BERLIN
LITERATI HANG WITH EINSTEIN
Havacuppa
Joe at the Einstein Cafe'
Leave
it to me to find the only cab driver in Berlin who doesn’t
know where the original Café Einstein is located. Okay, maybe
a lot of folks from the economically struggling former east come to Berlin
for
work
and end
up driving cabs. it’s a good thing I knew where it was, or
at least knew it when I could see it. I’d
had a meeting there once a couple of years before on a movie project
and was running late for this one. There are so many of them now, it's
good I remembered.
There
are several Cafe Einsteins, so popular it's become a chain. The Cafe
Einstein on Unter den Linden a few blocks from the Brandenberg Gate
is now the flagship upscale spot
of what is starting to be called Berlin's "upper east side",
emulating New York's stylish neighborhoods, surrounded by museums,
designer stores and glossy windowed car dealerships selling Bentleys
and Ferraris, a respite from shopping bag carrying. While many Berliners
embrace the glitz and growth of modern Berlin, you'll find many who
lament
the
slow disappearance
of city's rough edged Bohemian character, still
to be found at the original Cafe Einstein, located down east on Kurfürstenstrasse
(not to be confused with the Kurfürstendamm shopping street),
halfway between the heart of the old west Berlin surrounding
the
Zoo
to the reconstructed
vibrancy
of the former East, the café is a longish walking
distance or short cab or bus ride from Potsdammer
Platz.
Named
after the mathematical genius of physics, the Café Einstein
was Berlin’s answer to the intellectual and artistic salons of
the prewar years, both National Socialist and Cold, when the artists
and burgeoning intellectualism used to gather in the capital of advanced
ideas to discuss and argue the tenets of existentialism and minimalist
art. The original Einstein
Café has
been a popular hangout for TV, film and publishing media creative types
who come into
town from “the burbs” like Babelsburg Studios for a more
European coffee house literati feeling of long relaxed caffein infusion
while reading or writing, an escape from the corporate
commerce institutionalism of the central city, back to the bohemian feel
of old
world
creative
discourse. © Bargain
Travel Europe
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Web Info
Cafe Einstein.com
Get
a German
Rail Pass
SEE ALSO:
OSTEL - BERLIN’S DDR DESIGN HOSTEL
GUTENBERG’S
BIBLE AND LITTLE GUT WEIN
BAROQUE IN BAVARIA - ETTAL BASILICA
HALLOREN CHOCOLATE WORLD MUSEUM HALLE
