Spargel Everywhere: The Monochrome Set Germany Tour 2015: Part 2 - Hamburg & Berlin (including a meet up with Anka!)

Photo courtesy of Caryne

COLOGNE TO HAMBURG

'Alaska's cave' - a tardis stuffed to the gunnels with Zubehör

Easter Sunday saw the first long drive of the trip, and my first experience of tour bus travel. It was in fact technically a tall van - a Mercedes Splitter - but seemingly the Germans would refer to it as 'ein Bus'.

The most remarkable aspect of the van was driver Alaska's comprehensive assortment of accessories and bloke-y tackle, which hung off the back of the headrests, were stowed under seats, lined the dashboard - and also dangled perilously from pegs clipped onto the roofliner. He had everything on board from plastic cutlery to a spare toothbrush, torch, screwdriver, whistle, straws, paper cups, tissues, penknife, bottle opener, obligatory pin up photo, drinks box, tote bag of 'passenger reading matter', first aid kit, and - most intriguingly - several sets of swimming goggles. And this list is by no means exhaustive.

A small snapshot of Alaska's bits and bobs

A rat's eye view of the Autobahn

On Day 1, seating habits were formed, which also included my travelling mascot, Max Rat, who assumed one of several more or less perilous poses to the left of the drummer's headrest. On cold days, he took to swaddling himself in the keyboard player's scarf, which also made for better stability (see one of his many toppling incidents below).

Motorway travel games and ghosts of projects past

Further to the head scratching over US states that also double up as Christian names, another travel game I played with the keyboard player consisted of listening out for travel bulletins, specifically any instances of a person or foreign body obstructing a motorway lane. This is an incredibly common phenomenon in Germany, and on a single trip could range from the customary burning vehicle or HGV tyre shreddings to 'metal poles', 'unidentified objects', and - our personal favourite - 'children'. We didn't encounter any 'Geisterfahrer' on tour though - so-called 'ghost drivers' who drive the wrong way down the motorway, causing a major risk to other traffic. Oh, and the bass player remarked that for a long time he had thought 'Ausfahrt' was a major city in Germany, as so many roads seemed to lead to it...

Max inexorably heading for the passenger reading matter bag

Then I am not sure if it counts as a game as such, but pretty much any sign off the motorway had associations for me with a particular job - or several, indeed, going back over the past 25 years...So, Laupheim (high speed blister packing plant), Hannover (blind rivets, rubber additives for tyres), Rottweil (architectural lighting), Wittstock (composite wood panels), Schneverdingen (wafer biscuits), and so on. On one - rather startling - occasion, a domestic appliance factory I had visited in the late 90s turned out to be bang opposite the venue! And when we stopped for lunch at a service station on the way up to Hamburg, I realised I had been there in 1994 to met a Dutchman in the cafeteria, whom I interviewed in German about stationary waste compactors. So whilst I was outwardly in 'band on tour' mode, the ghosts of my professional past persisted in popping out of the woodwork at every turn...;)

My jacket potato with 'no sour cream please'

HAMBURG

The gig that night was held in Hafenklang, a scruffy but capacious club by the harbour. All but obliterated by graffiti, as is standard for the German indie scene. Our rather 'retro' hotel was within easy walking distance, and I was invited to join the band - and Caryne and Dave, the husband and wife duo selling the merchandise each night, aka 'Die Merchandiser' - for a delicious homecooked meal at the venue.

Note the matching shower curtain with its cheery depiction of marine life!

The rhubarb lemonade raid

Now we were in Hamburg, we had squarely entered Germany's answer to Yorkshire's Rhubarb Triangle, meaning we had ready access at last to that sought-after soft tipple of Rhabarberschorle - the rhubarb equivalent of 'Appletizer', comprising rhubarb juice and fizzy water. The lemonade part is poetic licence to be honest, though you can also get a rhubarb version of that. And thus it was that at the end of the night I was charged with yet another drinks mission using band vouchers - to include as many rhubarb drinks as the bar had left.

There were so many of these vouchers that I decided to minimise my embarrassment by staging a split raid between the upstairs and downstairs bars. The upstairs sortie passed off without a hitch - was 'reibungslos abgewickelt', as the Germans might say - and I snagged five bottles of Rhabarberschorle. However, when I went downstairs I found the way to the bar deliberately blocked off with trestle tables and stacks of chairs. Nothing daunted, I managed to negotiate this veritable obstacle course of furniture and sneak through to the bar, where I scored another half dozen bottles of our rhubarb elixir. My cunning plan backfired rather though, when the woman from the upstairs bar - who must have wandered down for some reason, possibly to seek replacement stocks of rhubarb drinks from her colleague downstairs(!) - caught me in flagrante as I was clumsily clambering up the trestle table mountain on my way out.

