Melodic ambience

Certainly one of the outstanding new trance tracks of the recent past has been Redstar’s “Rush”. A melody that everybody can whistle to comes in various good quality remixes and I found it hard to decide, which one to pick. The remix of Karl G is it for me since it builds up very slowly while spheric, almost romantic sounds happening in the back. It all leads to a fantastic break after which the main melody kicks in. I highly recommend this to everybody who is into trance or in particular into uplifting trance.

Its’ that time of the year where I’d like to announce the - in my view of course - best trance tracks of the year. First of all I want to say that especially in most recent times there were a lot of good tracks and after I complained that my favorite label “Anjunabeats” was releasing a lot of mediocre tracks the year before, this time there were a lot of very decent tracks that came out. So, no wonder, that Anjunabeats is represented very well in the list of my favorite tracks.

Basically there were two tracks dominating my personal play list as they are

Maor Levi - Shapes (Oliver Smith Mix)

and

Temple One - Forever Searching (Original Mix)

The remix of Oliver Smith delivered a perfect, euphoric version of a track done by young Israeli Maor Levi. Everything fits, the beat, the scrambled singing as well as the beautiful additional melody kicking in after a while.

British DJ Temple One’s “Forever Searching” lets you float in different spheres. This very romantic trancer is highly addictive.

Besides these tracks I’d like to congratulate Sunny Lax for his remix of Soliquid’s “Music is for rich people” since it comes very close to the legendary “P.U.M.A.”.

Last but not least I want to mention at least some other tracks that were very good. From Scandinavia Finnish Syna “Do you feel” sounded fantastic in the remix of Matti Kotala and Danish DJ Daniel Kandi’s original Mix of “Child” needs to be mentioned too.

When I visited the Cupcake Bakery in Prenzlauer Berg and mentioned that I am always searching for smokefree places in Berlin, a friendly worker there told me about a smokefree bar called “Erdbeer-Bar”.

Say what? “Smokefree” and “bar” - I never heard these words in combination here in Berlin although I heard about a smokefree pub in Weißensee. So I had to check for myself if that was true. Upon arrival at the Erdbeer-Bar which is situated near the Volksbühne at the corner of Max-Beer-Str. and Linienstr. I saw a man standing outside lighting up his cigarette. Actually a good sign cause somehow it told me that he did this here and not inside for a reason. And indeed, entering the bar there were a lot of people enjoying the music played by a live DJ and drinking their cocktails but nobody smoked. While the worn down furniture was something I had to get used to I really liked the big variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks as well as the size of the cocktails that you can get there. Not forgetting the fact that this bar is open until the early morning. So,if you want to sit somewhere smokefree late at night, this place is definetely recommendable.

A while ago I reported about cupcakes and the arrival of other items in this city long sought by American expats. Now, another café opened up in Prenzlauer Berg called “Cupcake Bakery” not only offering a wide variety of these delicious calorie bombs but also little sandwiches, English tea, scones and soups etc… Upon my first visit I especially liked the cozy atmosphere upstairs in a room basically lit up only by candles having a great view of the Zionskirchplatz and its impressive church. The Cupcake Bakery can be found at Zionskirchstraße 36. I am pretty sure that in this area with a lot of young people willing to try out new tastes it will find its cupcake fans under the Germans also. The café is completely smokefree.

So far this trance year has delivered a lot of mediocre tunes for my taste. But maybe it is because I am getting older and becoming more and more picky? Whatever it is, it helps the content of my purse. I want to mention though that two or three outstanding tracks were released so far as they are

From Great Britain:

Temple One “Forever searching” (Original Mix) - Listen (excerpt at the Audiojelly Downloadstore)

From Finland:

Syna “Do you feel?” (Matti Kotala Mix) - Listen (excerpt at the Audiojelly Downloadstore)

Whenever I mentioned to my friends that we intent to go onto a trip to Prague the reaction was almost the same - “Awww, Prague, what a beau-ti-ful city!”. The city is known as the “Paris of the East” and although I haven’t visited Paris I believe people who say this are probably right. No matter how you call it - after having been there finally I must say it is the most beautiful city I have seen so far. Here is a little report of the trip - chronologically.

Wednesday:

Our hotel is situated in Praha-Smichov. This city part consists of a lot of newer business buildings, hotels and a big shopping mall called Novy Smichov. After checking in into the hotel we decide to not use the nearby metro but to walk direction downtown. Over the Vltava we reach the Nove Mesto part of Prague. What we notice right away is the big traffic on almost all streets of this part. Many people still use old cars running on unfiltered Diesel. On the other, positive side it is not necessary to put away the digital camera since at almost every corner, interesting, nicely decorated houses and squares pop up. Highlights in this area of town are “Fred and Ginger”, the dancing house as well as the Charles Square.

We move on on our way to the Stare Mesto, the old city center. A gem is “Slovansky Ostrov” an island in the Vltava river with a nice castle-type of building called “Zofin”, a cultural center. Here we find some places to sit in the shade with a nice look onto the river. The Vltava is much different than the other rivers I saw before because due to some little built in water falls at most of its parts the only types of ships that use it here are little rowing or pedal boats and a few tourist ships.

