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| The alley way |
Wednesday, May 29, 2019, Berlin--Last evening's dinner at Panama https://oh-panama.com/en/welcome/#menu captivated the synthesis, creativity and dynamism of this city. Panama is located in an upscale neighborhood Lützoplatz with high-end retailers. The restaurant is reached by walking down a landscaped alley off the main street.
We were ushered upstairs to a large white room decorated with tropical
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| Panama |
flourishes. Our highly competent and friendly waitress, a young woman with a nose-ring, explained that everything on the menu (except for the three course prix-fixe dinner) was meant for sharing. We chose to go à la carte. First, with her help, we chose a mid-priced bottle of German riesling wine, a 2017 Clemens Busch v.b.S. which was delivered and poured for us by the male sommelier, a former San Franciscan who has fallen in love with Berlin. The wine was fresh, balanced and great with the dishes we chose. We ordered Panama empanadas with sesame dipping sauce, batavia salad with caviar and pomegranate, ceviche of salmon trout followed by pork cheeks with grilled pineapple and white asparagus with wild garlic, seaweed and thai basil. The crowd was young and middle aged of all stripes, well dressed and friendly. We briefly spoke to people on both sides of our table.
Earlier in the day we had taken the recommendation of friends and ventured on the S-bahn to Potsdam, the center of the Soviet occupation of East Germany, the Imperial summer palace in the days of the Hohenzollerns and the site of the Potsdam agreements near the end of WW2 between Stalin, Churchill and Truman.
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| The tour guide insisted |
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| Five of rhe seven languages offered on the bus |
Potsdam really was a no-place village until the Hohenzollerns took ownership in the 17th century. Then it grew over the centuries into an imperial wonderland of palaces, mansions and military barracks--Prussia, the big north German state--was quite militaristic to say the least. What is really fascinating as we learned on multi-language tour on a double-decker bus is that all of it is like frosting on the German cake as imagined by the rulers. A grand palace to celebrate victory--the Neue Palace, a summer home, Sanssouci, where Frederick the Great entertained and partied with his greyhounds and Voltaire, and buildings for immigrants like the French Huguenots and Dutch architects brought in to complete the town for the kings.
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| The Potsdam triumphal arch |
Nevertheless the overall effect comes somewhere between real magnificence and the contrived parvenu views of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia. We had a beautiful day to enjoy the vistas and the palaces.
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Homes built for Dutch architects
who never came |
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| Phony dachas for Russians |
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Looks like a mosque--i
t hides a pumping station |
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| French protestant church |
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The horrors of occupation--
East German on the left,
West Berlin on the right |
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Celciliahof,The palace of the
crown prince
completed in 1916, |
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The red star of Stalin installed in infurtate
Churchill at the Potsdam
Conference in 1945 |
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Roman gods celebrating inebriation at
Sanssouci, the summer palace of
Frederick the Great |
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FG the Great's grave.
He brought potatoes to Prussia |
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| Servants quarters at Neue Palace |
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Kaiser Wilhelm II mobilized for
World War I from her |
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| George Baselitz |
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| In the entrance hall, no others exist |
After returning from Potsdam and before leaving for dinner, the hotel offered us a guided tour of the art in the hotel. Most of it has been given on a long-term agreement by the Neo-Expressionist German artist Georg Baselitz who is still living in Berlin in his eighties. He and some of his East German contemporaries were degraded by Soviet political constraints and moved to West Berlin in the mid-50's. Most of the works, including two in our room, are etchings and many of them are upside down landscapes or figures--which accounts for the name of the bar in the hotel.
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