This week I had the opportunity to explore Mitte, of all the boroughs I have seen thus far Mitte has been the most beautiful. It was one of the few places that I have seen that wasn’t covered in graffiti or under construction. Mitte had many of the embassies, all beautiful tall buildings with elaborate architecture and embellishments. Many of the buildings had statues and murals of men and woman on the tops. Just about all of the buildings were the same the same neutral beigey tan color. For me, this color allows you to truly take in the glory of the buildings. I noticed the buildings all had many columns, it is the little additions like these that make the beauty of a building stand out. The Konzerthaus Berlin was perhaps the most beautiful building I have ever seen. The copper statues on top of the building were discolored green and the front of the building atop of the stairs was lines with colossal columns. The steps leading up to the Konzerthaus reminded me of the steps of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The steps were staggered with people eating salads and sandwiches during their lunch break, similar to what you see in New York.
After taking in the beauty of the buildings it was time for lunch, because we were in such a nice area we knew we had to eat at a nice restaurant. We landed at the fancy German restaurant with traditional German food and liters of beer. For lunch I had two sausages on top of mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. I come from a fairly traditional German family so I am very accustomed to eating pork, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut but the sauerkraut and mashed potatoes I have had in Germany are very different. Obviously the sauerkraut here is fresh opposed to the can sauerkraut we eat at home, it is much thicker and crunchier which I enjoy but the taste is not as strong. The mashed potatoes are much thinner here and typically much more sour than I’m used to. After lunch we headed over to a little gelato café. The first thing I noticed was the sizing options were very small and they had exotic flavors I had never heard of like whiskey cream and buttermilk lime. In my previous blog I mentioned how Germans are typically very fit and thin I can see how based on the small sizes of sweets and no free refills, it is such an easy way to cut sugars out of your diet with completely eliminating them.
After lunch we walked around the surrounding areas, it was a beautiful day and I noticed how much better the area is cared for. Little to no trash on the streets, clean sidewalks, fewer cigarette butts and new trees that appeared to be in their first or second year. Many of the business men were out for their lunch breaks, all wearing expensive finely pressed suits and animal skin shoes, definitely something I could get used to.
