Water Bus – Budapest

I could have used one of these on my last trip when the bridges were washed out from the floods

Pretty sure a strong wind would blow this thing on its side. It looks amazing though.

Stern Beer – Krakow

Harsh, but fair

This name cracks me up.  Tiara doesn’t find it funny. We leave it to you, readers.

Gummy Walker – St Paul De Vence

It came from a mediocre bistro!

These gummies came with the bill at a thoroughly unremarkable restaurant. From humble beginnings come great things…

Bootleg Cars Display – Czestochowa

For some reason the strip mall in Czestochowa had a bunch of cars that had been chopped up and made to look like Cars. The steering wheel in this one is actually hooked up. Impressive chop jobs.

Cairn – Trail around Vence

This cairn has no fewer than 13 carefully balanced rocks!

Fun fact, Tiara and I have taken dog surveys (highly scientific!) that say we should own a Cairn Terrier.

Bathroom Sign at Hanage Restaurant – Berlin

This speaks for itself.

I have an acquaintance who admitted to me of using western toilets in a squat toilet manner (figure 4). So it is possible Hanage has had these other problems as well.

These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty – Copenhagen Airport

Apparently we couldn’t wait long enough to take a picture before ripping into these thirst-inducing treats

Tiara and I have been slowly rewatching Seinfeld on this trip after hours. Obviously, we had to own this bag of These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty.

Pirate Wine Glass at La Cantine Restaurant – Paris

Yo ho, ho, and a bottle of Rosé

We had a really great set lunch at this place, and I fully intended to write about it. The skeleton chef wine glass will have to suffice.

I have no idea at Jardin d’Acclimitation – Paris

In the future, we will all be cows.

Okay, so I looked it up, and apparently transhumance is a real word:

the action or practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer.

But I’m still going to picture a parade of variegated transhuman cow-people roaming the astroturf.

I regret not taking a picture of the menu, because now it’s all on my memory, which, frankly is not up to the task. Drink names were weird. Like really weird. I couldn’t find the current menu, but previous drinks had names like “Fishing, But the Easy Way” and “Holy Shit – Is That Mary?”

Some strangely named drink

This is Tiara’s first order, a rum and banana concoction. Overall it was just a smart drink.  Banana and rum are like coconut and rum; a great pairing, that has been horribly perverted by the synthetic alcohol industry (looking at you, Malibu).  Needless to say Bryk was making its own banana rum, and it was delicious.

The garnish plays with a traditional absinthe preparation; the slotted absinthe spoon is actually holding a rolled up smoked dried banana thing. Think banana fruit roll, then try really hard to imagine it being good, and you’ve got the idea.

I honestly have no recollection what was in my first drink. I do remember linking it though… Apologies to all our devoted wanderalongs.

This was my round 2. Which was a little more memorable. Bryk is making their own gin in collaboration with a nearby distiller.  I asked the bartender for something using it. What came back was this martini-alike. The juice itself was good, but for some strange reason they chose to coat the glass with vanilla sugar. It didn’t make any sense, and actually detracted from the drink. Just goes to show; everyone needs an editor.

The last drink was a coffee concoction that Tiara ordered. A+ for presentation; they have a cocktail-sized mason jar with latch that perfectly allows a straw to peak out.

The drink itself was more of a B. Good coffee flavor, although a little weird combination with citrus.

Verdict

Bryk was definitely the most creative of the bars we tried in Berlin. Sadly, most creative does not necessarily mean best drinks. Tiara’s banana rum drink was possibly our favorite drink in Berlin, but the others had some flaws that put them below the average. Still, if you’re into cocktails blazing new ground, Bryk is a good place to check out. Also they solidly won on complimentary bar snacks; their dill popcorn was phenomenal.

In my defense, Beckett looks like he’s been through a lot

As I mentioned in my previous post, Beckett’s Kopf is owned by the same party as Lost in Grub Street. Though Lost in Grub Street went a little weird, Beckett’s Kopf has been tuning their game since opening in 2004, which is practically the epoch of the craft cocktail scene. Unsurprisingly they nail the classic speakeasy vibe.  And like any good speakeasy, it was “stumble into the wall” dark in there. So photos are on the grainy side.

Times of Cascara, served in fancy bone china.

First off, they had a good esoteric “wow” factor. One of the ingredients in the Times of Cascara is “a tea from the fruit of a coffee cherry.”  I had never had anything made with the outside of coffee, and now I want more of it. Add in some cognac and batavia arrack, and it was a complex sipper. I’ve always been a fan of Earl Grey in the morning, but Times of Cascara may well change breakfast forever.

The Knickerbocker, a “prehistoric mai tai”

I should mention that the menu was all in German, so we were shooting in the (literal and figurative) dark. Tiara went for the Knickerbocker, based on reading the words “Mai Tai” and “berries.”  It drank more like a sour than a Mai Tai, but was still well balanced and delicious.

Now that we had the bartender’s ear, we were able to get advice on our next drinks. I went with the Ford, essentially a genever martini infused with wormwood and a lemon twist. Delicious. I’m a big fan of genever, it’s got a more nuanced complexity than it’s modern juniper driven cousin, and is the main component in my second favorite long drink, the John Collins.

