Dorfdisco Gig Calendar

Berlin attracts the Danes

The distance is short, the prices very reasonable, and the city is vibrant with culture. Therefore the Danes’ interest in buying a holiday apartment in Berlin has been exploding in the most recent years. Compared to Denmark the purchase and sale of a property in Germany work quite differently though, the Danish-German laywer Hans-Oluf Meyer, who specializes in the purchase and sale of real estate, told the newspaper Erhvervsbladet. He sees a fast-growing Danish interest in buying a holiday flat in the German capital.

»But Danish buyers should be aware that in Germany it is the buyer who pays the estate agent fee, which is 6 per cent of the buying price and thus considerably higher than in Denmark, and the condition report is not existing in Germany,« Hans-Oluf Meyer told the newspaper.

Another pitfall is the total costs related to the transaction which are also higher than in Denmark and amount to about 10 per cent of the sales price.

Mr Meyer points out that it is the price level of apartments in Berlin which is the all-important reason for the Danes’ interest in the German capital.

»At the moment you can get a reasonable three rooms apartment at a price of about DKK 1 million, which is about one third of the price in Copenhagen«, he said and added that the property price level in Berlin is »at the very bottom compared to the European level«.

»But people should only buy a flat in Berlin because they like to have a place to stay when they are in town – and not because they hope to profit from price rises on real property like those we have seen in Denmark«, he told Erhvervsbladet.

MUSIC > Sonambiente Berlin 2006

SONAMBIENTE.NET: sonambiente berlin 2006 is summer in berlin set to music for the eyes and ears. Installations, objects, performances, happenings ­ visual art, sound art, video, new media, radio art, film: from June 1st to July 16th, for the second time since 1996, over 40 internationally known artists and some 20 up-and-coming art school talents make the metropolis reverberate with sound.

At five central venues and many other exciting locales, sonambiente berlin 2006 generates an extensive network of events throughout the centre of Berlin.

With a wide-ranging programme, the festival for hearing and seeing kicks off its opening weekend, June 1st to 5th, parallel to the football world cup.

This major sporting event plays a direct role in several of the artists' works. From June 9th to July 7th, the sonambiente_public viewing sound art lounge at the Haus der Berliner Festpiele will be the place to watch live broadcasts of the football matches amidst the arts. sonambiente berlin 2006 is a production of the Akademie der Künste and the Berliner Festspiele. The Opening of the exhibition will be on June 1st 18h at the Akademie der Künste Pariser Platz.

Festival direction/artistic directors: Matthias Osterwold and Georg Weckwerth.

FOOD > The Best and Wurst of Berlin´s Greasy Spoons

Almost every region of Germany has it´s time-honored local specialities, like the rich variety of dumplings from Bavaria, tender Pike-Perch fresh from the river Havel in Brandenburg or Rheinland-Pfalz´s stuffed sow´s stomach so beloved by former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Not so in Berlin.

Gastromically speaking, the German capital is still a brash, soulless place that turned into a metropolis only a century ago with little time to develop a culinary tradition. Fast food from the Imbiss (the world literally means "beetween the teeth") is often the staple fare of Homo berolinensis. But when the feeling strikes that you need something more substantial than your tongue in your cheek, than pride of place in the pantheon of rapid delicacies is taken by the one downright genuine Berlin original, the currywurst.

This is a grilled or deep fried pork sausage, cut into chunks, liberally dusted with curry powder and smothered in tomato ketchup. Of course, there are rival claims from Hamburg that the currywurst is a discovery of north German provence but every Berliner will tell you that Frau Herta Heuwer invented the currywurst for her stand on the Stuttgarter Platz on September 4, 1949, using a special spicy ketchup of her own invention with she later patented (Patent No. 721 319). Seventy million currywurst are annually slaughtered in Berlin. But too often, the luckless sausages spend all day on the grill or are deep-fried and tasted oif rancid fat. That ketchup may be red but it´s never seen a tomato and the curry powder hasd a stale musty aroma of orange sawdust. This isn´t what the currywurst is about.

Choose an Imbissbude which is well frequented and you can be sure, your wurst will be fresh; its slashed skin glistening and crisp, the ketchup fruity and prickling on your tongue, suffused with spices, and the curry breathing a hint of oriental promise. One last tip: Keep an eye out for visiting policeman at your local currywurst stand, for the long nose of the law often knows whre the best ones are to be had. My team of scientifically-trained testers has been combing the city to see whre you can get the best currywurst with pommes and mayo and a fresh bread roll. Scores were awarded up to a maximum of ten points. These are some of the results, in ascending order of merit: Schnellimbiß am Bierpinsel: U-Bahnhof Schloßstraße, next to Wertheim. Cost: 5,50 marks. Unconventional beef bratwurst, flabby, without bite. 3,5 points.

Fleischerei Bachhübers: Wittenbergplatz opposite KaDeWe. Cost: 6,50 marks. Organically produced, deep-fried, wurst with a good flavour, exterior hard, interior rubbery. Let down by curry ketchup: too sweet with a strong paprika overtone. Crispy, thick pommes with a soft centre. 6 points.

104, Wilmersdorferstraße 104, Charlottenburg. Cost: 5,50 marks. Slightly rubbery sausage with thick skin. Ketchup is rather odd - a bit like a warm, watery Napoli sauce with curry powder shaken over it - but it´s nonetheless strangely adictive. (This is one of those places favored by the police.) 7 points.

Konnopke, Schönhauser Allee, U-Bahn Eberswalder Straße. Cost 5.90. Skinless sausage, tasty and fresh. Ketchup fruity but without the necessary spices. Pommes freshly fried and golden. Worth the trip to stand in the genuine East Berlin queue and very tasty, but not very curry. 7,5 points.

Curry 36, Mehringdann, corner of Yorckstraße. Cost 6.20 State-of-the-art-sausages, hand slashed before grilling, well browned and bursting with flovour. The kethcup packed with tomatoes and alost as thick as the creamily glistening mayo. Generously dredged with an aromatic melange of spices. Just go into this wurst mecca and savor the flavor. 9.5 points!

Down the photo: the "wurst" is yet to come. Every man, woman and child in Berlin eats an average of 20 curried sausages per year.

ARCHITECTURE > The construction of the new Berlin Hauptbahnhof is a logistics masterpiece

While constructing the excavation pits, groundwater levels were constantly monitored, bridges were built while operations continued, and 1.5 million cubic metres of soil removed by barge, which would otherwise have resulted in a 1,300 km long convoy of trucks.