Well, I didn’t walk away with victory at the annual Glamour Magazine stiletto run, but I did walk away with two very sore feet and a great tale. The whole experience was quite surreal, from the hotel room full of jittery, over-primped girly-rag aficionados to the pseudo ‘fashion parade’ and the actual race which was a bit like a horse race – all puffing girls and petticoats. We may not have made the winners block but my friend Judy and I got some quality press out of it! We were in the Berliner Courier the next day (I am standing in a very unnatural position with my leg up on a fence (warming up?) and Judy is grinning behind me (secretly relieved that her image wasn’t forever cemented in such a ridiculous pose!).

In the past couple of weeks, I have settled into the Berlin summer like a comfy chair. We have all ignored the extremely schizophrenic weather and random torrential rainstorms and pretended it was business as usual – bike riding, volleyball games, swimming and eating out. There are so many great places to eat in Berlin and good food is so affordable. I thought I’d compile a little list of my favourite places so far:

Kado (Liquorice) Graefestrasse 20, 10967: I know this is a weird category of ‘food’ to include but I love liquorice so it was a revelation when my pilates teacher took me in here. It is set up like an old fashioned sweet shop complete with old fashioned scales and rows upon rows of glass jars filled with every type of liquorice known to mankind! Heaven.

Samaran Thai Imbiss (Thai) Winterfeldtstrasse 35, 10781: OK, so I am a bit biased as this is my local but this place is so charming and the food is excellent. It is a family-run business and is always full. I love walking past on summer nights and seeing the owners with their new baby drinking in the breeze.

Medel il Ristorante (Italian) Fichtestrasse 32, 10967: Italian food is one of my favourites so it was like striking gold when someone recommended this. The décor is very plain and there is no ‘mood’ lighting or cheesy music but the food is simple, honest, authentic and delicious. Try the spaghetti aioli.

Kuchi (Sushi) Kantstrasse 30, 10119: This sushi is the best I have had not only in Berlin but also in Europe. No joke. I had a friend come a few months ago from Sweden and he is still raving about it.

Ok, that should keep you going for a while. When your tummies are full and you feel like some exercise you can head out to one of Berlin’s lakes. It is so refreshing to go for a dip in the summer (not as good as a real Australian beach of course but we are in Germany and we must let go of our infatuation with sand!). One of the nicest lakes is Schlachtensee located on the outskirts of the Grunewald forest. You can ride your bike there from the centre of town in about an hour or catch the S1 to Ubahnhof Schlachtensee (around 30 mins). Right next door to the Schlachtensee is the smaller Krummelanke.

Wannsee is also a really nice place to go for a dip in the summer. It is a linked pair of lakes on the river Havel and, like the Schlachtensee/Krummelanke and is also serviced by the S-Bahn (S1). I remember reading that when he was in Berlin, Bowie really like to go for walks and lunch around the Wannsee.

If you feel like more of a cultural excursion all the museums (and most galleries) are free in Berlin on Thursdays four hours before closing time (this usually means 6-10). I thought I would take advantage of this last Thursday and go and see the Bilder Träume exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie. Unfortunately, I found out when I got there that Thursday’s wavered fee doesn’t extend to temporary exhibits, but I went anyway. It was a really interesting private collection of surrealist and abstract expressionist works by artists like Dali, Pollock, Ernst and Magritte among others. There were two very imposing primitive sculptures by Max Ernst and quite a few works by his fourth wife Dorothea Tanning. Here is a very cute picture I found on the internet of them playing chess !

On the music front there is not much to report as I have been spending a lot of time with my good friend the X-Box recording new songs. Last week, a fellow Aussie introduced me to a great concept though which I had never heard about before: ‘The Black Cab Sessions’. Basically it started out as a random occurrence: a black cab in London picks up a famous musician and asks them to give a live rendition of one of their songs in the back of his cab. Then, I suppose, it took off, and now every famous (or about to be famous) musician in town is wanting a slice of the action. Check it out here. One of the best in my opinion is Robin from the Fleet Foxes (my favourite band de jour) doing a rendition of Crayon Angels by Judee Sill. Here is the original alongside her most famous song: Jesus Was A Cross Maker. I think the chefs at Ixthys would appreciate her ‘cosmological Christian imagery’ (not my words alas but the words of the iTunes man!).