Berlin’s great reinvention

There’s enough grit among the glamour to keep this inspiring city real, writes Kate Wickers

We arrived late, hastily googling ‘cool new restaurants Berlin’ in the search for somewhere interesting for dinner. There isn’t one particular area with a glut to choose from so we took a chance and headed by taxi through a red light area to Potsdamer Strasse. Panama (tucked down a passage at number 91 and easy to miss) is a hip place with an eclectic sharing-concept menu (Latin America with a twist). There was also live music – a Cuban ensemble, which added to its happy buzz. We ordered flamed mackerel with sour rhubarb. This wasn’t the Berlin I’d imagined.

Das Stue is a stylish hotel, built in 1939 as the Royal Danish Embassy, and it’s from this that it takes its name, which means living room in Danish. It has a luxurious 70s design and (as it is right next to the zoo) a subtle animal theme. The yellow wire giraffe and leather hippos blend nicely in to the stylish décor of Stue Bar from where you can watch ostrich saunter by. The bedrooms have a cool retro feel too, and I loved my free-standing bath with views over our balcony to the Tiergarten’s leafy tree tops.

For breakfast we sat under the canopy of copper kitchen pots that hang above Paco Perez’s chef ’s table (by night this is the location for Cinco by Paco Perez – a gourmet restaurant with one Michelin star). We tucked in to heuvos rancheros, Mexican scrambled eggs with a hot chilli bite, before heading to the trendy area around the Hackescher Markt, known for its beautiful “Hofe” – nine interconnecting Art Nouveau courtyards.

It would be difficult to visit Berlin and not get a history lesson. The mighty Reichstag, seat of German government, is simply awesome. Stand before this great stone edifice and it’s easy to conjure the power of the German Reich. It still looks impenetrable but today, visitors can go on a guided tour and climb to the top of the Dome, a huge glass snow-globe of a structure, designed by British architect Lord Norman Foster in 1999, which has somewhat softened the Reichstag’s austerity. Close by is The Brandenburg Gate, built in 1789. Undeniably Berlin’s most iconic building it has been the backdrop for the city’s most turbulent events from Hitler’s military parades to celebrations after the Wall came down.

Unter den Linden, a grand boulevard lined with lime trees, runs from here and is home to Berlin’s oldest buildings such as neo-classical State Opera House and Humboldt University. On the ground floor of The Deutsches Historisches Museum we followed the exhibition that took us from Germany after the First World War to when the Berlin Wall came down in 1990. No first time visitor should miss it. The Holocaust

Memorial is another must do – a grid of concrete blocks of varying sizes and heights that echoes the tombstones of Prague’s old Jewish Cemetery. The perspective is clever, playing with your sense of distance and space. At moments it is stiflingly claustrophobic.

In the former headquarters of the Nazi Youth League we dined at Cecconi’s, located on the ground floor of the fashionable Soho House Hotel. It’s a pleasingly noisy Northern Italian restaurant with a sexy design (marble floors, red leather booth seating, fancy chandeliers) and a very open kitchen where good-looking chefs cook the classics. You can’t go wrong with lobster spaghetti or a margarita pizza and the pumpkin and goats cheese ravioli is delicious.

Das Stue has a private entrance in to the zoo so on Sunday morning we nipped in to discover why, since last June, the city has been gripped with panda fever. The female Meng Meng and male Jiao Qing were happily posing when we arrived – munching on bamboo, legs akimbo, looking like they were enjoying every minute of their celebrity status. They are undeniably gorgeous. In the Tiergarten, Berlin’s biggest park, we joined locals for a typical Sunday lunch of bratwurst, sauerkraut and

Clockwise from main: views inside and out of the Reichstag Dome; a panda at Berlin zoo

kartofelen at Café am Neuen – a no-nonsense self service restaurant with an idyllic lake-side setting. It is just a short ten-minute stroll from here to the city’s most famous department store – Kaufhaus des Westens (known affectionately as Kadewe). Germany is a nation of kuchen essers (cake scoffers) and they make them well so head to the 6th floor and you’ll be spoiled for choice. Lenotre Paris is a good choice particularly for fruit tarts and eclairs.

Schloss Charlottenburg, built in 1695, is far prettier from the outside. The word Baroque should have set alarm bells ringing so unless you have a liking for interiors adorned with hideous golden cherubs my advice is to wander the lovely gardens with its follies, statues and artificial lakes.

Berlin is a city still recovering and reinventing itself and in places it has become quite glamorous but there’s still enough grit and grunge to keep the city interesting and real. Blink and another basement club, or pop-up shop, or cocktail bar and gallery will have opened. Never has a European city had so much to offer, both from its past and present. ■

It would be difficult to visit Berlin and not get a history lesson

Easyjet (www.easyjet.com) fly direct from Edinburgh three times weekly and from Glasgow daily from around £47. A double at Das Stue, based on two people sharing, inclusive of breakfast starts at €250 (www.dasstue.com, +49 303117220).