Sipping Alternative Berlin : To Taste This City’s Quirky, Post-Punk Side, Get Off the Boulevards and Into the Cafes

BERLIN —  Let others buy their chunks of “Berlin Wall.” (Street lore has it that somewhere there’s a guy who poured a square meter of cement in his backyard, spray painted it and sledgehammered that baby to make it market-ready.) No, there is a better way to get a feel for this au courant city: the cafes.

Not the big, chandeliered places on the Kurfurstendamm. They’re nice, genteel, hushed. To see Berlin as the city’s glitterati and proto-punks see it, go to the cafes away from the sight-seeing shuttles.

The crowd is young, with hair by Weed Whacker, and leather-adorned. Someone is always getting that first cup of cappuccino for the day, and modern Berlin’s main industry--intense small talk--is being taken care of. The first customers may roll in about 11 a.m. at the earliest, but the cafes stay busy through the afternoon and into the night. I can never sit in one of those places for long without my mind inevitably turning to the big questions: What do these people do ? Where do they work? When do they work? Why are they wearing that?

Every cafe has its own style and following, but common to any proper cafe are newspapers hanging from reading sticks, big bowls of Milchkaffee (coffee with milk) that take two hands to grip, and heavy clouds of cigarette smoke (don’t bother asking for non-smoking sections; there aren’t any). It may be heresy to say so, but I find Berlin’s cafes a little more interesting than Parisian cafes. More quirky. More, say, proletarian.

Berlin neighborhood cafes have an unrushed civility found in the United States only in a few college towns and perhaps Seattle, where lingering is considered quality time. The one exception might be Schwarzes Cafe, which seems to have no American parallel and could be alarming to anyone unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the debauchery of pre-World War II Berlin.

There are hundreds to choose from, but here’s a highly selective guide to getting started from someone who has sampled several dozen, both as a leisure traveler and as a newspaper reporter working in East Berlin. A few highly personal criteria first:

* No pool tables. Any cafe with a pool table receives an automatic disqualification under the common-sense rule that wherever there is a pool cue there may be a knucklehead waiting to break it over your head.

* No little white aprons on the table-servers. If you want aprons, go to the Ku’damm, which is what locals calls Kurfurstendamm, the wide boulevard of tony shops that runs through the heart of western Berlin.

* You will never, ever be asked if you want something else. This implies a subtle suggestion that maybe it’s time to leave, the antithesis of what a good Berlin cafe is. Really superb alternative cafes make you tackle the server to put in your initial order. Sure, catching your server’s eye is a challenge through the smoke. But that’s the system and cafe fans like it.

With those rules in mind, buy a one-day public transit pass (all cafes listed here are easily accessible from the U-Bahn subway system) for nine marks (about $5.60) and head out.

CAFE SAVARIN

This is the place to step through the looking glass. It’s a perfect bridge to cross over from the niceties of the Ku’damm into avant Berlin. There’s a feeling of being in the living room of a slightly eccentric aunt--the one who never married, lived abroad and uses cigarette holders. Decor here is fabric wallpaper, musty paintings and photos in heavy gold frames. Sunday mornings are best here. Linger over one of several daily quiche offerings or the standard breakfast plates with cheese, cold cuts, soft-boiled eggs, fruit and a German concoction called quark , which is a cross between yogurt and sour cream served with diced fruit. It’s a little off the beaten tourist track in the residential neighborhood of Schoneberg, but near several good ethnic restaurants on Potsdamer Strasse.

CAFE DREIKLANG

The name means Cafe Three Alarm, but it’s a misnomer. Peace reigns here. An oversize Sphinx head looks down from the bar at the overworked staff, but the purple pom-pom-on-a-stick stuck in the sliced banana served with breakfast is the loudest thing in the place. Two small rooms are done in yellows and browns with a temporary look about them. There is homemade cake and a big pick of newspapers and magazines. Dreiklang is the first in a series of fine places as you walk north up Goltzstrasse. Not far from Cafe Savarin, the Dreiklang and other Goltzstrasse cafes are in a neighborhood full of the kind of chic boutiques with, seemingly, five or six clothing items in the whole store, all lovingly displayed.

CAFE M

The next stop. Not for the faint-hearted, but possibly appropriate for the faint-of-hearing. The music is loud and ranges from old blues to R&B; to classical. Loud classical. Red metal tables give the place a Berkeley feel, circa 1972. The newspaper variety is exceptional, including the Herald Tribune and Le Monde. It’s a good place to check out upcoming music events advertised on posters and leaflets posted near the entrance.

