The Bibiotheca Culinaria is a very special bookshop, devoted as it is entirely to antique / second hand cookery and baking books from around the world. It is the largest bookshop of its kind in Germany, and the owners are extremely friendly, greet each customer personally, and will offer you a coffee and show you some of their favourite recipes – such as one for “bear paws”… if you want to know how to cook them, you’ll have to go and ask!

“The Kitchen” is the cafe on the ground floor of The Circus Apartments.
It is a small, cosy café, where you can have breakfast, grab a bowl of probably the best muesli in Mitte and combine it with some great coffee. They also sell sandwiches, wine and yummy cake (try the cheese cake). Staff are super friendly and have an answer to all your questions.

Description: So you are sick of hanging around in cities? Its boiling hot? Then why not take a trip out of Berlin to Brandenburg. There are many lakes on which to take a dip. The Strandbad at Wandlitz takes about an hour with public transport to get to and cost €3 to enter. You can of course not both with the official swimming spot at the lake but for €3 you get a life guard which is pretty handy if you need one, changing rooms and toilets etc. Wandlitzsee is a wonderful lake and with some great surrounding countryside to refresh your lungs.

Description: The museum depicts the technological advance of the Berlin fire brigade from when they were getting to the fires with horse and cart or the six man bike (my personal favorite). There is also a range of mechanized fire engines over the years, video and descriptions of the varying jobs carried out by today fire brigade. The museum is situated on the third floor of the Tegel fire station and the entrance is all blackened out as it was on fire. A very small and specialist museum.

Description: A year after the construction of the Berlin wall (1962) brick layer Peter Fechte and his friend tried to escape East Germany at a section of wall just near checkpoint Charlie. After observing the guards they made a run for it and made over the death strip (a stripe of land that gave the border guard a free field of fire) to the Berlin Wall itself. Peter’s friend was lucky enough to get over the wall although Peter was shot through the pelvis and slumped down back into the death strip in plain view of hundreds witnesses. Despite his screams for help neither the West Berlin Police nor the East German border guides did anything (apparently for fear of being shot at by the opposing side). After one hour he had bled to death, which lead to a massive demonstration in West Berlin. An hour after Peter’s death the East Germans picked up his body and carried it back to East Berlin, he was just 18 years old. On the memorial it states that “he just wanted freedom”. In 1997 two of the former border guides that fired on Perter (the third one had already passed away) were sentenced to less than 2 years for this crime.

At the end of the 19th century Berlin ran out of space to bury people so had a smashing idea to use modern transport and create a massive cemetery on the outskirts of the city.

Thanks to its size and park/forest like design it became one of the most famous burial places in Germany. A large sections of the cemetery are renowned for there gravestone art and interesting mausoleums although after 1961 the cemetery lost its role as it found itself cut off from West Berlin due to the building of the wall and this lead to large sections of it becoming over-grown and falling somewhat in to decline. This process has been in reversal since 1991 when money for renovations became available. Very interesting and tucked away at the far end of the massive graveyard is a small British Commonwealth cemetery which is final resting place for prisoners of war from the First War World 1914-1918.

A very different museum…

So the person who came up with the idea to dedicate a whole museum to Berlin’s favourite spicy sausage must be simply mad. The bank that lent him the money (if he needed a bank) to do this must also be mad. It must be like waking up and having a funny idea in your head but then not just smiling about it and forgetting it but actually doing it….. Madness. Anyway here you can find out everything you possibly wanted to know about currywursts such as the new snack was born when Herta Heuwer in Berlin in 1949 mixed together tomato and Worcestershire sauce that she scavenged from British soldiers and put it on a sausage. You can also get stand in a little snack bar and press buttons which make all the right noises.

One of the Circus family and friends (Peter Sutcliffe) has written a book which shows Berlin in a new light. Around Berlin is 80 beers is a selection of pubs throughout West and East Berlin each selling a different type of beer.

The book is so well researched that it humiliates even the most well informed Berliners knowledge. Complete with maps, bar descriptions and facts about the different beers and even a brief history of Berlin for those more conventional tourists. Peter spends most of his working life in the depths of Whitehall but his passion lies in that brown fizzy drink that has been keeping generations of people happy. What Peter does not know about beer you write on the back of a postage stamp!
Now my beer drinking credentials are pretty sound having at least 22 years under my belt, 13 of those in Berlin and I am pretty sure if I never drink another beer in my life I have had my fair share. I can also claim to be one of the few people that survived Sunderland University beer festival 1992 and 1993 legendary all day sessions not only with having the inside of my stomach exposed but also making it back home with my souvenir tankard intact. The souvenir tankard for those interested is still proudly displayed in my old bedroom at me Mums, thanks Mum for not throwing it out. Anyway, enough chit-chat, what’s the best beer in the world according to Jimbo? Well you can do a lot worst than a Radeberger from Dresden which was incidentally the favourite beer of Vladimir Putin during his KGB days when he was based there in the 1980s, so he cant be all that bad www.radeberger.de/ A half litre of this lovely brew can be enjoyed on page 66 of the book and is just around the corner from the Circus. And while I am on a roll, I should mention the beer that can consistently upset me? Robinsons Bitter from my home town Stockport, I know I should be a little more “local patriotic” but the stuff is rank. www.frederic-robinson.co.uk/ All that said a few words of wisdom from my Granddad concerning beer:
“It don’t matter what it tastes like as long as there is plenty of it” Norman Penders 1940
Would Mister Sutcliffe agree I am not so sure….?