The one about the coat loop — An Elegant Sufficiency

As I was gathering things to bring with me to Berlin, I noticed that the loop in the back of my coat had broken. Knowing the importance of such things in chillier European countries where cloakrooms are essential, I thought I should replace it, much as I had done already with my Hero's coat.

Bearing in mind this was the morning we were leaving, I simply grabbed the nearest piece of ribbon from my sewing table and stitched it securely in place. Job done. When we arrived in our hotel, I hung my coat up on the hanger without further ado.

This morning, we had tickets for the matinee concert of music for Organ and Flute at the Berlin Philharmonie. We'd not been there before, even though it's adjacent to our hotel.

We looked on Google maps to see how much time to allow, noting that the entrance was on the far side of the building and there was a large road intersection to cross.

It's also a large complex of buildings; offices, several halls and a library. My Hero had used the facility when researching his book, ordering scans of manuscripts and so on. By the entrance to this “Kultur Forum” was a useful map to help us find where we needed to be.

The answer was immediately in front of us. Yes, we were incredibly early!

We looked around, noting that this part of the city is still under construction, though nothing like it was when I was here immediately post-reuinification, when PotsdamerPlatz was just a sea of cranes and nothing more than a building site.

It really didn't matter that we were here early, for there was plenty of reading material!

No queue for the cloakrooms - of which there were three or four like this. We handed our coats over and watched as the gentleman behind us did the same - noticing the muttering from the cloakroom lady as she went in search of a coathanger - for his coat had no ribbon hanging loop!

And there was time to chat to the delightful lady who handed me a programme. I checked with her how to find our seats, in “Block C, Row 6, 13 and 14” (First find Block C!) We have become more observant in locating our seats following a hiccup in the Schillertheater where we saw Chicago. There, we had “Parkett Links 18 and 19” - that's “Stalls, left, seats 18 and 19”. Perfectly clear - except….no sooner had I sat down in seat 19 than a young woman came along and showed me her ticket, also numbered 19…Hmmm? But hers was “Parkett Rechts 19” - in the middle of the row were two seats numbered 19 - one left and one right! Needless to say, I was sitting in the wrong 19!! Another lesson learned. In some German theatres, the seats are numbered from each end and meet in the middle. Who knew!?

Anyway, the Philharmonie is an interesting construction and when booking the tickets, I had difficulty imagining the layout.

From our seats in block C rechts, we had a fine view of the stage, where the organ console had been put into position alongside the music stand for the flautist. We were very impressed by the layout, by our comfortable seats and I think, almost immediately decided that yes, we need to come to a full orchestra concert here! Over the next ten or fifteen minutes the hall filled to around 80% capacity I'd guess and for the next hour and a half, we were treated to some glorious music. what a grand way to spend the morning!

We had planned our day carefully, thinking that we'd go from the concert to Mitte on the UBahn, where we'd booked a table for lunch at 2pm at another favourite haunt, the Augustinerstube in Gendarmenmarkt. We envisaged spending any spare time at the Christmas market there - until we arrived and saw all the road works.

Not part of our plan!

Never mind, we decided we'd head straight to the restaurant, explain and aim to stay dry, hoping the rain would stop before the afternoon when we'd go in search of the new market location after lunch. Our table was ready anyway, so in we went.

Our reward? German Christmas dinner on offer for the second Sunday in Advent. That's roast goose, potato dumpling and spiced red cabbage - delicious! We sat a while, savoured the flavours and felt content 😘

Feeling full, we set out towards the market, though once there, decided to continue towards the more “normal” market a little further on from here. We'd forgotten that this market is a fenced off, paid-entry collection of more upscale offerings and not really what we had in mind for an hour's mooch on a Sunday afternoon.

It was a gloomy afternoon though and the walk through the drizzle and over the bridge towards the Cathedral wasn't exactly the jolliest.

But the lights of the market soon lifted our spirits!

We stopped by a couple of the stalls, buying some candied almonds and other small bits and pieces.

With the Alexanderplatz TV tower in the background, we were keeping an eye on the time, for it being Sunday, the opera starts at 5pm.

So we hopped on the UBahn again and by 4.30pm were there. Interestingly, it wasn't anything like as busy as it had been the other night, when we came to see La Boheme.

We went into the bar and placed our orders for the interval before taking our seats for Verdi’s Macbeth- carefully checking we were sitting in the correct place this time!

We hadn't watched the trailer (above) for this new production, and no photographs were allowed during the show of course, but suffice to say that as the first half progressed, I found it surprisingly difficult to track the storyline. It's a very familiar tale to those of us who had studied Shakespeare at school, however long ago that was! But this was certainly a “different” interpretation and though the singing was wonderful, the visual design was rather less so in my opinion, not to mention the (unecessarily?) brutal scenes of a children's party which concluded the first half.

We retired to the bar, where our drinks awaited us by our reserved seats (they are so very well organised here!) As we sat chatting, my Hero had found an online review of this production: were we alone in our thoughts about it? Not at all. The reviews were pretty scathing and as he read on, he asked if I really wanted to see the second half… I read the outline myself and having finished our drinks, we did something we'd never done before.

We left.