The Wissenschaftskolleg made it compulsory for Fellows to eat meals together in its elegant dining room with a modernist entrance that makes communal eating quite an experience. The idea of dining together is to provide opportunities for Fellows to mingle and discuss each other's projects. We ate lunch with a French philosopher, a Japanese art historian and a German sociologist before catching the train to Heidelberg from Berlin Hbf.
Before leaving Berlin we did a quick tour of the Furukawa Michiyasu folding screen exhibition, "Rural Seasons," at the Japanese-German Center Berlin with the visiting Heidelberg students.
We had dinner with students from University of Heidelberg at Pan Asia restaurant in the trendy Hackescher Markt neighborhood of Berlin.
The Wittenschaftskolleg have so many M. Breuer chairs. If only I can take home six to replace the facsimiles we have in our London apartment.
We had dinner at Mr Hai & Friends in Savignyplatz, a wonderful public square off Kufürsterdamm that teems with restaurants, cafés, galleries and shops. 
Jannis Kounellis uses welded steel to construct a labyrinth topped with coal that is currently on display at the Neue Nationalgalerie. His artworks appear at different parts of the labyrinth that refers to the maze of King Minos in Crete.
On a gray Berlin day this mural/advertisement makes me happy.
I saw this remnant of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Star outside the Museum Haus Am Checkpoint Charlie after I visited the Jewish Museum. 
The Jewish Museum's main stairway leading to levels 1 and 2 (permanent exhibition) has very dramatic columns that connect and (perhaps) buttress the concrete walls. On the way to the galleries there are detours to the Holocaust Tower and Garden of Exile that try to conjure the sense of isolation felt by the Jewish prisoners in concentration camps.
I went to the more somber Jewish Museum to "experience" Daniel Libeskind's famous, unorthodox and controversial building. The lower level has compelling passageways (axis of exile, axis of Holocaust, etc) with windows displaying belongings and short biographies of people perished in the Holocaust.
Checkpoint Charlie's souvenir scalpers dressed as border guards holler incessantly at the tourists. To my annoyance they yelled at me: "China? Japanese? Show passport to cross border." 
Checkpoint Charlie has become quite the tasteless tourist spot in Berlin. The kitschy reenactment of a dark moment in German history just to cater to gawking visitors is as dreadful as Miss Saigon the musical. 
We're staying in a loft in Wissenschaftskolleg's White Villa in Grunewald, we found out, the most exclusive neighborhood in Berlin!
We're guests of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study) and staying in one of its lofts in the quite neighborhood around Koenigsallee. The Institute is an intellectual "commune" that brings together scholars from around the world to exchange ideas and write without distractions.
Went to Souterrain, Sammlung Hoffmann's new annex, and saw Maria Chevska's show, "For It Seems: A Reading of the Hoffmann Collection." The museum guide gave us a very genki description of the project and we were particularly engrossed with featured works by Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Eduardo Paolozzi.
There are over 400 galleries in Berlin so not something our "chicken feet" can commit to exploring what with work to do and major museums to visit. Saw this installation through the window of Delta 35 Projekt Galerie on Auguststr. (backbone of Mitte galleries) featuring Sabine Linse's multimedia show. Hhmmm.
This is the afternoon sky over Alexanderplatz/Fernsehturm (television tower). The weather has not been cooperating with us: wet, cold and gloomy.
BMW cleverly crashed a Bimmer against a tree outside its Kufürstendamm showroom. The gimmick works as most people stop to inspect it. I was looking at it when an old Berliner said to me: "Crash test, you know, test."
Berlin might be the center of the German government and has one of the most vibrant art scenes in Western Europe (in Mitte and Friedrichshain) but there's tangible depression and backwardness everywhere. Or am I just a fashion snob?
Berlin's postwar buildings might be photogenic but they're not pleasant to traverse. We got lost in Charlottenburg and ended up in the Internationales Congress Centrum ICC Berlin labyrinth. The monstrous building has postmodern drama but fails to engage with the humans in it.
We took the ICE from Heidelberg to Berlin last night to be greeted by rain, biting cold winds and schmaltzy Christmas lights that line Kufürstendamm.