Berlin, Potsdam, and some surprises

A recent visit to Berlin turned up some fascinating facets of German culture, and a few surprises in terms of unheralded but fascinating sights.

Modern German life:

• Railway stations sometimes have bike repair shops as well as bike parks.
• Nearly every kebab shop now advertises vegan doner kebabs.
• Germany is still 100% paper towel. Hot air hand dryers have zero market share.
• Beer does not go on shelves at the supermarket. You buy it from the crate. Or, of course, you just buy the crate.
• Supermarkets sell bike tyres and puncture kit, often next to the kitchen utensils.
• 'Caffe creme' is not café crème. It is an espresso, with no milk in at all.
• What is the best cuisine in Berlin? Vietnamese!

I found that some of the most interesting places to go were not well known, even in Potsdam. Sans Souci and the New Palace are crowded, with expensive tickets. But walking around the gardens (entry to which is and apparently always has been free) I found the delightful Neptune Grotto, decorated with abalone shells and waterfalls in stone; the Dragon House, a vineyard manager's house in the shape of a Chinese pagoda; and the wonderful Belvedere on the Klausberg.  All of these were part of the same building programme as Sans Souci itself, Frederick II's creation of a world of imagination and fantasy.

But the best two euros I spent in Potsdam was in the superb Botanical Garden, which belongs to the University of Potsdam. It's as if someone got hold of Kew Gardens and tried to shrink it into five greenhouses and a couple of rockeries - and succeeded. The signage is fascinating, treating subjects as diverse as German colonialism, making cocaine, and how ferns reproduce. 

I particularly enjoyed the cactus house. It's clearly designed to work aesthetically as well as thematically - if you designed a garden to look this good you'd feel happy - and the range of cactuses is immense, from tiny penny-sized pretties to three metre tall monsters. 

My guidebook doesn't even mention the existence of the Botanical Gardens, or the Paradise Garden the other side of the road, a little dell tucked in underneath the Orangery Palace, planted with ferns, heathers, and grasses.

And this was in the dead of winter. In summer, it must be spectacular.

On to Berlin, where I ate Vietnamese food every night. Of course I saw Nefertiti, and she worked her magic. I find her smile far more enigmatic than the Mona Lisa's, with her lifted eyebrows giving an impression that she knows a secret that she might tell you... but then again she might not.

But my favourite museums? Hard to choose, but the three that make the cut are the ones that come far down the list for most people.

1. Schloss Koepenick ('outpost' of the Kunstgewerbemuseum). This museum includes several complete rooms brought from other palaces, with a Renaissance marquetry room and a yellow lacquer Chinoiserie room, as well as magnificent pieces of furniture from the 15th to the 18th centuries. The palace still retains some of its stucco ceilings, and you can go right up into the roofbeams where the study collections are located. And when I came out, snow was drifting down slowly...
2. MEK, the Museum of European Culture. I have no idea if 'normally' this museum would be on my list, because the two most impressive exhibits were both temporary exhibitions; one on the Sami culture, and another on basketry which included a huge architectural installation. If all their exhibitions are this good, though, it would never fall off the list.
3. The Humboldt Forum. This is a big favourite because, exceptionally for Berlin, it's open on Mondays, when all the other museums are closed, and it's also free. But that's not all. Its collections are amazing. African art, including (for the moment) some fascinating Benin bronzes, South American art, two reconstructed cave temples from the northern Silk Road... and more Nepalese and Gandhara Buddhas than you can shake a large number of sticks at. But the thing that perhaps most affected me was the story of Rudolf Douala Manga Bell, king of the Douala people of Cameroon - told by his great-nephew, a teacher in Germany. 

Which brings me to two things these museums are getting right. The first is that they are examining the history of colonialism, and correcting biases of the past. For instance, artists were rarely named when artworks were collected from 'primitive' peoples; something that MEK corrected by inviting Sami craftspeople to examine the collection and create works using ideas from the collection. 

The second? They are using audio and video in interesting ways. I've seen a lot of videos in museums and they're often boring. Getting the great-nephew of a fallen king to tell his story? Not boring. Getting a Newari craftsman and a Buddhist monks to give their views of a Nepalese artefact in the collection? not boring. Filming basketweavers as they search out their materials in swamps and forests? Also not boring.

To some extent Berlin museums must have benefited from a huge public investment in culture - which looks like it may be coming to an end this year as the city government makes significant cuts. But they have spent their money wisely and, which is important, imaginatively.