Side note: most modern bars make their John Collins with bourbon. This is wrong. Those of you lucky enough to live in San Francisco can go to Comstock Saloon to get one done right. 

Tiara got the Lusitanian, a mix of Portuguese brandy, tawny port and cherry liquer.  The net effect had a lot in common with a manhattan, which is probably what they’re going for with the name; Lusitania was a Roman province in what is now Portugal.

Verdict

This was our favorite cocktail spot in Berlin. Beckett’s Kopf strikes the right balance of making unique drinks with a decent atmosphere. Not having to fight for a seat was also a big plus.

It wasn’t the mind-melting perfection of Le Syndicat in Paris, but it was every bit as good as our favorite bars at home.

The theme of the bar is “big bowls and short drinks.” Being as how there are only two of us, we skipped the punch bowls.

Bonus points for the double-wide cocktail napkin to accommodate the palate cleansing water.

There was a fair amount of esotericism going on here. To start with, the bar had a “pre-American” theme. Punch predates the modern bar-with-bartender-behind-it (an American invention), so Lost in Grub Street eschews the fixed bar in favor of a roving liquor cart. Or at least that’s what the bartender told us. My guess is they couldn’t figure out a way to make a bar fit in the big narrow space.

The bartender wheeled that jalopy table-side to prepare our drinks as we watched.

The menu was also frustratingly opaque. Rather than write out the ingredients, Lost in Grub Street chooses to list flavors (in German, of course). The bartender was very accommodating, but it’s no fun needing to ask what’s in every drink on the menu.  Near as I can tell they also weren’t using fresh citrus in any of the short drinks, putting them firmly in the spiritous family of cocktails.

We settled on Mandarine–Walnuss–Nelke (Ian) and Pflaume–Port–Zimt (Tiara). My drink had cognac, a local walnut liquer, and pierre ferrand triple sec. Tiara’s was madeira, a local plum liquer, and cinnamon tincture.  They were competently prepared, and flavors were generally good. Nothing blew our mind, and we settled up after the first drink.

I did get snipped at by the bartender for asking what one of the bottles was as he was adding it to the drink; “I vill show you at ze end!” To his credit, he did line the bottles up after mixing the drink for my benefit. He also refilled our water after every sip. I guess service was in keeping with the bar’s theme; studiously observant and a little stilted.

The owners of this bar also run Beckett’s Kopf, which is in a “hip” neighborhood outside of the center. A review is forthcoming; keep an eye out for the comparison.

We were lucky that the Gemäldegalerie had two of his 30 odd works while we were in Berlin.  Here are a couple close-ups from St. John the Evangelist and The Temptation of Saint Anthony:

Maybe not your typical transit, but it beats sitting in traffic

“Yeah, I’m a nearsighted lizardman with angel wings. So what?”

Fish Knight to the rescue

Low-Fi

Take a byte out of capitalism

Monochrome

Pretty sure this guy has a shack in the woods somewhere. And a shovel. And a bag of lime.

Disturbing and Weird

Alfred E Newman meets The Walking Dead

Its an um… island?

East Side Gallery

There’s a lot more than this, I just picked a couple I thought were cool.

Big and Bright

Giant Metal Horses and Dead Popstars

This utility box provides 220v electric, gigabit internet, and tetrastep moonwalk.

FIN

I kid you not, this is the “small” soviet memorial in Berlin

After they got their chunk of East Germany, they spent a little more time to build something substantial. You know, because the first one was so tiny.

A handsome soviet with a ten foot sword rescues a child while crushing a swastika under his boot. Masters of subtlety, the soviets.

The plaza leading up to the giant statue. In the distance you can just make out two more giant triangles that look like abstract dogs.

Believe it or not, there is yet another plaza behind this one, with yet another sculpture.

The main attraction is a collection of objects Vlad has collected over the years that he has put together in really nontraditional ways to create surreal scenes.  For example:

The doctor will see you now.

Much of the collection is made up of sports equipment, old cameras and lights, and medical instruments.  The overall effect is…weird.  Vlad says the main point of the museum is that we all love fantasy and science fiction books and movies but are much less interested in history.  However, the history of these objects (e.g. an iron lung) is sometimes more wild and fantastical than any science fiction story.  He wants his visitors to be creative and imagine stories behind the objects, and he promised us we would leave two times smarter!  While I don’t know if we succeeded on that front, we were very amused by the museum and appreciated Vlad’s personal touch telling stories and even trying on some of the items in his collection.

Here are some more photos.  Perhaps you too can use your imagination and be twice as smart when you finish this blog post!

What is going on here?

We each opted for the €8 lunch special, which included four dumplings and a bowl of soup.  I got Shanghai soup dumplings and chicken soup with wontons.  Ian got black beef dumplings and lamb soup.  The soup dumplings had trouble staying together and didn’t have lots of broth, but they tasted good (though they can’t compete with Nan Xiang’s XLB in Flushing, NY).  Everything else was quite tasty and the price was right.  We were surprised and pleased to find such a good spot to satisfy our dumpling craving.

I don’t want to grow up, ’cause if I did, I couldn’t be a bolshevik kid