LUX CAFE

Just steps away, the Lux, advertised in dripping black painted letters on the bike rack out front, would be trying too hard if it were any place but Berlin. Grotesque friezes are built into the walls, which also support German expressionist paintings from hell. A three-quarter-size mannequin in a Hawaiian dress with a grass wig stands in one corner. Goldfish circle in a small aquarium atop the coffee grinder. But the flower arrangements are artful and sumptuous. Black clothing only, please. This place even has a fan to get rid of the cigarette smoke. That, alone, makes it worth a visit if only for the curiosity factor.

CAFE NIEMANSLAND

In Berlin, Niemansland (no man’s land) used to be the barren “death strip” between the two parallel Berlin walls; it was filled with land mines, tank traps, German shepherds and automatic machine guns. Cafe Niemansland has slightly more Gemulichkeit (coziness), and no barbed wire. No breakfast, but coffee, cakes and a full bar.

Niemansland has a warehouse sort of ambience appropriate for Berlin--a city with a Eurotech feel. The first shift sitting at the bar in the morning seems particularly in need of some hair of the dog, although older, white-gloved women sit at the widely-spaced, marble-topped tables--both groups politely ignoring each other. The female bartender, with a pierced nose, gets into a discussion with a customer about the freshness of the cranberry torte. She takes a piece from the plate of the guy sitting next to me, tastes it and judges it still fresh. The walls have an oddly formal marbleized treatment. Not many journal writers here. This is a crowd that needs virtually all its concentration to work on waking up. There is a phone in back, and near it is a bowl of water for visiting German shepherds. Outside the morning drizzle fits in with the area’s death-strip decor. An angry Dylan protest song about imprisoned boxer Hurricane Carter plays on.

MONTEVIDEO

This cafe can’t be too highly recommended. It looks sort of like an outtake from the set of the bizarre 1985 movie “Brazil.” A woman in green bell-bottom jeans at the next table circles job ads in the local Tagespiegel newspaper. There are many mirrors--it’s a beautiful people place after all, including the tall woman with the long, dark ponytail who is serving breakfast. Newspapers and magazines are provided, but this is a rendezvous spot--someplace to flop down in wicker chairs and tell a friend that the most unbelievable thing just happened to you while walking down the street. The room is long and narrow, a cushioned bench running along one wall, with plants stuffing the big front window that has a southern exposure looking out onto the upscale residential area, Viktoria-Luise-Platz.

CAFE MORA

A balm for the nerves. One look at the bartender with the dark, deep-set eyes and your metabolism slows down. Cool jazz plays on the sound system (surprisingly, something of a rarity in Berlin), the black rubber floor absorbs noise and the heavy black chairs could support the weight of the world. There is no mirror over the bar; that tells you something, too. This is a place that is comfortable with itself. Instead of several hundred liquor bottles, there are a couple dozen. The art on the walls--the cafe doubles as a gallery--looks like it belongs there. The walls are white with track lighting for the art. Cafe Mora is not near much else on the street, but worth the walk several rather grim blocks from the nearest subway station.

ATLANTIC CAFE

This is the kind of place that plays Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds . . . before noon. It’s somewhat off the beaten path, but Atlantic provides a reasonably safe window into what it must be like to live here in Kreuzberg, the Berlin quarter that is home to anarchists, Turkish immigrants, the working poor and the counter-counter-culture. It is always unclear what people do here to make money. Maybe that’s why it’s hard to find a seat in mid-afternoon. This is where Kreuzberg parents come for that first big bowl of Milchkaffee and pack of cigs in the morning . . . with kids in tow. Recent family scene: Toddler in leather pants with suspenders; mom with purple and red streaks in hair, dancer’s tights, a short off-shoulder blouse and cowboy boots; Dad in fringed buckskin coat. You have left “Leave It To Beaver” territory. Also, dogs seem to be regular customers, loping in and out without apparent ownership. A short walk to the north is the Checkpoint Charlie Museum filled with cars containing secret compartments that East Germans used to escape to the West.

CAFE VOLTAIRE

If you come here via the Charlottenburg S-Bahn stop, keep walking past the Yugoslavian shell-game players shouting, “Where is the pellet?”--the pellet in this case being a small tinfoil ball. There will be five or six separate games. Keep walking. Their hand is faster than your eye. They work in teams (notice that the only people who win are also Yugoslavian) and they only play for big, blue 100 mark notes. Many an East German visitor who came to the west for the first time in 1989 lost his entire “Begrussunsgeld,” the 100-mark gift from the West German government, in less than 10 seconds.

