The view from the top of Französischer Dom.

With our last night in Berlin we met Wabes at Fr. Dom and climbed the 254 steps to the viewing platform where we had a 360 degree view of the city. It was still warm up there, but breezy and beautiful in the late afternoon light. Then we visited the Fassbender & Rausch chocolate shop, famed for having enormous models of the Brandenburg Gate and other architectural marvels made of chocolate, with a cafe dedicated to cakes and chocolate drinks. In the spirit of pure vacation decadence*, we replaced beer o’clock with cake o’clock (Berlin takes cake-baking *almost* as seriously as it takes beer-brewing) and the three of us destroyed three little cakes and chocolate drinks in record time. We returned to the Fr. Dom for a music concert — mostly Chopin — in the little side chapel. The room had amazing acoustics. My mind wandered with the music while the sugar high slowly subsided.

Then we walked north through the city enjoying the late twilight. We crossed over the Spree with a view of the Bode Museum, and ended at a little cafe aptly named Cafe Bötzow (apt since we’ve been staying in an apartment on Bötzowstraße all week, no relation). We had a farewell Berlin meal of house-made käsespaetzle (made, appropriately, with a strong Tyrolean mountain cheese from the region we hiked in last week) and damn if it wasn’t the most delicious mac-and-cheese-meets-freshly-made-dumping ever served in the history of mac and cheese. We sat out at a sidewalk table, of course — I realized that we didn’t eat a single meal INSIDE a restaurant all week — and had time to linger over a final beer while visiting with Wabes.**

Then it was back to our apartment for a few hours sleep, and on our way home tomorrow. I’m not anxious to leave Berlin or to resume our normal lives, but I was beginning to feel a little profligate. Had we’d stayed in Berlin any longer I would have needed to add some structure to my days — work, German language lessons, something to make me feel like a productive member of society again. We concluded that 3 weeks is, in fact, the ideal vacation length — one week to wind down, one week to really relax, one week to wind back up and be ready for normal life again.

* eg, “we’re grownups and we can spoil our dinner with 6pm cake if we want to!”

**I have great appreciation for the late-night dining habits of Berlin in the summer (and possibly winter? I keep visiting here in the summer), where one can go to a 7:30 show and still dine afterward –I’ve never been a fan of the pre-show 5:30 grandma-dinner.