I’ve never known as city to be so associated, so wrapped up in one particular music style. OK, Seville has flamenco, and London has … erm … Regina Spektor … but berlin has techno, tchno, techno.

There’s no escaping the manic beats. It is everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I.Mean.Everywhere.IN.CAPITAL.LETTERS!

Even the telephone hold lines pump out techno. When put on hold at DeutscheBahn – yes, the staid, boring railway company – you get jumped on by some biffing choons and beats, bro.

After ringing up for train times to Leipzig, I didn’t know whether to hold or neck a couple of Es and sniff some ammyl, such is the thumping bass rocking from the DB DJ machine, man!

Tim Berlin music, berlin, transport

I’ve danced in an old public toilet converted into a club; I’ve visited a flat converted from an old public crapper, I’ve even taken a leak inside a public toilet (yes, so wow, like I so have!)

But there was one dream I had not fulfilled, I had never eaten organic food cooked and served from inside a public toilet. Until now, that is.

BurgerMeister in Schlesische Strasse (try pronouncing that when you are drunk, especially given the context) is no ordinary ex-public lavvy.

For one, it’s an old, Prussian green-timber framed former pissoir sat smack bang underneath the U-Bahn tracks at Schlesische Tor. Just to remind you of its former use as one guzzles a cheeseburger, there’s an authentic sign that shouts “Manner” (which I think means urinals).

It’s set on a traffic island too; so it’s not just the yellow New York-style subway trains racketing overhead as you sink your teeth into a chilliburger mitt pommer, but cars flying past at 40mph, too. All that’s missing are the pigeons bombing back and forth between the steel rafters, dropping reminders of their presence onto your meal. Actually, there are no pigeons here.

The seats at BurgerMeister are old metal bicycle stands, covered in padded leather, to keep one comfy, though not too comfy that you loiter around the table for too long (erm, hello, perhaps the trains hurtling overhead and the cars whizzing by might sort that!)

The food is rather good, too. as you’d expect in Kreuzberg, the famously leftwing, alternative and now increasingly trendy multicultural district south of the Spree, the very west of old West Berlin. It was here in Kreuzberg, a district surrounded by the Wall on three sides that only punks, ravers and Turkish immigrants prefered to settle. It’s why there are scores of kebab shops and fast-food places and such a leftwing, laidback vibe.

Fast food here means independent fast food, as it is largely all over town. There are no chains.  Well, there is a McDonald’s, albeit hidden away, off the main street of Skalitzer Strasse. When Ronald M opened up here in late 2007, the riot police were on standby. Kreuzberg punks – famous for torching cars each May Day – once threw a handgrenade into a fine dining room to help thwart gentrification. (”th steamed lobster, sir, comes served with a handgrenade?”)

There’s a Subway sandwich chain here too on Schlesische Strasse, but it, too, seems redundant. Each day that I have passed, often at peak times, it has stood empty. When I did spot a queue it was not for the food but for the cash machine outside. Well, why not, it’s a good cash machine.

Few here frequent such chains here. There’s no need. There’s too much good cheap food anyhow. There’s Baghdad Cafe, for starters; the fabled 24hour kebab shop which for many east Berliners was their first port of call when the wall came crashing down almost 20 years ago this November, letting them stream across the nearby am Oberbaum bridge.

Gawd, they must have been deprived; you’d think a chicken doner would be the last thing on their mind after finally being freed from the social shackles of a paranoid one-party police state.

Of course, BurgerMeister wasn’t open back then. But if it had have been, I wonder how many Ossies would have dreamt of taking their first taste of the west, from a burger shop, on a traffic island, under a dank U-Bahn bridge, where the food is cooked inside a former Prussian public lavvy?

Tim Berlin architecture, Berlin drink, Berlin life, Berlin walls, Food, Kreuzberg, berlin, transport Berlin food, Berlin transport, Berlin Wall, Kreuzberg, Schlesischer Tor

Chuffing sparrows, they’re everywhere, like vermin!

Here comes another one, a cheeky little minx, tucking into my bread basket. They are brazen these little birds, much like pigeons, though not as annoying, or as ganky, or as flipping huge.

Thankfully, they seem to outnumber  flying rats  in Berlin.

I can’t fathom why there are so many of the blighters; almost as much a part of the urban furniture as the graffitti. And they act almost like pets. OK, they don’t sit in your hallway woofing at the postman, but they often feed from your hand or pop up onto the table, taking small beak-size nuggets out of your bread.

As I’m typing this at Mir cafe, outside Gorlitzer Park in Kreuzberg, one pesky varmint has nipped up on to the table to help me finish off my snack. wish he’d take the olives instead. He’s not quite as bullish as this youtube clip, but you get my drift.

Sparrows are a thing of the past in London, dwindling in number ever since the horse stopped being the main form of transport – apparently sparrows loved horses crud, which essentially are 90% oats and a cracking good sparrow feed.

Not that the main form of transport is horse in Berlin. However, it is noticeably cleaner air hier, perhaps due to the heavy reliance on public transport, and the tram network, and the fact most people use a bike. Berlin is also almost one-third park, lake, forest or river, with the consequent colonies of insects to feed on.

Not that the sparrowsey need insects: they have bread – Berliners seem to have bread with every meal. Rarely do they eat it all. They just leave it on their plates or in their baskets, for the sparrows to peck at!

Tim Food, Kreuzberg, Sightseeing, berlin, graffitti, photos, transport Berlin sparrows

Tim Berlin architecture, Sightseeing, berlin, photos, transport berlin, Berlin Hauptbahnhof