Tomorrow will have been 3 years since my family and I have moved to Germany. Time flies! (apologies for the cliche)
It does kind of seem like I’ve been living here much longer though. I managed to move to the wunderbar Berlin, found a better job and the most perfect human being to be and live with 🙂
The city truly never sleeps, something is always happening, and the full public transport at 11 pm and morning ‘forced cuddles’ with other people who are also going to work do not surprise anymore.
At almost every cafe you can see ‘Soljanka’ in the menu. If you are Russian/Eastern European, please mind that the Berlin kind of soljanka is different from the Russian one and the taste surprise is not going to be nice. If you do want to try the best one in the whole city you should go to the oldest Russian restaurant called ‘Samowar’, they have the most delicious soljanka I have ever tried (they also bake their own ‘Borosinsky’ bread that goes well with the soup and it is yum!).
If you are looking into having some German food, the only advice I can give you is to avoid a place called Josty. We visited it once, however after seeing a shopping cart (yes, a freaking shopping cart from a supermarket) with plates  on it, we decided not to repeat the experience.
At the moment I believe that we have not seen about half of the city (we’ve been to all the cliche tourist places and to a couple of non-traditional areas).
Now, the most awesome part about living in a city like this is the number of concerts that you can attend without having to travel crazy distances (work schedule frustrates me sometimes though, because we couldn’t get time off then and missed a couple of nice concerts :(; only managed to go to one so far, Â Silverstein at Musik und Frieden were supreme and I am really glad I bought the tickets at the very last moment).
If you are in Berlin and you want to go to the zoo, be warned: if you don’t buy your ticket online you will be doomed to stand in a line for about 2-3 hours unless you come there about half an hour before the zoo opening. If you do buy the ticket there is a separate line and it moves much quicker.
The Berlin TV tower always has lots of people waiting to get in (you can buy tickets online too), but I have not been inside yet because I have not acquired enough patience to stand at the entrance with about 30 more people waiting for the area to free up for them. Once I am ready I will go and try my luck. Would be awesome to get that amazing-zoom lens and then take some cool panoramas from there.
Speaking of panoramas… There is a cafe high up above most buildings on Potsdamer Platz (called… wait for it…. Panorama (!) Punkt), and it usually has quite a lot of people waiting in line too. You can get yourself a VIP ticket and get inside without waiting for hours. What it has it basically a cafe and an opportunity to see Berlin from really high up at a spot other than the TV tower. And again, once I accumulate enough patience from the patience land I will gladly try it out.
The most crowds are usually expected in the areas of Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin wall, and Alexanderplatz; the rest seems a bit more manageable and you don’t need to elbow every 2nd person you see or hear.
And even though the city is full of people and sometimes you have to fight for a clear passage, Berlin is indeed wunderbar and worth visiting 🙂
More stuff about about more places coming up. Tray tuned.
Peace.
Viktoria Moon 