Bubble tea – just another hype?

If you live in Berlin, particularly in the trendy (former East Berlin) areas of Prenzlauer Berg or Mitte, you can’t have helped notice the emergence of a particular type of cafe, the bubble tea cafe.

Apparently bubble tea originated in Taiwan during the 1980s.  It has been a popular drink in the US and A for years and now it has made it to the German capital.  I have to admit that I have not yet summoned the courage to walk into one these cafes, somewhat put off by their non-appealing look: they tend to be loud, bright and colourful (in a Japanese comic sort of way) and attract a young crowd of teenagers.  Not my cup of tea and certainly not very gemütlich!

What I find striking about the bubble tea cafes in Berlin is that they seem to have sprung out of nowhere and suddenly you see them everywhere, even in the Alexander Platz underground station, an addition to the various smelly burger joints and shops selling sandwiches, donuts, muffins and Japanese crepes.

It reminds me of another trend that has also become extremely popular in recent months, the frozen yogurt shop.  This seems to be particularly prevalent in the fashion conscious Mitte district of Berlin, where being skinny is a way of life.  After all you could never possibly imagine a Mitte hipster digging into an über-caloric chocolate ice cream!

Luckily I live in an area that is densely populated by children and therefore I have a choice of over 10 different ice cream shops just in my neighbourhood, selling all sorts of exotic varieties, such as lemon and basil or strawberry and mint, but more about this in spring/summer.  Most of these places are now closed and will not reopen until sometime in March/April.  So until then it’s either bubble tea or a glass of traditional Glühwein to warm up during those cold Berlin winter nights.

All roads lead to East Berlin

I found my flat in Prenzlauer Berg on 3 October 2009.  This is a symbolic date for Germany and in particular for Berlin: the 3rd of October is the Tag der Deutschen Einheit or Day of German Unity, a public holiday commemorating German Reunification; 2009 was a memorable year as it marked the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the Wall.  

The Day of German Unity is celebrated each year in a different German city.  Somewhat ironically, the designated city for 2009 was Saarbrücken, where I was living at the time.  As I spent that particular weekend in Berlin, I missed one of biggest events the city of Saarbrücken had seen years. (It is fair to say that Saarbrücken at the best of times is not the most exciting place on earth, but more about that later).

Before moving to Berlin, I had lived in several German cities and Bundesländer, but my knowledge of the East was limited. It included a short visit to Berlin in the summer of 2001, three days at a rock festival close to Erfurt - where I was first introduced to the East German accent - and a couple of enjoyable days wandering around Dresden, which immediately became my favourite city in Germany.

I had never seriously considered moving to Berlin.  I always imagined it as being very cold in winter (it wasn't just my imagination!). Moreover, I thought that if I was to live in a large European capital that could only be London. As often in life, circumstances took an unexpected turn and so did my opinions. Things changed when I naively moved with my partner from London to Saarland or, as I once read in a travel guide, “The least rewarding of the German Länder in terms of tourist attractions”. I soon found out why.

Once the novelty and excitement of being in a new place had worn off and after numerous trips to nearby French towns and supermarkets – one of the relatively few advantages of living in Saarbrücken – my partner and I soon realised that our only salvation (at least in my case) was escape. So once we devised the solution, the next question was: “Escape, but where to?”

Because of my partner’s job - the reason we ended up in Saarland in the first place - our choice of cities was restricted to Germany.  We agreed that after the Saarbrücken experience, we would not make the same mistake, i.e. we would not take a gamble when making such an important decision as choosing where to live. Thus we began a methodical process of elimination to eventually end up with the perfect place to live in Germany (if such a place exists).

We initially considered Cologne, as we had heard favourable comments about the city but we soon rejected the idea after a weekend in Cologne (too ugly!) and Düsseldorf (too West German! Also the nightlife in the city centre seemed like a cross between Mallorca and the Oktoberfest). We briefly toyed with the idea of Munich, but this was soon dismissed on similar grounds, but mostly due to its Bavarian nature and conservative image.

That left us with two last candidates: Hamburg and Berlin. Everything else was too small and provincial. We had planned to spend a weekend in each city to help us make up our minds and to get a real feel for both places. However, a weekend in Berlin at the end of July 2009 was enough to persuade us that there was no need to look any further: we had found the right place. So we never actually made it to Hamburg until some months later when we visited some friends who were about to leave Europe for the US with their two young daughters. Although we liked Hamburg, we did not regret our choice.