Source: milchmaedel.de

HAMBURG TO BERLIN

The next day, Easter Monday, should have seen a fairly straight run down to Berlin, however we hadn't fully reckoned with holiday traffic, and got caught out with a vengeance a little north of Neurüppin. We were so behind schedule that I scrapped my idea to take the band on a scenic Umleitung to view the Trabant on a pole of a past post. My assigned mission that day was a spot of emergency navigating - using a paper road atlas, how impossibly quaint! - yet essential to figuring out a route that dodged the main jam and any likely spin off bottlenecks on the more obvious alternatives. To say we ended up off the beaten track is putting it mildly. Some of the minor roads we traversed were so minor they were cobbled, an oddity peculiar to former East Germany, as far as I can tell.

On this leg, I was also given the very important task of 'holding apples and envelopes of money'. Just briefly, you understand, while band members' hands were otherwise deployed.

BERLIN

The third and fourth gigs of the tour were back at Monarch, a quirky little venue overlooking the U-Bahn station of Kottbusser Tor. A full description of the place may be found in last year's tour report. Back then the dressing room had consisted of a subutteo table, but the ever resourceful Alaska took it upon himself to fashion one this time using a black out curtain and some of his extensive collection of clothes pegs.

Two English fans had come over specially for the gig, and proffered their necks for me to sniff - Simon (he of the Pratchett-esque beard) was sporting the über-elegant Chanel pour Monsieur, while his wife Mazz was rocking Aromatics Elixir, which wore beautifully soft and mysterious on her. I was rightly reprimanded for completely failing to recognise either of these iconic fragrances.

Photo courtesy of  Caryne 

At some point in the evening I embarrassed myself in the (heavily graffiti-daubed) ladies, when I followed a young girl inside without realising that the toilet cubicle itself was missing its door, thereby scotching the usual possibility of someone going to the loo while the waiting person touches up their makeup or whatever by the sink. The girl proceeded to take her trousers down in front of me, muttering with a slight note of petulance: 'Well, okay then, if you must', whereupon I legged it out of there as though I was on fire. I was sure to use the disabled toilet later on, which to my amusement was not completely free of graffiti either!

Hope and Anka

The following afternoon I had arranged to meet fellow perfumista (and Bonkers reader) Anka in a coffee house near our hotel, where I took a seat at a table by the window a little ahead of the appointed time. Anka recognised me straight away from my blog photos - while I recognised a woman with a look of recognition of her face ;) - and we spent a most enjoyable hour chatting about our respective jobs, her recent holiday, and that evening's gig which Anka and her husband had gamely agreed to attend! Our chat stretched my 'extrem eingerostet' German to its limits, but it was a jolly good thing for me to practise in this way. Surprisingly, we barely touched on the subject of our fragrance hobby...another instance perhaps of '(brand new) friends before perfume', to quote Val the Cookie Queen.

I didn't catch up with Anka and her husband till after the gig, though they had texted me their whereabouts, while I had left a notice by the door to direct them to where I was standing, in the unlikely event of their wishing to be as close as I like to be to the stage (for reasons of height and photography, mostly)! I was delighted to learn that they had enjoyed the set. Moreover, as they were eating their dinner before coming out, they had tuned into a live radio interview with the singer, Bid,  which had helped them to get 'in the zone', as it were. ;)  I should also mention that Anka was wearing Rozy edp, which smelt amazing on her. It proved to be an unexpected leitmotiv of the tour, as will become apparent in due course...

My confusing use of arrowheads was a source of some merriment

Oh, at the end of this gig the bass player sent me back upstairs to 'waste' TEN more drinks vouchers on beers for the next leg of the trip. I encountered the same resistance to the 'alcoholic beverage takeaway concept' as I had in Cologne, but in the end I managed to do a runner with all ten, though not before I'd copped for a serious ear bashing from the barman.

The singer leaves his mark at Hafenklang

PS Spargel (asparagus) will be along soon!

Bonkers "On Tour" In Germany: April Aromatics At KaDeWe, Berlin, And Thoughts On "Tuning Out"

Saturday 21st April found me in Berlin, with my merch selling duties acquitted and a free day stretching ahead until a late evening flight home. I had plans to go sniffing in at least three different outlets, but in the end only managed a flying foray to KaDeWe, an upmarket department store with a large selection of designer and niche scents, which I also visited on my previous trip to Berlin a year ago that week.

