Having tasted the purity of Scandinavia we then ventured back to the somewhat more rough & tumble Berlin. With more rain, graffiti and abandoned buildings it was a different but no less interesting cityscape that awaited us.

We spent a couple of days in the South West of the city including a day trip to Potsdam and the Sans Souci palaces and gardens(above), and a quick sqiz at the somewhat surreal Norman Foster library at the Free University (below) before heading east.

Most of our time was spent wandering the wonderfully textured inner suburbs of Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain(below) and Kreuzberg ducking into cafés or bars whenever the weather turned ugly. It was nice to have limited time pressures having covered touristy things in our previous visit 6 years ago. As there is a huge surplus of accommodation in Berlin there are fantastic re-uses of vacant buildings dotted about the place with beautiful run-down apartments overlooking leafy squares.

We tried to taste a bit of the culture of the city – watching Holly Golightly play at a tightly packed smoky bar as well as visiting a slew of Wallpaper mentioned bars and clubs with our architouring friends – the architecture tended to be great while the music was often crappy house. There was even a design festival on while we were in town to allow us to complete our overdose of design.

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