Ars Vini: a little bit of Switzerland in Berlin

There's one tthing about me: I LOVE cheese,no, I WORSHIP cheese!
So there's been some time I was craving for a fondue and a raclette. So I decided to look for a Swiss restaurant, and yesterday we went to try out Ars Vini.They are specialised in fondues (cheese, meat and chocolate), they have 2 venues, we went to the one in Mitte, at the angle of Templiner Strasse and Zionkirschestr.

First, the place is very nice, you feel welcome right away, the staff is very nice. If you order wine, they will advise you, make you try a few samples,... Well, as I don't drink wine I just had a vodka with orange juice.

We had the Classical Swiss Fondue, we thought we'd get 1 or 2 pots for all of us (we were 5), but no, each one gets a small pot with a "dosis" for 1 person. You get with it a small salad and bread, I also took an extra portion of potatoes. It was so delicious! A delight for my tastebuds! I'm so looking forward to have my own place for quite some time and invest in a fondue pot and a raclette grill to throw "cheese" parties at home! ^^
And the "portion" of fondue was really a lot, but with my huge appetite, I was the only one to eat it all and even helped my friends out! :D After this, a kirsch to digest a bit and we went on with chocolate fondue, served with fruits. We had almond chocolate fondue, such a delight once again, but this time we ordered for 1 person and shared between 4 of us. It was really a delicious dinner and plus we had lots of fun!

When paying, the waitress asked us if it was the first time we were coming, and with one friend, we answered at the same time: "yes, but that's not the last"! We are already planing another visit, next time I might try out the meat fondue (I also love this one - yes I love meat, potatoes and cheese, this restaurant is kind of a paradise for me).

Stockholm

This week end I went to Stockholm. It's been a long time I wanted to visit Sweden, so I took advantage of great Ryanair discounts to go to the capital for 1 week end and have a glimpse of it.
I was completely delighted! The city is of the most charming ones.

I left Berlin on Saturday early morning to Stockholm-Skatsva, where I took a bus to Stockholm city centre (80min ride). There, I met with Charlie (my host for the night) and his guest from the previous day. We first went to his flat, then I went alone to explore a bit of the city. I had no idea where to go, I found a map, spotted an island called "Old City" and decided to take the tube to there.
This island (Stockholm is composed of several islands), is really nice, full of little streets, with wonderful buildings. I walked around, visited a few churches, saw lots of beautiful places, even though I didn't know what most of them actually were. Then, I ended up in a shopping street, than in a shopping mall... the good thing in flying with Ryanair with cheap flights is that I don't take check-in luggage for a stay of max 4 days, as I'm limited to 10kilos, shopping clothes & shoes is excluded... but not earrings, and I found a very nice pair! ^^
Then, i took the tube back to where I started, stopped in a café for a good hot chocolate and brownie and went home.
At night we didn't do anything exciting, watched a movie, chatted, went to bed early,... So Stockholm night life experience will be for next time.

On Sunday morning, I went again city exploring alone, I kinda get lost from the tube station to the coach station where I would leave my luggage, but at least I would know the way later when I'll go catch my bus to the airport.
Then, I decided to go to the harbor where I'll take a boat tour later on, walked along the quays, frozen sea, freezing wind, ... I tried to find a cheap & open restaurant in the neighborhood but found nothing so I had to have lunch at Mcdonald's whereas I would have liked to try some Swedish specialty.
Then, I went for the Winter Boat Tour on an icebreaker boat. It was guided tour, so I learned quite a few interesting things about Stockholm and Sweden history, and I was crazy enough to sit outside, despite the freezing cold it was worth it, the views were just amazing. But when we took the way back to the harbor, I went inside again to get warmer with a hot chocolate. I really enjoyed this ride, Stockholm is so wonderful! I really have to go back there in Summer time and stay longer to explore more of the city and see the famous Archipelago.
Then, I headed back to the coach station, I was too cold to walk, and took a bus to the airport to get settled at the hotel, just 50 m away from the terminal. Flying back to Berlin at 6:30 on Monday morning it was the wisest choice, especially that I was going directly to work after that.

