Villa Harteneck

As our stay in Berlin drew to a close, I found myself spending an unhealthy amount of time in KaDeWe, and was in danger of becoming a permanent fixture:

So I consulted the list I´d made before I left Australia of sights to see in Berlin, and noticed I´d been rather slack in writing just one - Villa Harteneck. The fact that some considerable time had elapsed, and I no longer knew to what these two words referred, prompted me to do an internet search. I then realised that I had read about Villa Harteneck back in early March in posts by two of my fellow bloggers - Suzy from Studio Annetta and Michelle from Just Imagine. Since I was so close, I decided to venture out to Grunewald on the outskirts of Berlin and, sure enough, found this beautiful building:


Villa Harteneck is a multi-purpose building which serves as a function centre, has design books for sale and sells furniture and other items, such as Fortuny lamps. I went inside, but didn´t think I should take photos, so you´ll have to be content with the outside, which is pretty stunning:


I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in interior design.

It´s Still About the Food....

I had thought that after the food in Spain, Italy and France, I would be ´fooded-out´. But that was before I found KaDeWe here in Berlin. This seven-storey department store is almost a century old and was originally called ´Kaufhaus Des Westens´:

After wandering around the baby clothes department, I found myself on the gourmet food floor, ordering a Currywurst, which a nice man recommended as the specialty of Berlin. It is, as one would imagine, a sausage with lots of ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder, and is absolutely delicious with a cold beer:

Then, I wandered around the rest of the vast floor. Forget Harrod´s Food Hall, Fortnum and Mason´s or any other foodie heaven of your acquaintance. This is huge. You could spend hours just wandering around looking, which I did. There´s an oyster bar, lobster bar, antipasto, pasta, Asian bars, schnitzel, and of course chocolate and desserts. Also, I´ve never seen so much meat of different kinds in one location, and all beautifully presented:

When I say serious food, I mean serious:

I can´t wait to go back there on Tuesday. Then, today I tried another Berlin specialty in a bar. Believe it or not, it´s raspberry flavoured beer, and once again, absolutely delicious:

Finally, for those of you who think I´m only here for the food, here´s some cool art. It´s called ´Molecule Man´ by Jonathon Borofsky, and is in the river near our apartment:

Swap 6 - Berlin

We´re very fortunate to be swapping for a week in a lovely apartment in the former East Berlin:


So far, this city is absolutely fascinating. The highlights for me, though, have tended to be not only thought-provoking, but somewhat sad, such as the ´Pieta´-like sculpture by Kathe Kollwitz of a dead soldier being cradled by his mother:

The rather controversial Memorial to the Jews:

And an intact section of the Berlin Wall: