1000 steps... round the KaDeWe!

Main: The Princess & the Pea window display. Inserts: Outside the KaDeWe.  No matter the day there will always  be a crowd outside waiting to get in at 10am. 

It's Christmas time in the KaDeWe. Last week the windows were shrouded while the displays were perfected, but it didn't stop people trying to peek. The theme this year is 'fairytales', and it's been done beautifully. I couldn't wait to see the main foyer display. So I waited with the daily crowds (instead of going to the supermarket) and decided it would be the perfect time for another 1000 steps!

 30 steps... 

If you don't have a silver hand-held mirror that rests on a silver platter, then don't worry: they've got it! Christmas comes in all shades. These pale lilac baubles were rather lovely, though my camera hasn't quite captured their true colour.

Oh, and inside it's just lovely. The foyer is packed full of beautiful things. A zillion things that I wouldn't say no to. Admittedly, that would mean that my house would be chock-full of Christmas tree decorations and scented tealights, but I could be happy living like that. Especially those little tealights that smell like the essence of Christmas and come in the teensiest little ceramic casserole dish complete with lid. Oh, and they have a fine selection of festive fascinators - my favourite was a jaunty cup of tea with lovely ribbons, but I'm not sure if it would coordinate with my snowboots, so I've left it for now...

 50 steps... 

Main: birdcage and birdies, the tree of many baubles and Christmas products piled high. Inserts: Louis Vuitton boots, and the most gorgeously illustrated book of fairy tales. I esp. like the purple cover.

Enter into the world of eclectic prettiness. I have fallen for their gilt birdcages which are dotted around the outskirts of the foyer. They sit atop golden pillars, displaying little feathered or glass birds to clip on to the branches of your tree. Want, want, want...the whole lot. But the foyer complete with all it's overflowing displays is dominated by the KaDeWe's very own ginormous Christmas tree. It's the place to stop with your baby or your boyfriend and have your photo taken for your Christmas card, or more likely your FB profile pic.

 300 steps... 

For the girl who has nothing and wants everything: a crystal studded DeLonghi coffee machine; Red Westco scales: totally worth the money as turn them around and they're a CLOCK!; I do need a hole punch for Orla's school newsletters...

So I skipped the rest of the ground floor which is mainly populated with the cosmetics department and handbags. Which is nice and everything and there are probably more exclusive brands than you'd get in other department stores but really, most cosmetics departments have the same 'look' so I just bypassed it on my tour. The ground floor is also home to an outer perimeter walkway where there are lots of little individual stores. It's here that you can find Prada, Gucci, Tiffany & Co, Chanel, etc, and the lifts without a view. If you are in a rush, avoid the glass lifts in the central atrium, you'll be waiting forever.

I also skipped the 1st and 2nd floors. Menswear & Ladieswear. I couldn't be bothered and I thought I might run out of 'steps', so I went to the 3rd - home of bed & bath, childrenswear, hairdressing, and the creche of joy. But I haven't sorted my photos of it. I love the 3rd floor. I can never get tired of gasping at 50 euro Armani baby bottles, or choking over a completely plain tiny baby t-shirt that costs the same as a return flight to Scotland. And the creche, well I adore the creche and the 3 hours of FREE fun they allow me.

So onwards and upwards to the 4th floor - homewares. When I first arrived in Berlin my neighbour's famous words to me were "Buy your fruit, veg, fish, and meat from the market. For everything else there's the KaDeWe". As I couldn't find a single shop selling mops, I did what my neighbour said and went to the KaDeWe. Alas, while the KaDeWe have most things, they do not stock mops. Unless they are studded with diamonds...

 500 steps... 

They do have a 'My First Barbie' but I'd rather have one of these. Left to right: Van Gogh Barbie, Gustav Klimt Barbie, Sinatra Barbie, Elvis Barbie, Grace Kelly Barbie, and Farah Fawcett Barbie - all 50 Euros each - uh-huh-huh, ooohhh, yeah!

Next floor up and it's toys, stationary, books, and technology on the 5th. I love the toy department. It's not the best one I've ever been in, but it's nice. They have a great selection of Playmobil & Lego, and a lot of Steiff, and Haba, and their play food selection is to die for. Admittedly the play food is far more expensive than the real thing, but you are paying for cuteness, and eh..the creche staff wages.

Lego Santa is back in town; the glorious English-language section of Hugendubel in the KaDeWe; the big Steiff bear who costs more than your house is worth.

  600 steps...  

We're still on the 5th but we're round at the Hugendubel franchise. This is my usual first stop hangout when I drop the kids off at the creche. There is an English-language section - look that's it you can see right there! This is the place that is responsible for some of my stranger forays into literature. I just buy what they have that I haven't read. Especially as I haven't really been in the mood for crime since I got here, so I limit myself to 1 bookcase. But it's made me more experimental, and on top of that, there are seats where you can just sit and read as much of a book as you can in 3 hours and then put it back! Yay!

 800 steps... 

Hello! It's lucky you are protected by glass or I would throw myself at you.

 Just one floor up on the 6th is the KaDeWe food hall. It's great. You'd like it. I promise. It's everything you could ever want at a price you can barely afford! There are unusual, hard-to-get-hold-of things and there are everyday things. I like the bread counter and the cake counter with the lovely little petit fours - they do the tiniest little chocolate eclairs that are only about 3 cm long and a cm wide, they have the broadest range of loaves I have seen this side of the city all displayed beautifully. There are little restaurant stands dotted throughout the food department which are on the ok-side of a-bit-dear. Stevie and I have frequented the Chinese restaurant a couple of times where you can watch your food being prepared as well as watching the world go by and it seems pretty reasonably priced. Really I want to be one of the people hanging out in the Moet bar at 10:30am, having a little glass of champagne while I meet a client. Those are my kind of meetings! Behind the Moet bar you can find the fresh fish; fresh to the point that some of them are in tanks so you can point to the one you want. Around this part of the food hall there are oyster bars which are always busy. Ah, oysters and champagne, or even oysters and beer...if only I liked oysters!

You can buy tea from giant ceramic urns, and choose wurst and cold meats from a massive selection. There are walls of sauces and condiments, a whole section dedicated to different chocolate companies including Godiva. And of course there's the 'American section' which I adore. But you could do all your regular grocery shopping here too. There are fruit and veg sections (see below) which stock everything that you could hope for. I read on someone else's blog that they didn't think people actually shopped there, but that in order to be a proper food hall it was a requirement. I can confirm that I have seen on quite a few occasions people buying potatoes or apples or in fact a whole shopping list of perfect quality produce.

The KaDeWe food hall. This bit has the more exotic things like baby pineapples and plantains, but you could also buy just a regular apple, onion, or orange round the corner. 

 1000 steps... 

Part of the glass roof on a sunny, blue sky, November morning. The seasoning station where you can add herbs, oils, dressings, and spices to your lunch. Nice. Bottom: Dessert. Kids in the creche? Why, yes, I think I will have the strawberries!

From the 6th floor there is an escalator (or lift) which takes you up to the restaurant and bar on the 7th floor. (Just before you get on the escalator you should take a moment to admire the huge Brandenburg Gate which sits in a glass display cabinet. I never gave it too much examination before, but it turns out it's made of 50 kilos of marzipan and took 150 hours to make by hand)  In the restaurant the food is displayed no-less beautifully than you would expect. Everything looks totally delicious. You can buy salads and so on by weight, there is a lovely selection of cakes, always at least two soups, and a wide range of hot meals all freshly prepared. But it is quite dear. You can however get perfect strawberries and cream all year round - but let's just say, you'll pay for that pleasure.

The restaurant itself is set in the roof of the KaDeWe and has great views from the giant arched window which faces out on to Tauentzienstrasse and Wittenbergplatz. You can also see the Fernsehturm from here which is the only place round this end of town that I have actually seen it from. But mostly it's nice just sitting under the glass roof, with a beer, and a new book, and two kids having a great time in the creche 4 floors below. Aaahhh.....

More photos on my Flickr

Kanninchen paella won't make me a better person (pt1)

I was reading Mwa's post earlier about her buying Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Committed' - the sequel to Eat, Pray, Love'. It's about a couple who decide to list their respective flaws to each other prior to their wedding. Is this ever a good idea? There's always the risk that while you list 6 A4 sides of terrible flaws, your boyfriend can only think of maybe 1 or 2 things about himself that he considers negatives. Depending on how long you'd been 'dating', and for me & Stevie that's 10 whole, long, flawless years, I reckon I know most of his flaws and would find it hard not to help him out with a few suggestions. Still, I reckon I'd still have a longer list than him, and that would be enough to make me hate him.

Over the years vague, fuzzy notions I've had about myself have begun to cement themselves in my head as flaws. Maybe it's just as you get older you become more self-aware, and start to realise there are things that you wish were different, but either can't, or can't be bothered to. And then there are the things that you don't consider flaws, but other people do. I'd count my refusal to eat kanninchen paella as one of those. When we were out for our 'one year in Berlin' anniversary, we stopped to get something to eat and Stevie bemoaned my lack-of-adventure-in-food flaw. Stupid paella. Why do they have to be for a minimum of two people anyway? Find me two people who want to eat rabbit paella, and I'll... well, I don't know, probably have a much lower opinion of them. That's bunnies! You can't go eating bunnies! It's just not right. I would have been far more comfortable eating pigs eyelids and god knows what all ground down lovingly into a nice big sausage. And anyway, cast your mind back to Fatal Attraction. Exactly! Bunnies in a pot - never a good thing.

In actual fact the kanninchen paella was just a little follow up to the main event of our anniversary weekend. I'll write about that in part 2. My trip to paradise. Or where more of my flaws (moaning, and my utter hatred of swimming and it's related activities - which absolutely is a flaw (according to Stevie)) are explored.

Saturday-Shoplifter Stevie

So at the end of my last post I mentioned that I had thought I'd had my purse stolen and then I tried as I thought, unsuccessfully, to cancel my Commerzbank card, and got the neighbours upstairs involved in the cancelling before Stevie came up holding the purse that had been sitting on the sofa.

As things turned out I had quite a lot on my mind the next day what with people poking about with my eyes and then an afternoon split between entertaining the kids and mulling over the prospect of needles in my eye every 8 weeks. Apparently what I should have been doing is going down to the Commerzbank and checking whether I had actually managed to cancel my card. But I didn't. I reasoned that I either had done it, or I hadn't. If I hadn't then, great, next time I used my card all would be fine. If I had cancelleed it then my card wouldn't work and no doubt a new one and a new PIN would be making their way to me some time around Christmas. Or New Year, knowing the Commerzbank.

Am I too casual about things like this? We had cash and I wasn't in any immediate need to take money out. I didn't really give it much thought, and to be honest by Friday I'd forgotten about it. So by today, it was a near distant memory.

Until we went to IKEA. (Why is it that when you combine IKEA, me, and the Commerzbank things go hideously wrong?? Should I change my bank to get out of this horrid cycle?) We had gone sledging nearby and the kids were starving afterwards so as IKEA was handy we stopped off there for some meatballs and I managed to pick up a few storage boxes for the growing Playmobil collection which (note: I handily stacked so they were easier to carry). Oh and they had the kids basket of fabric vegetables back in so I got one of those, and then as we were passing I also thought I should get a new storage jar for my risotto rice. And then because Stevie was getting impatient to the point of not coping with IKEA on a Saturday and because the vegetables were for Orla, he went to the express checkout to pay with his card and I wandered over to the meatball freezer with the kids.

The first thing that really pissed off Stevie was getting accused of shoplifting. It's easy done when you only listen to the first half of your dear girlfriend's conversation regarding toy storage. "Should I get 2 of these? Would you be opposed to me buying another of these storage units in the New Year? Do you even care? Ok, I'm getting 3! Because I am definetly buying that when the car isn't full of sledges and crates of empty bottles.". So he scanned 1 crate twice, and then he got collared and the first I knew about it was him screaming across at me "What? 3??? You never told me you were getting 3? Moan, moan, moan". At this point I could tell that Stevie was getting to the point where he can easily be tipped over the edge of reasonableness into a foul mood not because he was now being classed as a shoplifter, but because the transaction was taking too long.

So I shouted back, "Just forget it then, just get 2. It really doesn't matter", you know as you do, because even though you really want something you'd rather just have an easy life. And then we got to payment. If I had known better I would have walked out of the shop with my children and run for the hills and never returned. But you see, I'd forgotten all about Wednesday night. But I remembered as quick as a flash when his card got rejected and he got directed over to a 'colleague'. Shoplifter and card stealer!

Well, what can I say? I forgot it was a joint account and that he might be affected. Curse the Commerzbank! Curse my successful telephone cancelling!

I am going to end up with a terrible guilt complex. Not only do I feel bad about cancelling Stevie's card, but when we got home I put on the washing machine (with a final big bag of Playmobil in it) and now the washing machine is broken. It isn't able to drain, and we can't find the blockage, and even though there is no substantiating evidence, I think we all know that there is a high probability that a pride of lions are more than likely the cause of our soaking wet floor. Has anyone got a dark hole I can crawl into before the downstairs neighbours come round to complain about the massive costly damp patch on their ceiling?

Conceptual eating

Taking my mind off things, last night we went out for a final goodbye meal with our friends who left Berlin today to return to Derby. Stevie has been desperate to try out Vapiano which is a chain of restaurants across Europe selling pizza and pasta. There is one not far from where we live and every time I've passed it it has been really busy. As you walk down the street you can look in the window and see chefs making the pasta by hand, and that has made me quite keen to try it too.

So that's where we went as our friends hadn't been there either. When we arrived we noticed that most of the seating is at high tables with high stools. Not ideal really for a 2 and 3 year old (complete with sledge). But we were also pleased to note that the place was mobbed - that's got to be a good sign when eating out, right? We eventually found a table with seats at a height that would not cause spinal injuries if the kids were to fall from them and a lady at the front desk gave us 4 swipe cards and menus and nicely explained to us how ordering worked. The menu is split into price bands (totally pointless to be honest) and once you have decided what you want you queue up at any of 5 or 6 stations to place your order and watch it being made right before your eyes. Everything about it was just a bit gimmicky. I think you are meant to be impressed by the 'coolness' of standing in a queue to watch your food being prepared, but 1 minute in you can't help but think it's an awful lot like standing in a queue in McDonalds and that's not really that cool.

Once you get to the top of your queue you get to watch your very own meal getting prepared. Again this is fun for about 30 seconds. The sullen chef asks you to select which pasta type you want and then you get to watch him take it from a shelf and tip it out of a takeaway container into a wok-like thing. Once he's made your meal you hand him your little swipe card and he adds the cost on to it. I was queueing with my friend and Hamish and I got my food first along with the kids. I went back to the table and then the guys went up and ordered their pizzas. By the time my friend got back to the table with her meal I had finished mine. And 20 minutes later when the pizzas were ready she had finished hers. Call me old fashioned but I quite like eating together and being served by someone.

The food was ok though, there was just a bit too much concept going on.

Oh and then I thought I got my purse stolen. But it turned out I'd left it on the sofa at home. But not before I 'may' have cancelled my Commerzbank card and got confused by the German recorded message on the 'cancelling your card' phoneline and then went upstairs and disturbed my neighbours and got them to phone the Commerzbank to make sure it really was cancelled. Then we got disturbed by Stevie at the door, who it turned out had been sitting looking at my purse the whole time. But it was worth it because I got to check out the inside of their flat which I hadn't seen before. (Sparse, nice wood floors, extremely large abstract art on the walls, and a running machine in the corner - in case you're wondering)