Boetzowviertel Photo: Chriggi
There are no big-draw museums or landmarks in Prenzlauer Berg. You venture up the mountain (well, in Berlin it’s a mountain) just to breathe the latte-scanted breeze and to hang out, browsing markets or checking out the boutiques. Now that most of the altbauten from the late 19th/early 20th century have been restored, there is only the odd crumbling façade with missing balconies and old flag holders, but if you want boho atmosphere, there’s a zone of Prenzel’berg that most guidebooks skip, where the air is even more rareified: the Boetzowviertel. It’s not just the tourists that pass by. Brennendeautos.de, which keeps track of all the luxury cars torched by anti-gentrification protestors in Berlin, records only one BMW and one Porsche being sacrificed to the anti-Mammon in the genteel streets near Volkspark Friedrichshain.
Have your photo taken on Marienburgerstrasse Photo: evy produkties & konstrukties
Technically Boetzowviertel begins east of Prenzlauer Allee, on Marienburgerstrasse, but if you carry on and cross the less-than-lovely Greifswalderstrasse, you get to a leafy street of freshly restored, pastel coloured altbauten with carefully maintained plaster-work.
Around Hufelandstrasse you can find pagan goddesses tangled in vines, trees-of-life sprouting under balconies and fat putti pouting over doorways. Look up at the eaves of a dull brown stucco’ed building on the corner of Esmarchstrasse and Hufeland and there’s a frieze of diaphanously robed goddesses prancing with naked athletes.
It’s pottering territory on Hufelandstrasse. Who knows how long the chi-chi shops selling ‘Scandinavian living’ (ribbed glass jars and paisley dolls) bio-composting toilets or 12€ ‘vintage’ H&M skirts will last; they’re nice for window shopping. Kunstschule has novel Berlin souvenirs, Fernsehturm-shaped cookie-cutters, soft toys and bird feeders, and Corsarini sells its own printed wallpapers with Tord Boontje-style foliage. In Schneewitte I found a fragile, lacy Sixties wedding dress with a photo of the original owner and her groom in 1969.
The eating is good too: you can pick from Pakistani, Portuguese, Indian, Thai or get a magazine from one of the best-stocked cornershops in the city and spin out a coffee in a bakery or cafe. Chez Maurice on Boetzowstrasse has stayed the distance: excellent French bistro food for twelve years. Down Niederkirchnerstrasse there’s the Kunst und Teehaus Tschaikowsky, where an earnest young man with curly hair is strumming an acoustic guitar.
Does anyone here do any work, you might wonder? Listen and you'll hear the sound of lotuses being ruminatively chewed.
