Love it or hate it - Berlin can and will keep surprising you. Sometimes those surprises will be less welcome but sometimes they will make your day, your week or even your next 20 years.Like this story did for me. In the last episode of S...

An old Yididish proverb says: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans". The author heard booming laughter from above and thus planning to launch the last episode in the series had to be postponed.In the meantime you can...

In this episode of "Berlin Companion Podcast" we are travelling back in time to the second half of the 17th century to witness some royal shenanigans (including several weddings, an extramarital affair, a couple of deaths and a crowning) and fo...

Those of us living in the city centre, close to industry sites or a very busy street junction know the smell only too well: fuel, burnt rubber, melting plastic and unspecified chemical stench that might or might not make your skin crawl (someti...

Are you afraid of the dark? The answer is is most probably yes. Few people are comfortable not seeing where they are going, or what might be lurking ahead. An extreme form of that fear is known as noctophobia. When in ...

In December 1989 US department stores expanded their pre-Christmas offer by a very attractive item for late or for undecided Christmas-present buyers.It was small yet profound - filled with more deep meaning than it modest size or weigh...

Hello Berlin and Beyond! This is a repetition of a Series 1 episode - my family and I are about to say goodbye to a very dear person, and my mind is understandably elsewhere. It turned out to be impossible to get the planned episode rea...

The sky over Berlin is never dark. Even at night. The main cause is the city's heavy light pollution. Berlin's streetlights, its signs, its permanently illuminated buildings - all they contribute to the problem. So much so that for the past two...

During 2022 excavations in the area of Berlin's Molkenmarkt - a historic plaza and the city's oldest market place - archaeologists discovered Berlin's oldest street, a Bohlendamm (corduroy road or log road). Two years later they made a...

Eight out of ten people in our (scientifically absolutely unreliable) survey with only one question "What is it that you could never imagine Christmas without?", named it.You can live with less or different Christmas dishes, fewer prese...

The first episode in the new series is both a starter and the main dish. It's a story of soup. Of instant soup that from the late 1860s on fed Prussian, German and even foreign armies, filled stomachs both on and off the battlefields, and was t...

Last week we  talked about the long-vanished cemetery railway line which connected Berlin-Wannsee with Germany's second largest burial site, Berlin's Südwestfriedhof Stahnsdorf. This episode remains in the realm of both the dead and the ra...

What do large cities do when they run out of space to bury their dead? They go beyond their limits. Traditionally all large European cities like Paris, Vienna or London eventually established new burial sites further and further from their cent...

Many old Berlin flats in the typical 19th century apartment buildings are equipped with a curious feature: a small storage space under the ceiling, usually installed in the bathroom, the kitchen or the corridor. What makes these so curious is n...

The 1920s in Berlin were an incredible time, full both of misery and wonder. It was the time which brought both the worst and the best in people who lived there. And sometimes it helped pave way for genius. Or future classics.Episode 5 ...

We all know how annoying air traffic can be these days for those who experience it from the ground - not only is it a time-bomb just waiting to make our environment  go belly-up but it can also bring any conversation to a halt, if said con...

In the 1920s elegant Berliners fell in love with a scent called "Treffpunkt 8 Uhr" (Rendezvous at 8PM). Made by a legendary local manufacture Schwarzlose - which still exists today - it stood for the Exciting and the Romantic but also ...

When in April 1893 German Empire introduced new time measuring system based the Greenwich meridian, Berlin lost something big for good. It lost its own time. Here is the story behind it.Main theme for the podcast: “Assembl...

For anyone interested in history, Berlin is your playground. From old Slavic and Germanic tribes through Crusaders, alchemists and feuding houses to Prussian expansion, Emperors and world wars, including the Cold one. But next to big ev...