And in KaDeWe I only sniffed scents from one brand: April Aromatics from Berlin-based artisanal perfumer, Tanja Bochnig. April Aromatics is a range I had been curious to try ever since reading Asali's glowing review of Unter Den Linden on All I Am A Redhead. And now here I was in Berlin in April - not exactly ON Unter den Linden, even though it is on the long side as boulevards go - or UNDER linden trees on any street, even, but just being in Berlin felt quite fitting!

The sales assistant in KaDeWe encouraged me to sniff the pre-prepared fragrance strips for all eight scents in the range, and said I could keep any I liked. No samples were available, which is perhaps not surprising given that the perfume oils I tested cost a whopping 70 euros for the 10ml size, while the EDP is 189 euros for 30ml. However, these scents are an all-natural line, so one would expect to pay top euro.

April Aromatics sums up its ethos on the company's website:

"Working only with natural extracts enables us to experience the true soul of a plant and April Aromatics captures these essences in its perfumes."

Well, the topic of whether plants do in fact have a soul is perhaps moot, and best left for another time. The brand also proudly states that it doesn't use "animal derived ingredients that involve the killing and torturing of animals". Now I didn't think any perfumery ingredients were sourced by killing or torturing animals nowadays, though please do leave a comment if you know otherwise. But there again, if plants have a soul, by the same token they may well also have a body that isn't too keen on being slathered in grease and having the living daylights pressed out of it. Or being scalded in a hot alembic or whatever. You can't have it both ways, surely?! Okay, so I was being facetious there, but selective anthropomorphism when it suits your purpose strikes me as a bit cheeky. : - )

But on to my testing of the range - all eight on paper, then I sprayed my two favourites on skin.

BOHEMIAN SPICE

Notes: orange, sandalwood, patchouli, incense, vetiver, vanilla

"Very spicy" was my rather terse verdict on this one. I know that isn't much to go on, but the subtext will be that it smelt more like the jumbled contents of a kitchen spice rack than a perfume you might care to wear.

JASMINA

Notes: jasmine flowers, ylang-ylang, pink grapefruit

Jasmine in 3D - this was seriously indolic to my nose. I was reminded of Gorilla Lust, which also features a vampy ylang-ylang note.

ROSE L'ORANGE

Notes: rosa centifolia, rose otto, neroli, mandarin, vanilla

"Weird, spicy, sour" is all you're getting on that one!

PRECIOUS WOODS

Notes: sandalwood, cedarwood, vetiver, buddha wood, cistus

All I have written is "very woody". Even the sales assistant apologised for the extreme woodiness of this scent, saying that it might appeal to men. Or extreme wood-loving women, obviously. An 8 out of 10 on the "trapped in a tea chest" / "planky" scale.

NECTAR OF LOVE

Notes: tuberose, neroli, jasmine, rose, sandalwood, yuzu

"Spicy, honeyed, a bit like Amoureuse?" As anyone who knows me will realise, a comparison with Amoureuse is not a good thing, the DeRae scent in question being a sticky, indolic, veritable Venus Fly Trap of a scent as far as I am concerned. Or was concerned in 2008 when I last tried it. I may be feeling a shade braver now, you never know.

ROSENLUST

Notes: rosa damascena, rose absolute, orris root, tonka bean

"Very true rose" is my bald comment on Rosenlust, my second favourite. They definitely "expressed" the souls of the petals in this one - in every sense of the term!

LIQUID DREAMS

Notes: lemon peel, narcissus flowers, osmanthus petals

This one was "very light, almost aquatic", and would have made a pretty day scent, but it didn't move me particularly, or smell recognisably niche.

UNTER DEN LINDEN

Notes: lindenblossom, mimosa, honey, bergamot, gardenia

My favourite of all - the linden note was very pretty, with a slightly indolic aspect that was well within my comfort zone. I was reminded of Ajne Printemps and its dewy, bright, photo-realistic linden and gardenia notes. Just a minute though - I thought that gardenia couldn't be directly captured in natural perfumery, but only evoked through cunningly circuitous routes? Presumably Tanja Bochnig combined natural extracts of other flowers to create the illusion of gardenia - a fusion of other white floral "souls", if you will. Yes, I think that must be it, for here is a telling commment on the Ajne website:

"Printemps is a complex, soft floral reminiscent of the blossom-filled Parisian air after spring rain. Jane began with subtle top notes that mimic soft gardenia, followed by deeper heart notes of intoxicating flowering lime."

Well, I would say that that description applies pretty well to the Unter den Linden scent too, if we substitute a windy, sunny yet rainy day in Berlin - just like the weather I experienced that Saturday.