If you make it to the cafe with money still in your pocket, you will find a room that is bright and airy with plenty of plants and a mixed bag of art on the walls.The crowd is eclectic, due mostly to the electronic wholesalers in the neighborhood who cater to speculators from the Third World and the former Eastern Bloc.

CAFE SOLO

Danger! Danger! Entering beautiful people territory. Admittedly, there is a pool table, but Cafe Solo gets an exemption from the no-pool rule. The cafe is dark, with wood everything, including solid butcher block tables. Local shop owners--mostly smallish boutiques--stop by to get their mugs filled with coffee. A reproduction of the Edward Hopper painting “Nighthawks” hangs over the bar. The help is gorgeous, soft soul music is on the stereo and the neighborhood is quiet and tree-lined. They have a phone, the importance of which can’t be understated (public phones in Berlin are at a premium). Located in a beautiful neighborhood south of Ku’damm that includes a rare Kurdish restaurant.

SCHWARZES CAFE

Always open. Always weird. James Brown screams over the P.A., echoed by the voices of the zoned-out staff. The black and pink plastic table covers (bring your own damp sponge to wipe them clean). The “Rocky Horror Picture Show” look of the waiters in the wee hours. The back page of the menu is a manifesto--apparently a message from the management--against date rape. However, breakfast selections (in the spirit of detente?) are named for romantic themes. Choices include First Love (Milchkaffee, two eggs in a glass, toast, champagne), Late Love (scrambled eggs, cheese) and Love on the Run (cheese, ham, bread, fruit, hard-boiled egg). Look for the neon parrot in the front window. It’s near the Bahnhof Zoo (from which U2 got the name for its Zoo Station song) and the hot music club Quasimodo (at Kantstrasse 12), a must for its free Monday night bebop jam sessions.

GUIDEBOOK: The Berlin Cafe Scene

Price ranges for all cafes: Coffee $1.50-$5. Complete breakfasts $4.50-$12. Desserts $2.50 and up.

Atlantic Cafe: Bergmannstrasse 60. Hours: 9 a.m.-2 a.m. Breakfast and desserts served. U-Bahn: Menringdamm stop, Line 6 or 7; or Gneisennaustrasse stop, Line 7.

Cafe Dreiklang: Goltzstrasse 51. Hours: 9 a.m.-3 a.m. Breakfast served. U-Bahn: Eisenacherstrasse stop, Line 7.

Lux Cafe: Goltzstrasse 35. Hours: 9 a.m.-3 a.m.; Saturday and Sunday until 4 a.m. Breakfast and desserts served. U-Bahn: Eisenacherstrasse stop, Line 7.

Cafe M: Goltzstrasse 33. Hours: 9 a.m.-2 a.m. Breakfast and desserts served. U-Bahn: Eisenacherstrasse stop, Line 7.

Cafe Mora: Grossbeerenstrasse 57. Hours: 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Desserts served. U-Bahn: Moeckernbruecke stop, Lines 1 or 7.

Cafe Niemansland: Goltzstrasse 17. Hours: 9 a.m.-2 a.m. Desserts served. U-Bahn: Eisenacherstrasse stop, Line 7.

Cafe Savarin: Kulmer Strasse 17. Hours: Noon-midnight daily; Sunday from 10:30 a.m. Breakfast served. U-Bahn subway: Kleistpark stop, Line 7.

Cafe Solo: Pariser Strasse 19. Hours: Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-2 a.m.; Saturday and Sunday till 3 a.m. Desserts served. U-Bahn: Spichernstrasse stop, Lines 2 or 9.

Cafe Voltaire: Stuttgarter Platz 14. Hours: Always open. Breakfast and desserts served. U-Bahn: Wilmersdorfer Strasse stop, Line 7; or S-Bahn, Charlottenburg stop.

Montevideo: Motzstrasse 54. Hours: Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m.-1 a.m.; Sunday from 10 a.m. Breakfast and desserts served. U-Bahn: Viktoria-Luise-Platz stop, Line 4.

Schwarzes Cafe: Kantstrasse 148. Open 24 hours, except closed 1:30 a.m. Monday to 9 p.m. Tuesday. Breakfast and desserts served. U-Bahn: Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten stop, Lines 1 or 9; or S-Bahn Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten stop, Line 3.