A good place to drown your Berliner winter-melancholy. The bartenders are top notch and the interior is warm but stylish, with the inevitable retro vibe. Open from 6 till late. There´s also a legendary (and kinda expensive) restaurant next door, which provides the bar with some excellent snacks. Works for dates and for friends, but if you´re planning for a bigger group it might be wise to reserve.

The central ‘Mitte’ area of Berlin is packed tight with galleries and museums, which means you can cram a lot into a short amount of time, if that’s what you want. The best of the lot is the Me Collectors Room, which shows off large chunks of the Thomas Olbricht collection alongside other contemporary private artworks. The permanent ‘Wunderkammer’ display offers over 200 pieces from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, with a solid focus on the strange and macabre. There’s even a Mark Ryden original that fits in nicely.

Möckernbrücke is a station of the Berlin U-Bahn network in the western Kreuzberg district, named after a nearby bridge crossing the Landwehrkanal. The bahnhof (train station) is part of the first Stammstrecke route of the Berlin U-Bahn opened on February 15, 1902. As the station also served the nearby Anhalter Bahnhof the original building was soon getting too small to cope with the rising number of passengers. It therefore was demolished and replaced by the current station opened on March 25, 1937. Severely damaged by air raids it was closed on January 30, 1944 and not reopened until June 16, 1947. I like it here for the spookiness and feeling of impending doom that it has on a rainy day.

A place where I spend some time almost everyday is the Marheineke Markthalle on Bergmannstraße in Kreuzberg. It's just around the corner from where I live and a great place to buy fresh food and products from local farmers or all kinds of delicatessen from different countries. Many market stalls also sell freshly prepared food and it's always busy at lunchtime. For saturday mornings try the original french croissants.

Peres Projects mostly showcases young, emerging artists and is at the forefront of fusing art with fashion, celebrity and the love of a good party, which seems to work very well in Berlin. Having recently moved into an ex-Soviet building on Karl Marx Allee, the giant new space contrasts brilliantly with the commanding facade.