guess space just isn’t at a premium in Berlin. Highlights however included some amazing work by Munch including this great piece of someone called Kessler!! I didn’t actually even notice the name until I got back to London and someone pointed it out to me though just thought it was a beautiful portrait!!
There were some incredible paintings by the expressionist artists Kirchner who I know very little about but knocked out some incredible stuff. This one in particular, of Potsdamer Platz was really breathtaking; depicting the hustle and bustle and disconnected existence of metropolitan living at the turn of the 20th century Berlin.
Some other pieces that really stood out were the beautiful bauhaus style poster art they had on display which annoyingly I cant remember the artist or find anything online for. Oh well. They also had a room full of really beautiful 1920s German Painting. This was the movement away from Expressionism after the First World War towards new sobriety and simplicity – still some expressionist elements but with a more detailed style such as this fab one io girl about town in her little black dress with her packet of Camels:
They also had this fabulous Dada collage, not usually that much of a fan of the Dada but rather like this:
This has all gone on rather too long to say the least so will quickly mention the Jewish Museum which I studied a bit of in first year Courtauld and, although then I thought it was frankly rather naff, in person it worked very well and was extremely effective and full of crying Americans. It was also the place where I got to go on one of those great machines where you squash a penny and print something on it – love those, nothing like a bit of currency debasement on holiday. The Holocaust memorial was also good. I attempted to go to the Stasi museum TWICE – once I went to its old location as guide book was clearly not that up to date and then when I went back to where it has now relocated to it was closed for refurbishment – tres annoying. Did a thousand other things but doubt anyone will have got this far anyway so will leave you all alone and just say a last thank you to Anthony for putting up with me for 5 days!! THANK YOU ANTHONY!!
So Berlin, what a fascinating city! So much history!! So many crazy things have happened to it!! First though I will start, as always, with the food. Having never been to Germany before I was obviously keen to sample the local cuisine, the most important element of any society/culture, and started with the key element to the German culinary tradition – Kinder Surprise!! Over there though they have about 10 times the number of kinder products and the best by far seems to be Kinder Joy – looks like a Kinder Surprise but is in fact made of plastic and one half is filled with this weird gooey white chocolate concoction with 2 ferrero rocher style chocolates in it and you eat it with a little spoon that comes with – EXCELLENT.
Then I has currywurst – a sausage covered in tomato sauce and curry powder – not impressive frankly – and a schnitzel, yum. I also had a German croissant which is dark brown and made with some sort of savoury element so it’s kind of like having a normal croissant with salted butter – excellent. The best meal by far however had to be that which Anthony’s delightful girlfriend Lea cooked for us (yes it was she who lured him out there with her Germanic-feminine whiles). Annoyingly I meant to send her a message asking her to forward me the name of the dish and a good online recipe but haven’t done that so THINK she made us Kohlrouladen, or cabbage roles, which I THINK the below may be a recipe for, but this also may be wrong!! Either way they were dumpling style things made of cabbage stuffed with meat and baked/roasted and served with yummy sauce and mashed potatoes and more cabbage and were DEFINITLY the nicest thing I had out there – they were delicious. I clearly have Germanic routes as really do love cabbage. It was ace – thank you Lea!!
http://www.recipegoldmine.com/worldgermanI/kohlrouladen.html
Other than that I was delighted with all the beer drinking that goes on out there, and am particularly impressed with the prices – bottles of beer being no more than about 1 euro usually!! Also Anthony introduced me to the concept of walk beers – he claims that it’s more than normal to walk along the street drinking bottles out there, but in fairness it is here too just the people who do it are usually skanky alcoholics. We went to a couple of cool bars – one on a barge sort of thing and one on the 16th floor of a tower block that obviously had amazing views across Berlin – definitely better than paying to go up the Reichstag or whatever. Had a yummy lychee martini.