I slept at Connect Hotel, quite luxury hotel to me, I paid 55€ for a room (well you can be up to 3 persons) with no private bathroom/toilets, no TV, no nothing, but it was wonderfully quiet! I got a cocktail at the bar, had dinner and went to bed at 7:30pm. So I wasn't that tired when I woke up at 4:30 to enjoy the included breakfast.

This stay in Stockholm was really enjoyable, I now have to go back as 2 days are rather short, a nice week end away from home!

PHOTOS

==Greetings from Berlin==

Havanna, Berlin

On Saturday night, I went (finally) for the 1st time to a club in Berlin! It was Havanna, great club, with 3 floors, one with salsa only, one with bachata, merengue,... and one with rnb, black music, 90's,... There was supposed to be a 4th room with disco/dance but it was closed (I hate disco but love dance music).
It was lot of fun! My problem is that I can't dance proper salsa and it's impossible for me to go & see a guy & ask for dancing... The only man who invited me could have been my father and couldn't really dance...
So even if I love latino sounds, I spent most of my time in the underground floor, where I could dance alone on very good music. So good music, that even with hurting feet and dry throat, I had a hard time leaving the dancefloor! Yeah, I had the wonderful idea to put on new shoes! I was even surprised to hear 2 French tracks, plus good ones! I'm always surprised to hear French music abroad in non-frenchspeaking countries.
I had to abandon around 4 am, my feet hurting too much, so much that I rather stayed sitting at the bus stop for 20 more minutes than running after a bus stopping a few hundred meters away...

But well, I totally love that place, hum so now gotta find electro club! ^^

==Greetings from Berlin==

Dixit

I discovered this game during a board game evening in a bar on Friday night and just love it!

How to play it? Easy:

"One player is the storyteller for the turn. He looks at the 6 images in his hand. From one of these, he makes up a sentence and says it out loud (without showing the card to the other players).
The other players select amongst their 6 images the one that best matches the sentence made up by the storyteller.
Then, each of them gives their selected card to the storyteller, without showing it to the others. The storyteller shuffles his card with all the received cards. All pictures are shown face up, randomly, and every player has to bet upon what picture was the storyteller's.
If nobody or everybody finds the correct picture, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and whoever found the correct answer scores 3. Players score 1 point for every vote their own picture receives.
The game ends when the deck is empty. The greatest total wins the game." (source: Wikipedia which explains it better than I would ^^)

I wasn't that bad at it, I do love the creativ aspect, I might even buy it, it's lots of fun!

==Greetings from Berlin==

A week-end of discoveries...

This week-end was a nice & interesting one. On Saturday, I first went for Brunch in an Italian restaurant, even if there was too much fish according to me, it was very nice.
At night, I went to the place of some guy from CouchSurfing for a small party, it was lots of fun! There was a Mexican guy who came with some specialties from his home land, first: fried bugs, yurk... I didn't try, I found it too disgusting. But he also brought nice dark tequila and showed us the real Mexican way to drink it: you take a quarter of a lime, put some of lime juice on your hand, add salt, lick your hand, drink tequila in one shot and bite into the lime. And this way, it's not burning. Then, I discovered a German way to drink vodka, with Ahoj-Brause powder, a powder with taste, sweet, designed to be mixed with water for kids, but here you take a bit of the powder, in your mouth, take your shot of vodka and mix powder & vodka INSIDE your mouth (cheap shaker :D ), it pops, it's funny! Then, they went for Russian Disco, I wanted top join but felt not really good and we had to queue before getting in the club which means it's full so I rather went home.

