This is a tale of four friends (Mike, Charlotte, Gina and Paul) who spent four nights in Berlin during March. Their mission was to see the sights and sample the beer.
Day 1 - Thursday
The first day we arrived eager to get out and see Berlin and set off
from our hotel in Charlottenburg walking past the newly refurbished Reichstag,
through the Brandenburg Gate and down Unter den Linden. Soon we were feeling
extremely thirsty and looking for a suitable drinking establishment. Being
new to the area and not being close to any of the bars on our list we entered
the nearest pub which by chance turned out to be a fine choice having an
authentic atmosphere with dark wooden furniture in abundance and a fine
beer menu. (From a plundered matchstick packet it appears that we were
in the Zur Gerichtslaube on Poststrasse)
The quantity of beer served ranges from 0.2 litres to 0.5 litres and invariably comes in a strange shaped glass with the essential small paper doily around the base. Charlotte went straight for the local Berliner Weisser, which arrived in a huge glass bowl mit straw. Depending on your vice this is either bright green or bright red due to the addition of raspberry or woodruff syrup. The main purpose of the syrup is to disguise the actual taste of the beer, which is very sour and a bit of an acquired taste. Mike sampled a very tasty wheat beer and there were plates of strange German cheese and bread all round.
Following a couple of rounds we decided to get a good overview of the city and to this end we travelled 200 metres vertically up the Fernsehturm (television tower) for a 360-degree view of Berlin.
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In the evening we walked along the Kurfürstendamn and found a smokey side street bar (omitting to remember the name in our excitement) where we did some serious beer sampling which from memory was mainly a dangerously drinkable altbier and some cloudy southern German wheat beer. Mike had a cheese and mushroom omelette. (Mikes top tip for all you veggies out there… German cuisine as you can imagine is based largely on sausages and various cuts of meat and therefore particularly in more traditional establishments it can be difficult to find anything at all to eat so you may not be able to dine as well as drink at your bar of choice).
Day 2 - Friday
Setting off from the hotel this morning we walked down Strasse des
17 Juni, taking in a fine statue of Bismarck on-route, walked up the Victory
column (185 steps to the top) then down towards the Brandenburg gate past
the Russian war memorial and joined the queue to visit the Reichstag and
it's shiny new Norman Foster dome, which was very impressive. Fortified
by a large slab of cake in a nearby café we then visited the world
famous Checkpoint Charlie Museum.
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Lured by a dodgy website that we found before we left for Berlin we decided to spend the evening at the Mommseneck Pub The House of 1000 Beers. We were extremely disappointed to find that this was a misprint of the cruellest kind by a power of ten and that there were only 100 beers on the menu, however about a dozen of these were on draught (and we sampled most of them between us). Mike opted to try the Berliner Weisser au-naturel (without the syrup) and Charlotte tasted a Köstrisser Schwarzbier (black lager). Overall Mike and Paul voted Andechser Doppelbock Dunkel as the best beer of the evening, while Gina stuck to the Andechser Weissbier. If you felt homesick there was also the opportunity to buy John Smiths (god forbid !!) or Fosters (as if !!) if you really wanted to as well as numerous other bottled beers from around the World.
Two great reasons for drinking beer in Berlin is that a) you never have to queue at the bar for a drink as it's waitered service (albeit for a 16% charge) and b) there is no such thing as closing time. We finally left the 'bar of 1000 beers' at 1.00am got a tube home (tubes dont stop at midnight in this city) to have a final nightcap at the hotel trust bar.
Day 3 - Saturday
Interestingly enough, Paul was a little worse for wear this morning.
He put this down to a 'bad half litre' (!!!) but whilst looking round the
KaDeWe (Berlin's equivalent of Harrods) we noted from the bottles of beer
for sale that Mike and Paul had been drinking a 7.1% proof beer most of
the previous evening . It's seems that pubs are not required to state the
alcoholic content of beers they sell - so be warned! Mike purchased two
bottles of a brew called Turn to bring home, which interestingly is beer
brewed with hemp blossom rather than hops and therefore not strictly a
beer at all under the German beer purity laws.
We wandered along rows of stalls in the huge flea market on Strasse des 17 Juni, then took a tube across town to see the East Side Gallery - the largest remaining portion of the wall (1200m) and the worlds longest art gallery with contemporary murals painted along the whole length.
At this point it began to chuck it down so naturally we headed for the oldest remaining pub in Berlin, the Zur Letzten Instanz. Dating from the 17th Century it was originally named Bullenwinkel and is adjacent to a small surviving piece of the original city wall. The interior was the familiar dark wood panelling. A small selection of the usual draught beers was available here and although the place had a nice authentic feel about it, it was obviously a bit of a tourist trap!
Mike and Charlotte bravely continued their research into drinking venues and walked to the Georgbräu nearby. This is a large lively modern microbrewery located by the river Spree. Outside is a bronze statue of George and the Dragon; even more interestingly inside were a number of large rooms with simple wooden tables and benches with the working copper brewing tanks on display. There was a limited selection of beer, the two draught beers being a Hell and a Dunkel (both unfiltered at 5%). If you don't like pig's knuckle, bratwurst, pickled herring or strange tasting German cheese, this is not a place to eat, but the beer was voted all round favourite by Charlotte.
In fact we were so impressed we returned only hours later with Paul and Gina in tow. We stuck to the Hell and Dunkel and stayed away from the metre of beer (10 glasses of beer on a metre long board).
Day 4 - Sunday
Highly recommended as part of your trip to Berlin is a trip to the
Pergamon Museum, which has impressive archaeological exhibits, including
the Greek Pergamon Altar and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon. We also visited
the Natural History Museum (very little text in English but the worlds
largest real dinosaur skeleton !) and the Olympic Stadium where the infamous
1936 Olympic games were held.
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Enticed by an advert in a local 'what's on' guide stating 18 beers on tap we headed for our final beer venue of the holiday which was Wirtshaus zum Russbaum. By chance it was a few doors away from a Mexican restaurant, and the veggies among us were delighted to eat a hearty meal at last prior to quaffing more beer. The pub was fairly quiet apart from some cheesy organ 'covers' music in the background, but we managed to taste several types of beer including a nice Hefeweizen and more Altbier and Schwarzbier. We finally left reluctantly to catch the last tube home.
Day 5 - Monday
Our last venture was to the 'Story of Berlin' an interactive museum
on the Kurfürstendamn, which is an extensive exhibition about the
history of Berlin. Wearing strange speaking headsets that were activated
upon walking into various rooms it was an interesting end to our visit
completed by a slightly surreal tour of a nuclear bunker in an underground
car park.
Useful websites:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~patto1ro/berlpubs.htm
http://www.negia.net/~brew/berlin.html
Addresses of bars remembered:
| Zur Gerichtslaube
Poststrasse 28 |
Zur Letzten Instanz
Waisenstraße 14-16 |
| Georgbräu
Spreeufer 4 |
Mommseneck Pub
Mommseneck-strasse at Giesebrecht |
| Wirtshaus zum Russbaum
Bundesplatz 5 |
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Footnote:
Berlin is not a beer metropolis like London or Brussels, the bars that
we went to were mainly ones which we had identified prior to leaving London
and took some finding as they were located in several different parts of
the city. Unfortunately due to the limited time available and the lack
of a local guide we were unable to just hit an area of the city in the
hope that we might find a nice bar.
If anyone having read this has any comments or can suggest/recommend
any other fine drinking establishments in Berlin or any other major European
cities then let me know at:
mike.lapworth@talk21.com
All in all an excellent trip to Berlin with slightly too much cheese……