food – It's all about the coffee

Four Hour Bike Tour in Berlin

Following on from last nights tour, I’m doing another one today. I didn’t have a heap of time to get coffee, and couldn’t get out to the few places I was recommend for best coffee in Berlin, so grabbed one from a small cafe under the rail station. Perfectly acceptable for a random coffee place on the go, a 6.5/10. At another place I grabbed what I could only describe a breakfast pretzel. Not salty and not as sweet as it looks. Rather delicious actually.

We all met at the same place as last night for the bike tour. I count 39 people waiting and I’m think OMG this is going to be terrible, the 25 in Copenhagen was ok but bordering on difficult. Double that is a busier city will be unmanageable. Thankfully we are split split into three groups. Daniel mentions on weekend they can have up to 200 booked in. These tours are popular.

At the start we are told the TV tower was designed by Swedish engineers due to brain drain on the state at the time. Interestingly enough the shape whilst looking space age casts a shadow that looks like the Christian cross. This was was quite embarrisng for the East Germans as an atheist communist state. It was promoted as the Popes revenge in the West. All the bikes have individual names so its easy to remember which one is yours. I had a red one yesterday, so I picked a blue one today.

We rode over to the Opera house which was bombed twice. The Allies bombed it, Hitler fixed it at great cost even with scarce resources during the war. Once it was complete we bombed it again. The communists fixed it again but had no appreciation for musical acoustics and replaced it with a flat ceiling.

We also looked into Bebelplatz (the book burning square of the Nazis). There is an underground empty library to symbolise all the missing books

Onto Checkpoint Charlie. It’s very kitschy now. The traffic here was crazy, no lights or priority signs on a major intersection in a tourist heavy area. This is the only spot in Europe ive felt nervous riding a bike. Exasperating the traffic were hordes of Trabants being driven in convoys by tourists. Funny to look at but a pollution disaster when in numbers. When in Poland on the Communist tour I was In a single one and not driving. They are hard to drive even for people used to them, being a tourist driving one, navigating traffic in Berlin and trying to take selfies with phones is a disaster waiting to happen. Looking out for cyclists would be the last thing on their mind, hence my nervousness cycling anywhere near them.

Here is an example of a convoy I’ve uploaded to YouTube.

From here we moved over to the Fuherbunker (Hitler’s underground lair). It is marked with a sign, but its just an insignificant car park. As I read elsewhere once its an historically significant site but not a culturally significant one so it only gets minimal attention.

Brandenburg Gate was next, then the Jewish Memorial then into the Tiergarten.

The Jewish memorial is massive, I was shocked at how tall some of the concrete blocks are. there are apparently 2711 of them.

The Tiergarten is beautiful and massive. We had lunch here, I had a Bavarian Meatloaf slice on a bun. This is basically a square frankfurt sausage. Tastes way nicer than it looks. In the video below there are some shots of the Tiergarten. There were some very tame birds who would take the food off your plate if you left it for a few moments.

After lunch it was a trip over to the Reichstag and Museum island.

And here is the video from the trip. What other music could I possibly have used other than 99 Luftballons ?

Travel

Dinner and Tivoli

After cycling down to 108 and sampling the coffee, I noticed another large outdoor food market. This is something Copenhagen excels at is food markets. Apart from the cafe where I’ve had a coffee I have not set foot in a restaurant, it all been street/van/market food, and its all been amazing quality and delicious.

It’s not cheap though by any means, Copenhagen is living up to it’s expensive reputation. The sandwiches with soft drink have cost me around $23, and tonight’s dinner and lemonade cost me $32. This would be super expensive for a family of 4 or 5. Add in an ice cream after dinner and per person you won’t get much change out of $50 per person. And remember, this is food stall prices. Coffee that costs me $4 at home cost $8 here.

So after riding around a bit past the Opera house, I went back to the street food place and had a closer look

Some of the food options

I couldn’t go past the Singapore ribs with roti bread.

After devouring that, I rode back to the Tivoli gardens. Even though it’s not really my thing, you can’t come here and not go inside. Single entry to the gardens, no rides included, A$25. O-U-C-H. An unlimited ride pass will cost you another A$50. Individual rides are between $6 and $18 each. No rides for me….

The gardens are pretty. Worth A$25 for entry? Umm…..

Since this is my last night and I had some coins to get rid of, nothing better than ice cream on a warm night. I’ll be paying heavily for this food indulgence when I get home…

Here are some of the restaurant boards of your wondering what restaurant prices are like. All prices in Danish Kroner. A$1 = 4.72DKK at time of writing

Yes you read that right peeps, on this board below a serve of snitty is $42. Add a beer and you just dusted $56. Probably closer to $60 with the fees on exchange etc….

Travel

A Danish Danish in Danish

After deciding that I was just going to cycle around by myself today, after grabbing my coffee at Wecycle (which was excellent). I decided to cycle down to Christiana Freetown. Thankfully I got my coffee where I did, as whilst there were people about, not much was open and I seemed to arrive in the middle of a drug bust / sweep as there were cops everywhere. I’m gathering that a lot of the locals made themselves very scarce at this exact point. The literature on this place says to avoid taking photos as it makes the locals nervous, but given the “enhanced” police presence I snapped a few anyway as it was unlikely anyone would complain or try and stand out at this exact moment.