On Sunday, I wanted to visit Berliner Dom (the Cathedral) but had to pay €5, so well next time. I had a small walk in Museum Insel (Museuem Island) and ended up in Deutsches Historisches Museum (Museum of German History) which shows National History (and well also European History, they're often linked) from Roman times to 1994. It was very interesting, and gotta admit that German & French Histories are sometimes linked, especially History from my home region which had been the target of wars between the 2 countries.
After that, I decided to go to cinema, i first wanted to go & see Rapunzel (thinking a cartoon might be easy to understand) but it's plaid only late morning/early afternoon so I chose The Next Three Days, it was very nice movie, I really liked it, except one or two times when everybody was laughing because of something funny I didn't get...
It was a very nice week end, and here are some pix of Berlin since the beginning of 2011.


== Greetings from Berlin==

Szczecin, Poland

This week-end, I went to Poland. It was a country I wanted to visit for a long time, I had several attempts to get there while I was living in  Czech Republic (and so not that too far away) but never made it. So for my 1st week-end out of Berlin (Xmas trip to France doesn't count) I went to Szczecin, not very far from the border, used to be German, 2 hours by train, perfect.
I took the train around 8am on Sat morning and arrived there around 10am. And when I got controllled I realised I've been screwed, the lady controling my ticket asked me why I had not bought the Brandeburger ticket for 10€... well because I didn't know, so I paid 55€...

When I arrived, I took the tram and met J., my great host for this wonderful week-end. We started with a breakfast, before going to visit the cute city centre, she wanted to have me taste a Polish speciality, but the place where they make the best ones was closed, so we head off to a bakery, they had poppy cakes! I used to eat tons of this while living in CZ but never found them in the other countries I visited/stayed in afterwards.
We had quick lunch at McDonald's, I kinda like to try McDonalds in different countries, good thing in Poland: they got ice tea!
And then we continued with the visit and ended with shopping! And there was a shop of Bata shoes! A shop in which I hardly can enter and leave empty handed (which is not in Germany), plus it was sales, so I bought a beautiful pair of pumps! ^^

After the shopping, we went home, she cooked me a nice Polish specialty boiled potatoes with "medalony", some meat with oinions and spices, that was very tasty. After this, the party started, some of her friends came by, I was surprised to surprise them by drinking pure vodka. We had a nice time, and ended up in a great night club. The club, Cityhall, was free for ladies before 10pm, and it was a special night with a famous DJ coming, and as I love electro music that was just perfect. Except that I got suddenly completely tired and it was quite frustrating not have the power to dance on such a good music. We got a great night!

The next day, we slept late, and when I woke up, I met her Italian flatmate, and we were like: but we know eachother, don't we? I had met briefly met him last year in Oslo for NYE party, he hosted her in Bergem (Norway) this summer and now he's sharing her flat... the world is so small! I love those moments that are likely to happen thanks to CouchSurfing! We had a slow start, had a good breakfast and went for a walk.
We took a shortcut, quite isolated, so there was still ice, and my sneakers were slipping like hell, I tried to walk on the muddy side, was fun, and we met a dog, it was sitting on my side, as he wouldn't move I started to try to cross the icy way to get to the other side, when it started to bark at us and chase us, with something aggressive in its eyes, I'm usually not afraid of dogs, but there I paniked a bit, and wanting to kinda run away, I slept on the ice and fell, kinda hurt me, nothing serious, but I still feel some pain... Well, I'll survive ! :D
Then, we crossed a nice park, walked in the centre a bit, stopped for an ice-cream and it was already time to get home, stopping by the shop to buy a bottle of Polish Wodka! :D

It was an awesome week end, the city is very nice, there are lots of parks, lakes and it's not very far from Baltic Sea, so might be even more beautiful in Spring and summer... and for sure I'll go back!

PHOTOS


==Greetings from Berlin==

Why oh why?!

I wonder why my online dictionary is always displaying an ad for the shoes website Zalando! I can't help sometimes clicking on it, and I guess I'll soon buy those wonderful pink heels... well once I read (and understood) the conditions for returning or exchanging and got my January salary.
The ad engine of the site must be a kind of mindreader... On my own laptop, I would understand since I might from time to time visit shoe selling websites, but come on it's my work pc!


==Greetings from Berlin==