Right, that’s the culinary aspect out the way – now for the art. I got a little overwhelmed when I got there and actually bought a guidebook (had left the one the lovely Justin had leant me at home but that’s probably a good thing as it was from 2004 or something and clearly would have been miles out of date – that city is changing fast!), there is just so much to do! I ended up spending a small fortune on admissions and as ever was made to truly appreciate the free element of London museums. Also postcards over there are 1 euro EACH!!! What’s that about??? Must have sent about £25 on them alone and was truly horrible having to limit myself in the gallery shops – made me realise that they are always worth it though as basically every other painting I have forgotten about already. My first port of call was clearly the Alte Nationalgalerie, as this is where all the 19th century stuff is. It wasn’t until I got home by the way that I realised I have a whole book called ‘Masterpieces from the Alte Nationagalarie’ which I picked up cheap in a National Gallery sale about 8 years ago and do look at occasionally as has so many pretty pictures in. I have never noticed the name of this book or where it came from before. This is worrying. Anyway, they have some truly fab stuff here and was definitely my favourite of all the many museums I visited. However, I would like to discuss just how shit German audio guides are. They would spend at least the first 4 minutes, which in a gallery is a long time, telling you what’s in the painting, the painting you’re standing in front of – its like ‘yeah I know am looking right at it’. They then tell you how you should feel when standing in front of the painting, again – ‘thanks I’m standing here you don’t really need to tell me that and frankly it’s not only patronising but also highly presumptive and plain irritating’. Then you have to put up with some mindless gush about nothing – and then there is no bloody real information at all at the end of it! I gave up after the first few galleries.
Anyway, highlights of the Alte Nationagalerie have to be works by the amazing Romantic artists Caspar David Frederick and Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the later being pretty new to me. Interesting works by him include Morning (below) which is a comment on Napoleon pissing off finally out of Prussia leading to the dawn of a happy new German era:
Another interesting piece by this artist was Gothic Church as one thing I was able to glean from the hours of audio guide crap was that in this period, as everyone (wrongly) thought Gothicism sprang from Germany, any Gothic element included in a composition/narrative was a sign of German independence and pride, again mostly as a response to the Napoleonic invasion. Caspar David is always good for a bit of paint and very much did not disappoint in the flesh. Images that particularly stood out were the fabulously gloomy Monk by the Sea and Abbey in the Oakwood which are intended to be viewed as a pair. Apparently Frederick envisioned many of his works as pairs like this as he viewed the world and his art as an ever repeating cycle of life and death – each image has an answer so in this case we have the solitary contemplation of a monk, alone against nature, and in the second we have the funeral of a monk, being guided slowly into the next life through the abbey which has 2 faintly glimmering light above the entrance, the only thing that guides us to the unknowable beyond, the journey we all take alone – etc etc. Anyway I think this is quite interesting. Some other images I enjoyed from this gallery were those by Franz von Stuck, a symbolist artists who I hadn’t heard of before who not only paints damn well but was clearly CRAZY, having an ego the size of a planet and basically building himself a house to memorialise just how amazing he thought he was – his self portrait below depicts him within this building. Here we also have The Sin and Circe.
