We continue to wander, now joined by Devon, who arrived a couple of days ago. As before, the routine seems to be to pick a destination, maybe two, and allow ourselves to veer whichever way the serendipometer points as we go along. A massive, modern building near the hotel advertises: “BAUHAUS”. but it turns out that here in Berlin, it’s not an homage to the architectural movement, it’s the German equivalent of Home Depot.

In the time of Moses Mendelssohn, the Rosenthaler Gate was the only gate of the city through which Jews were permitted. Searching for traces of it near Rosenthaler Platz, we stumbled upon a statue of Heinrich Heine, another Jew who, less than a century later, effectively became the poet laureate for the German empire. (While the artistic works of Jews were suppressed and destroyed during the Nazi era a century after that, Heine’s poems and songs were so popular that they could not simply be whisked away – instead they were embraced as the works of ‘Anonymous/Traditional’).

Aside from the somewhat Avenue Montaigne feel of the street our hotel is on, we’ve been spending most of our time in what was formerly East Berlin. Not by any special design – it’s just where we keep ending up, and where we keep finding improbable corners to explore. Case in point: the Magicum – an interactive museum devoted to magic and mysticism. Complete with puzzles, Tarot readings, and dioramas – including an imagined reconstruction of Nicholas Flamel’s laboratory (for all you Harry Potter fans). A bit hokey, but great fun, topped off with a delightfully choreographed little magic show at the end.

And hidden a block or so away at the back of a quiet courtyard is the Tajikistan Tearoom – remnant of a Leipzig trade fair in the ’70s, donated by the former Soviet Republic – where we indulged in borscht, pelmeni, fried cabbage rolls and, of course, tea.

There was a day in Potsdam (also former East Germany) before Devon arrived. My mother was giving a talk at the Geiger Institute there and, rather than sit in like a dutiful son, I wandered the sprawling grounds of the adjoining Sanssouci Palace. I mean, the architecture is pretty impressive, but to get to walk a chestnut orchard from the 1800s, trace footpaths through even older woods and lounge about under the rolling sky in a gilded gazebo (+3 charisma) was too irresistible a pull.

Another solo exploration from a few days back was an impromptu tour of the aircraft restoration hangar at Tempelhof Airfield – it’s good to have interesting friends who have interesting friends. There, Gunther and Heiko and a crew of Airbus and Rolls Royce engineers and mechanics are painstakingly rebuilding the only Focke Wulfe 200 “Condor” in the world. Built in the ’30s, it was a sleek, elegant airliner years ahead of its time. But they were converted and pressed into wartime service, and the best surviving specimen was a rotting fuselage recovered from the bottom of a fjord in Norway. They’re incorporating what little they can of the wreck – the steering column, some bulkheads (reinforced by other materials) and the like, but Heiko insists that it’s only fair to recognize it as a “recreation” rather than a restoration.

For those who were left on tenterhooks after my last post, I did make it out of the federal coffee shop and to the Altes Museum. Spent the morning losing myself in the Etruscan, Greek and Roman artifacts, including a room off to the side featuring (viewer discretion, and a sense of humor advised) Greek and Roman erotica.

Today? Today we’re going to wander again. Probably Tiergarten, the big central park, then east to the Brandenburg Gate, and maybe some ice cream at a posh hotel over in the East my mother remembers from past perambulations. But who knows what else the day will bring? I’ll keep you posted, as always.