A few blocks further we reach the shopping district of Prague consisting of a big pedestrian zone and Wencelas Square, a big rectangle area with a parklike zone in the middle part and shops to the sides ending up at a huge museum building. This street might be comparable to the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Reaching Stare Mesto the density of beautiful buildings rises more and more, almost every little street has something to offer, paintings at walls, ornaments and statues, you’ll find so many that you might as well plan to spend a lot of time here if you wanna see them all.

We take a little break at one of the few smokefree restaurants in Prague, the “Bohemian Bagel“. A place run by a Czech and an American which offers some delicious and authentic american food. After relaxing here we head on to the Charles Bridge. The tourist density rises and we find ourselves within large groups of people from all over the world walking over the bridge, taking photos of almost every statue along the way. The Mala Strana quarter begins right after the bridge with Hradcany, the Castle Hill throwning over the narrow paths and cute looking buildings in this area of town. We take the effort to climb around 180 - 200 stairs up to the castle and I am a little bit surprised that - although it is getting dark already - we are still able to enter the different courtyards of this huge building. The view from the hill onto Prague is magnificent and worth the sweating experience of reaching this place. Very delicious icecream from Cream & Dream refreshes us afterwards.

Back over the Charles Bridge. Suddenly, to many people’s surprise, a big fireworks starts from a boat and I wonder if this is done everyday for the tourist’s pleasure? Because I don’t know of any special occasion or celebration. After the fireworks we had our way back to the Wencelas Square noticing even bigger crowds of tourists on their search for a nice dinner or drink and walking by a lot of souvenir shops. Sadly we don’t have the budget to buy something from the beautiful but expensive Bohemian Glass being sold everywhere. The whole city is now illuminated in fascinating lights. Almost every building uses different colors. We take the metro back to the hotel. It needs to be mentioned that the platforms are much deeper down than in Berlin and the long escalators are going with so much speed that I wonder how disabled or older people are able to hop on and off of them.

Thursday:

After eating at a store of the Bio-Cafe chain “Bio Cafe” (organic food, smokefree) we go downtown to the Wencelaw Square in order to look at a Multimedia and a book store. Returning to Smichov we explore Novy Smichov, a big, nicely designed mall. I am not ashamed to say that we spend about 2h in Tesco, a giant supermarket since I am always interested in finding out, what other countries offer concerning grocery stuff. It appears to me, that the Czech people are obviously big fans of any kind of muesli bars as well as of non alcoholic beverages when looking at the big variety of these items in the shop. Getting around and communicating in the shops is easy by the way since almost everbody and especially the younger people are understanding and talking english.

The mall is directly connected via a bridge with a small park on a hill, the Sacre Coeur park from which you have a nice view of Prague. We decide to walk from Smichov to Mala Strana exploring Prague at this side of the river. The absolute highlight on our walk here is the Petrin Hill. This is a big park. You can either have it easy by going up there with a tram or you walk up the hill which is a sportive event since parts are very steep. Finally reaching the top we have another nice look of the castle hill and Prague as well as of the buildings up here, the Hunger Wall and the Petrin tower, a copy of the Eifeltower.

On our way down we see a lot of embassies and little cafes. We cross the Charles Bridge again, walking through Stare Mesto making sure we use streets we haven’t visited before. A nice meal ends this trip to Prague.

There are much more photos of our trip in the album.

For the american expat some beloved items are very hard to find in Berlin. US food products at Kadewe and other department stores are often overpriced and the american restaurants offer generally meals known to Germans. So, I was quite surprised to discover that a while ago viv (homepage in German), a German organic food store chain started offering organic american breakfast every saturday in their Lounge at Prenzlauer Berg. You’ll find all the long-missed goodies like Buttermilk pancakes, various sorts of scrambled eggs or french toast. This all can be even eaten at acceptable times since you can get american breakfast until 3 pm. At our first visit the place was pretty crowded. The food was made freshly after we ordered.

And for those who desperately seek for cupcakes, rice crispy treats, rootbeer floats etc. there is a place for you in Berlin-Friedrichshain called Cupcake (Krossener Straße 12, near the “restaurant-mile” Simon-Dach-Straße). This café is open from Wednesday and Sunday and offers english and american breakfast too. Vegans will find some adequate food as well.

It was late sunday night when I strolled down Danziger Straße in Prenzlauer Berg. Normally, this is the time when you don’t see many people out on the streets or in the restaurants. But not in this part of the town, almost every cafe or restaurant was crowded. Another special thing about Danziger Straße: In no other part of Berlin I have seen so many Late Night shops as in this street. When I walked between the crossing Prenzlauer Allee/Danziger Straße and the Kulturbrauerei, meaning I walked maybe around 10 - 15 mins. I noticed even 5 of these shops. And they all had customers coming in and out. Considering the high number of students, artists etc in this district I guess this is no wonder.

I guess it somehow was not very informative to just put some short comments under the non smoking restaurants in my list like “italian restaurant”. So, I enhanced some of the comments and I put links to a map for each of the entries which shows where the particular restaurant is.

I guess jays are not really typical birds in the big cities since they are more common in the forests and parks. So, it was quite a surprise to see this baby jay on the hood of my car. After one of his first flights he was obviously taking a pause.