They had devoted most of the bottom floor to an artist who I hadn’t heard of but must be pretty important in Germany as, well, they gave him the whole floor! This guy had numerous official commissions, many of them HUGE, and painted an incredible variety of work:
They also had the amazing Manet painting The Conservatory and apparently the first Impressionist painting by Monet:
The next gallery I visited was the Hamburger Bahnhof which is a bit like the Tate Modern meets the Musse D’Orsay as it’s in an old Railway station. I got slightly lost trying to find it (story of the trip) and stumbled upon what I thought was a terribly cutting edge contemporary gallery around the corner but then I realised it was the Haunch of bloody Venison and was a bit embarrassed/disappointed – god damn it!! Anyway, this gallery starts with people like Warhol (the famous and HUGE Chairman Mao) via all the greats of this era moving through minimalism, pop art, video art (a lot – snoar) and various other movements whose names I don’t know as well as a hell of a lot of stuff by Joseph Boys, who I can never really make my mind up about but definitely always makes me feel a bit sick.While I was there they had a Bruce Nauman show on and it’s like yeah yeah whatever but I did very much enjoy one piece by him, recommended by Anthony, where you walked into a little room filled with bright green light and when you come out everything around you looks bright pink!! Amazing!! The stuff that in many ways interested me the most though was upstairs in these little temporary show spaces – one, Hans-Peter Feldmann was filled with little rotating carrousels covered with children’s toys with lights shining at them casting strange and sinister shadows on the walls:
The other space was filled with a weird collection of giant carved insects teamed with a collection of brightly coloured glass objects which I assume was something of a piss take:
The Gemaldegalerie was where I attempted to make the most of Thursday evening free entrance but fuck me it was a bit of an intense experience trying to get round there in 2 hours. It’s basically the National Gallery times 10 and was a pretty darn impressive collection of art from the Renaissance to about 1800 (I think). Stuff that stood out were the Frans Hals Portraits:The Holbein’s were mind blowing in the flesh, such amazing painting really took my breath away:
They had some of the great Caravaggio’s including this one which frankly I have always thought completely grotesque:
What I was most excited about seeing though were the Lucas Cranach’s as I LOVE him, and they did not disappoint. What really surprised me though was the size of some of them; I have only seen the little ones in the past and didn’t realise he painted such huge pieces such as The Fountain of Youth which is HILARIOUS – showing old haggard saggy people getting into a big swimming poor and coming out the other side young and beautiful and then going off to a party to have fun and get laid – hilarious:
Earlier that day I went to the Neue Nationalgalerie which was meant to be showcasing artworks from 1900 until about 1960 but seems like half of the place was closed and paid 10 euro’s to go and see about 5 rooms of exhibition space. What they had in those 5 rooms was admittedly wonderful, but 10 euro’s was just a total rip off specially as in my guide book it said it was filled with loads of stuff that just wasn’t there. This particularly annoyed me as the entrance way to this strange place was the entire ground floor of huge museum space totally totally empty apart from some 70s style carpet and an enormous chandelier – what’s the point of that??? I guess space just isn’t at a premium in Berlin. Highlights however included some amazing work by Munch including this great piece of someone called Kessler!! I didn’t actually even notice the name until I got back to London and someone pointed it out to me though just thought it was a beautiful portrait!!
There were some incredible paintings by the expressionist artists Kirchner who I know very little about but knocked out some incredible stuff. This one in particular, of Potsdamer Platz was really breathtaking; depicting the hustle and bustle and disconnected existence of metropolitan living at the turn of the 20th century Berlin.
Some other pieces that really stood out were the beautiful bauhaus style poster art they had on display which annoyingly I cant remember the artist or find anything online for. Oh well. They also had a room full of really beautiful 1920s German Painting. This was the movement away from Expressionism after the First World War towards new sobriety and simplicity – still some expressionist elements but with a more detailed style such as this fab one io girl about town in her little black dress with her packet of Camels: They also had this fabulous Dada collage, not usually that much of a fan of the Dada but rather like this:
This has all gone on rather too long to say the least so will quickly mention the Jewish Museum which I studied a bit of in first year Courtauld and, although then I thought it was frankly rather naff, in person it worked very well and was extremely effective and full of crying Americans. It was also the place where I got to go on one of those great machines where you squash a penny and print something on it – love those, nothing like a bit of currency debasement on holiday. The Holocaust memorial was also good. I attempted to go to the Stasi museum TWICE – once I went to its old location as guide book was clearly not that up to date and then when I went back to where it has now relocated to it was closed for refurbishment – tres annoying. Did a thousand other things but doubt anyone will have got this far anyway so will leave you all alone and just say a last thank you to Anthony for putting up with me for 5 days!! THANK YOU ANTHONY!! 
