August 22nd, 2007
Berlin’s heart
Everybody wants to go to Berlin these days. The restored capital city of the unified Germany is a popular spot for highculture tourists, with its three opera houses and superb art collections, and also with younger folk who imagine they are following in the footsteps of Auden and Isherwood.
Then there are the would-be alternative types who head for the nightclubs, with their designer noise and designer drugs, and imagine that they are rebelling. Actually, in Berlin, more than anywhere else, these boring people are merely conforming.
Go to Kreuzberg, if you must, and savour the Turkish street life. Trot along to Neukölln, though it’s not nearly as decadent as is supposed. Far more enjoyable is Prenzlauerberg, where East meets West, and old meets new, in a way that remains — for the time being — fascinating. The old ‘ossis’ live in ramshackle apartments, next door to on-the-make professionals who favour pastel colours. There are student bars cheek by jowl with traditional inns, and it makes for an atmosphere quite unlike that of the more prosperous West. In this ever-changing city, it won’t last for ever.
In Potsdamerplatz, where the Wall separated the two cities, the scrubland of 15 years ago has been transformed into a booming commercial canyon of hotels, banks, cinemas, bars and offices. You wouldn’t recognise the place from Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s evocation of the square, which hangs nearby in the Neue Nationalgalerie. You might, however, recognise the description applied to this new Berlin by Sir Simon Rattle, who conducts the city’s great orchestra at the Philharmonie, one block away: ‘a cross between Manhattan and the Wild West’.
The area around Unter den Linden, the famous thoroughfare that serves as the spine of East Berlin, has also changed, and in almost every respect for the better. Walk from the station at Friedrichstrasse, where Western visitors used to alight, to the Deutsche Staatsoper, and it can be hard to recall the drabness that enveloped this part of the city. Some of the finest shopping and dining in Berlin can now be done here, and many of the grand hotels are a stone’s throw from the lime trees.
For all its history, and its significance, Berlin will never be mistaken for a beautiful city. Hamburg and Munich are more handsome places, and Cologne has the Rhine, that powerful symbol of the nation, flowing past its famous cathedral. But Berlin has witnessed a lot and is connected to the world in a way that only the great cities are. It is more like a city state: in Germany but not always of it. In this respect it sits comfortably alongside London, Paris and New York.
Berlin’s reputation as a lively city is well deserved, but it does not overwhelm you.
Unlike central London, which is overrun to the point of hopelessness, Berliners take their pleasures with more discrimination. In the West there is a small world-within-a-world, which people tend not to notice because it isn’t considered interesting enough for trendhungry travel editors. Savignyplatz is neither exclusively young and thrusting, nor a haven for old-timers. It is a place of cosy streets, gathered round a square that gives its name to an S-bahn station, where people of all types live, work and carouse.
If you turn right out of the Zoo station, weave past the drunks and down-and-outs who never seem to be moved on, you can reach Savignyplatz in five minutes, so it really is in the heart of Berlin. Strictly speaking, it occupies the space between Fasanenstrasse and Schlüterstrasse, two of the city’s most pleasant streets. In Fasanen you can sit with a coffee and strudel in the garden of the Literaturhaus. In Schlüter, night-time is the right time to visit Lutter and Wegner, a classic oak-panelled Berlin restaurant which dates from 1811, with friendly staff and a fine list of German wines. Marjellchen, a delightful East Prussian restaurant in Mommsenstrasse, is also a good place to satisfy the demanding appetite.
It is the square itself, though, that compels the visitor’s attention, particularly those who enjoy a drop or two. Ignore the trendy bars that have cropped up on the south-east side of the square. You can find those anywhere.
Instead head for Grolmanstrasse, on the other side of the rail tracks, and pop into Diener, which also carries the perplexingly English name of Tattersall. With its Spartan interior, its plain, inexpensive fare and the apparently unchanging cast of regulars, many of whom have seen better days, it could hardly do more to repel the casual barhopper. Yet, with its photographs of actors and music-hall stars, and its lived-in feel, it conveys a strong impression of Berlin as it was. Best to arrive at midnight, gently sauced, to get the most out of it.
Other bars worth a visit are Dicke Wirtin, on the north-east side of the square, which feels like an English pub, and Wirtshaus Wuppke, in Schlüterstrasse — a real German Kneipe, this one, full of men playing cards in the back room, and waitresses who observe the national credo, ‘it takes seven minutes to pour a good beer’. But the outstanding hostelry in this part of Berlin, in the whole of Berlin, is the great Zwiebelfisch.