I spent about 10 minutes there before heading off, this place is probably more lively in the evening and when the boys in blue go home. If this little place had a king it would be Bob Marley. Overall I think Christiana Freetown was the least interesting most overhyped thing I’ve done in Copenhagen. I’m just not into this stuff.

I decided to head over to the old water storage cistern on Copenhagen thats been turned into an art display hall. It was about a 30min bike ride away, i could have gone a shorter route but I wanted to take the bike snake again.

And here is a video of the bike snake.

If you are wondering how I navigate around town on the bike, google maps on the phone in the basket. The spoken navigation makes it a breeze. I had a Danish person ask me for directions. They were amused to see an Australian riding in the back streets of Copenhagen.

The cistern is pretty cool, literally cool, about 10c cooler than outside. Its quite humid. The display was interesting, lots of reflective things, fire and balls gonging on metal bowls. Not sure the actual artistic intention but it was pretty cool none the less. The fire bit was interesting, the closer you got to it, the more it shot out flames. Of course geeky me was looking for all the fire safe mechanisms to see how it cut out to prevent someone roasting them selves, and sure enough there was a sensor that would cut it out instantly if you got too close. There were also fire blankets and extinguishers for that “one person” who would get a little toasty. The whole place was quite dark, the photos show it brighter than it was in reality.

The cistern is an old 19th century water storage area which was taken out of service in the 1930s and drained in the 1980s. It’s on a hill and they used to pump water into it. It’s under these beautiful gardens.

The actual display. In reality much darker than this

It was raining a little when I came out, so I decided to head down to Torvehallerne where I had lunch yesterday and get another Danish open sandwich. The queue was massive so I decided to grab a coffee at the “COFFE3 COLLECTIVE” again. Another awesome brew and I noticed its actually written up in my guide book as a recommend coffee place.

I couldn’t come to Denmark and *not* have a Danish pastry. I tried ordering my Danish Danish pastry in Danish “Jeg woud som et dansk wienerbrød tak”, however failed spectacularly as the sales person at the counter spoke to me in English as soon as I even tried. Interestingly enough Danish Pastries are not called a “Danish” here. They are Viennese Breads ! What ever it’s called, I called it delicious.

Wandered around for a while and the queue for the open sandwich (Smørrebrød) had died down so I ordered a roast beef one. It had roast beef, corn pickle, dried onion, pickles and onion. It was sensational, way better than the one yesterday which was chicken.

Some of the other mouth watering selections

The food being prepared

I rode round the neighbourhood a bit, it started raining again so decided to head back to the hotel for an hour or so until the rain is predicted to clear. Much cooler here today than it was yesterday.

Cycling in Copenhagen is easy. Interesting when turning left (the difficult turn, as riding on the right hand side) you never ever sit in the centre of the intersection, cyclists are expected to do hook turns just like you do in Melbourne to avoid trams

Even though I rode in Paris, on the road it was still a little hair raising when not on a bike lane, In Copenhagen it feels very safe. Here I am doing a left turn.

Once I’d had a break and the rain had died down, I went out to the Round Tower. Read about that adventure here

Travel

Wecycle Copenhagen

Wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do today, there are a few options, I’ve decided already that I love this city. I’d signed up for the bike share so thought about hiring a bike and cruising around

Those bikes worked out at $6 an hour, not outrageously expensive but I had to find a local docking station. I discovered the hotel has bike rental for 125DKK (about $26) and I have it till midnight.

I wanted to cycle over the famous “bike snake” so headed that way and thought I’d cruise towards Christiana, a cool hip neighbourhood in the city, and if it’s full of hipsters with the munchies it’s likely to do good coffee somewhere.

I didn’t even make it into the area when I went past Wecycle. A combination bike shop and cafe. In essence, my dream cafe. To top it off the coffee was awesome, 9/10

Here is the link to their website.

My ride for the day

Travel

Kitchenalia Café

Our day started early with a knock on the door from the apartment manager, she was here to try an fix the internet. It’s virtually unusable in this apartment, I’ve been relying on the SIM card I have in the phone. Thank goodness I have 15g of data, but it means uploading video from last nights ride is not an option.

I’m not really a fan of this part of Paris, it was a last minute compromise given what happened to the one we booked, but I can’t complain to hard, it’s still Paris and only a short ride on the metro from the really nice areas. It’s not that much better here than it is between Gare Du Nord and Gare du Est IMHO

I did grab a Starbucks first thing in case I had the same issue as yesterday, however I need not have worried as I found a rateable coffee (7/10) right near the kitchen shop we visited. This is *the* store to visit in Paris if you are into cooking utensils. After we had looked and shopped here we grabbed coffee next door

Here is the kitchen / cooking store

After here we wandered a bit further away from the Les Halles part of Paris and found some pastry and grocery stores with interesting and wonderful products

It’s amazing the care the French put into displaying and looking after ingredients. It’s no wonder French food is amazing

Tinned Snails, COMPUTER SAYS NO!

We then found a small mall with all sorts of cool shops

There was one with steel letters on display. Of course I let my inner 13 year old out to play a little, bit unfortunately Sharon’s outer teacher took over and made my display slightly more high brow before we left

We are now also the proud owners of the French equivalent of Opal/Oyster cards. It took quite a bit to navigate the French bureaucracy, find someone who spoke English and get some photos printed, but we did it, we have them and no need now for paper tickets. Vive Le France 🇫🇷!! Vive la révolution 🇫🇷 🧀🥐🍷!!!!