An Afternoon in Someone Else’s Berlin

The best way to see any city is with someone who moved there for reasons they can’t fully explain and stayed for reasons they can. Anouk—media student, art enthusiast, person with a genuinely good eye for where to spend an afternoon—showed me around a few of her Berlin spots, and I left with the familiar feeling that I’ve been doing this city wrong for years.

First stop was Dandy Diner, a vegan place that earns the description rather than just apologizing for it. The food is good enough that you forget you’re eating a principled meal. Vegan restaurants in Berlin tend to divide into two camps: the ones run by people who want you to feel guilty for every bite of your previous life, and the ones that just want to feed you something decent. Dandy Diner is the second kind.

Then Made in Berlin, a vintage shop on Potsdamer Strasse that functions less like a store and more like an archive of other people’s former favorite things. I spent longer there than intended, which is the correct response.

Frozen yogurt at Yoli to close it out. I’m mildly skeptical of frozen yogurt as a cultural institution—it had its moment and now it’s a little bit 2012—but Yoli makes a decent argument for itself. Sometimes you eat something cold and sweet at the end of an afternoon and that’s exactly right.

Anouk’s Instagram is worth following as a document of how someone with a good eye moves through a city. Berlin is endlessly photographable and endlessly photographed, which makes the real challenge finding the frame that doesn’t look like the other ten thousand frames. She manages it more often than not.