East Side Galery (Kunst auf der Mauer)

So, I missed posting on Friday too. That would be on account of the most excellent dinner we had at Hallmann & Klee, which I’ll get to later.

The main thrust of the day was to go and see the East Side Galery, an open air exhibition of murals that had been painted on a remaining section of the Berlin Wall, after it was torn down in 1989. The art was still quite fresh because the original artists (bar seven, apparently) had come back in 2009 to restore their work, and it is this restoration that we can see today. Initially we were a bit surprised at the street-grafiti style, because we had walked from the train station through the gate that had the exhibition signage and into a nice park by the river, and so were looking at the “wrong side” of the wall. The art was on the other (street) side. Being on the side of quite a busy street meant that there was often not enough room to stand back to take a whole piece in (or take its photograph), so what I have is mostly a collection of vignettes that could be captured perpendicularly in the space available and angled-shots that might capture the whole piece but not directly. This seems to suit the wall itself. There were, of course, many many more pieces than I’ve included here, which are just a collection of my favourites.

After the wall (both sections: they’re separated by a new apartment building) we travelled to the Neuköllner Wochenmärktet, an insight into Anatolian culture in Berlin. Interesting market: not just meat and vege and knick-knacks, but also quite a lot of cloth, yarns, and clothing-makings. We ate an empanada and a buckwheat Galette each for lunch: didn’t find Anatolian food at all. Both were good though, and the Galette man (“nearly famous in Berlin”) hailed from Camden markets.

From there we stopped in for a coffee (and ANZAC biscuit!) before heading back to the hotel for a rest before dinner. I snored, apparently.

Dinner was at the aforementioned Hallmann and Klee, and was every bit the Michelin star experience. A tasting menu with paired wines with absolutely no sub-par dishes. The whole experience was wonderful. I’ve only included the oysters that we had for starters.