Berlin Diaries – Part 3

I have come to the realisation that Berlin summer is all about the bike rides, the parks, the socialising and the sprees (lakes). I’ve been crazy busy in my new job as Head Chef at the recently-opened restaurant, East London. As the name suggests it’s all about serving ‘good ole’ British food with that modern twist - bringing back the pies, the fish and chips, the bangers and mash; but not in the traditional pub grub kind of a way, but more giving it that fresh, modern twist. Making us the new kid on the block in Berlin and trying something completely different for the Berliner’s to try and love, and also making us super busy!

So whenever we can we are enjoying the sunshine and discovering many new and amazing secrets Berlin has to offer. The influx of friends coming to visit has begun and it’s great to be able to feel like a local and show them around and find new and interesting places to visit. So here are some of the amazing discoveries we have found and stumbled upon … The kooky fake beach at Wannsee, about 45 minutes on the train from central Berlin. You get off at this town called Wannsee where they have brought in sand and tried to make the lake a beach, the complete tackiness makes this kind of cool!

An interesting soviet war memorial in the middle of Treptower park, which has been put there to commemorate 5,000 of the 80,000 Soviet soldiers who fell in the Battle of Berlin in April-May 1945.

Bike rides to the outer superb of Grunewald (German for Greenforest), which is hard to believe it’s not that far from the city of Berlin as once you arrive there you are totally surrounded by instant forest, and the deeper you get in this forest, and the thicker it gets you find a magic lake in the middle, surrounded by hundreds of naked Germans, stumbling upon this was a shock to the eyes but feels so stereo-typically German! So when in Rome hey!

Close by we found ourselves getting directions from some local Germans saying ‘Find the hill and climb to the top and there you will find the allusive secret American spy-towers used after the second world war’. So off we went! We found a hill, no sign-posts, and we went with the hunch that this was where it would be, we ditched the bikes halfway, and kept climbing this hill with our burning calf muscles. We got to the top and were surprised to find the fence half bent open with a gap wide enough to fit through. Then we were presented with an abandoned, vandalized warehouse looking building, we explored and climbed over rusted old doors to the top of the tower to find some amazing graffiti and the listening station.

The acoustics up there were insane - the sounds your voice created, the crackling of the glass beneath your feet, the loud clang of your own footsteps. It’s so hard to describe how they sounded like an out-of-body experience, this needs to be seen and tried to really understand. Sitting in the sun, with a panoramic view of Berlin couldn’t really top any of my Berlin adventures so far!