Pottering Around Berlin and Budapest

Give me a glass or give me Fidesz.

— exhausted, I finally arrived at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, having spent the better half of Mannheim to Frankfurt vigorously engaged by a suited and booted homoeopath with a shock of white hair and a satchel of St John’s Wart. A thin dusting of snow slicks the cobblestone avenues, but I want to stretch my legs. It is 10:30pm, and I am on through Berlin Mitte, dreaming of a big Pilsner and a hostel bunk-bed. The TV Tower’s silhouette looms down the avenue, gazing with its one blinking red eye. For ten days, I’ve gone Alibaba-Bourdain, giving you what’s hot and what’s not from Berlin to Budapest.

Berlin

Freytag Liquors and Spirits

Freytag Liqueurs and Spirits, run by old mate Marcus, was more than happy to provide a run-down on the small-batch Berliner bitters and other modifiers in which the store specialises. From Peychaud’s to Luxardo, this is a one-stop shop for any budding bartender, although I took two, as I could only afford to pick up one item and needed some thinking time. I pondered my pick through the snow of Friedrichshain, finally taking a cold brew liqueur. IN

Buck and Breck

Buck and Breck is one of the best bars in Europe, a sleek speakeasy with classic cocktails and encyclopedic bar staff. At least, that’s what I heard; I didn’t even open the door, which was primed with a warning accompanied by a plastic flamingo. 

“No card - no guns - no phones”

Diffords may’ve seen this place as “effortlessly elegant and without pretense”, but I’ve never seen a shopfront that made me feel more like the bookish dilettante (see: wanker) I fear I am. In a town of whimsical dark spaces, I wanted the KitKat, not the Berghain of Sazeracs. OUT

Karl-Marx Alle

Karl was not a seer, but I am a sucker for red architecture; nothing tickles my Richter more than the tiled facades of Stalinist flats and a boulevard wider than the Wall. Karl-Marx Allee is a Hausmannian tragedy and farce; you push through cold winter air and the ghosts of frog-marching leviathans, past Hyggish furniture stores and the insensitive ex-eponym, Stalinallee. IN

Budapest

Romkocsma, or the Ruin Bars

Romkocsma, or the Ruin Bars, are post-communist city rot squats turned into bar halls. The most famous is Szimpla Kert, which is sprawling but serves at ruinous prices. My friends and I were on the hunt for Pálinka, the mouth-burning apricot spirit, the national moonshine of the Magyars. So, we moved to cheaper orchards.

Living in France, I miss snooker an awful lot. There’s very little that lights my fire like a cold pint of Tiger, blue chalk under the fingernails, and my mate Jacques scuffing an un-scuffable shot off the felt. So when, upon venturing into the cellars of UdvarROM, I saw row after row of unoccupied pool tables and a miserable barman willing to give me balls for 1500 forints, my woes were wiped clean. IN

Black Swan Budapest

My partner Clara and I escaped our friends on the hunt for craft cocktails and ended up outside a wood-panelled noir door reminiscent of a private eye’s office. We were greeted by a black-shirted host, who informed us sternly we had strictly 45 minutes in the bowels of their cocktail crayère.

We were ushered into a stock-standard speakeasy, which nowadays is legal, but Black Swan still managed to serve up a series of crimes.

Charge 1: We were not to be told the base. Apparently, the only difference between sloe gin and blackstrap rum is our prejudice (rather than the fact they’re entirely different spirits); we were to pick on favour alone.

Charge 2: My drink was served to me (fig. 1) in a fucking brick.

I don’t mind a bit of stagecraft, as long as you stick the landing, hence charges 3-999999: The drink was terrible, cloyingly sweet, lukewarm and one-noted. It was syrupy rose water. I was drinking the Turkish delight from the set of Narnia, preserved for 18 years in some old kettle in this bloody bar.

Look, if you’re gonna be pretentious, expensive and exclusive, at least show some love for the craft. OUT

So, in saccharine fashion, what did I take from my sojourn in central Europe? I learnt that Budapest feels like a paradise until your Hungarian mate starts yelling in front of parliament about Fidesz. I’ve learnt that some people like photos in front of Brezhnev’s fraternal snog, and I’ve learned that traversing through Czechia is an awful long train trip if your partner’s at the end of it.

Much love, Cain.