So how come all I achieved in a whole day in Berlin was the testing of eight scents from a single range? Well, in KaDeWe I think I wasn't in the mood for the massive selection on offer, especially as photos were not permitted and the prospect of attempting to jot down the content of the fixtures was daunting. And whether I had managed to document the brands carried or not - which I hoped I might have partly covered already in my earlier KaDeWe post - I simply wasn't up for trying a bunch of things I had never heard of - that would have been too random. And generally I felt a bit dazed by the noise and the bright lights and the Saturday afternoon crowds, so I headed out again after as little as 10 minutes, even though it had taken me a good half an hour to get there!

Does anyone else have those days when you don't feel like shopping (of any kind), though there are things you need and you find yourself in a place that is the perfect hunting ground? When the term "retail therapy" is a misnomer and the "therapeutic" course of action is to be outside pounding the pavements?

Well, I guess that was how it was for me that day, though I felt suitably guilty for "wasting" a perfectly good sniffing opportunity in a major European city. But having spent a lot of that week on trains or sitting at a table in a gloomy venue, I just fancied being out in the fresh, damp air, kicking the blossoms strewn on the pavement by the blustery winds. And though I set off in the direction of one more store - independent perfumery, The Different Scent - I developed a sudden urge to track down a secondhand clothes shop where I had scored some bargains last year. I did eventually find the place but it was shut, so, having blown my chances of making it to The Different Scent before closing time, I wandered along the Berlin wall instead, taking photographs and pausing every now and then to watch the world go by.

And at the airport later, as I was reflecting on the day's activities and the conspicuous lack of perfume content, I mused on whether there was more to it than my not being in the mood on this occasion. I had after all spent the week immersed in sound, not scent, so perhaps I was stuck in a different sensory "groove"? I had also devoted myself to a new and unusual task, and my world had pretty much shrunk to the merch table in each venue.

And in my world I was preoccupied with such important matters as rubber band stocks for the posters, ensuring that I correctly distinguished between one euro coins and the twos!, and that the sizes and designs of T-shirts sold were correctly logged, along with any requests for vinyl. I had all but tuned out to the rest of my life with its sundry other roles and personae, interests and concerns. I was "Head of Merch etc, Germany" and that was that.

Also, I had gained a fair bit of satisfaction from doing what was essentially a favour to the band. I was being useful, and felt appreciated. They even presented me with a gift of a travel pepper mill, because I had previously complained that when you ask for black pepper in Germany you mostly get given white pepper and a weary look. Pepper mills are even a bit hit and miss in Italian restaurants, though those are undoubtedly your best bet. Well, speaking for the calibre of restaurant I frequent, certainly.

So it did occur to me to wonder if I was feeling sufficiently good about myself on account of a job well done that I didn't have any need for perfume as a mood enhancer? Not that I am suggesting that perfume's primary function in my life hitherto had been to act as olfactory Prozac. However, given that my discovery of fragrance coincided with the onset of middle age and its attendant insecurities, there may be some kind of connection there. Has anyone else noted an inverse correlation between high levels of happiness and low levels of perfume usage? : - ) I know that when I am very stressed I don't feel like wearing perfume either, so it could be that for me, extreme emotions of any kind are less compatible with fragrance. Like the "soul" issue above, this is rather a big question to lob in so casually at the end of a post, but I am curious to learn if it strikes a chord with anyone reading. Though it may of course have been a one-off in my own case anyway.

I will give the last word to the band - from the same track ("On my balcony") that contained the gratuitous perfume reference noted in my merch selling post.

For it just so happens that a few of the lines later in the song tie in rather neatly with my Berlin sniffing experience, such as it was...

"Imperious linden, saplings in tow
Nobody knows if she will ever see them grow
And I'm too weak to want to know
Yes, I understand, there's no rush"

No, there's no rush...I will be back in Berlin some day, with my sniffing head on next time, hopefully...?

Berlin Sniffathon: Galeries Lafayette, KaDeWe, And Our Man From Havana

I have been to Berlin about five times in as many years and I always find it an exciting, energising city to visit. It is young, hip and edgy, radical, grungy and a bit dark. Don't ask me what exactly I mean by "dark", but I know it is the right word. It may be a reference to people hanging out in underground clubs or the graffiti-defaced courtyards of tenement buildings till very late at night. It may be a way to describe the austerity and bleakness of some of the buildings, especially the derelict ones - or the patches of waste ground, piles of rubble and random artefacts you come across here and there.

Between my hotel and the train station, for example, was a grassy area where someone had "installed"/abandoned?? a long length of old gas pipework that had been painted a hot pink with a cartoon picture of a sperm swimming up it. The pipework was still there from my last visit in September, though there was less of it now and some of the paint had flaked off since the photo below was taken. This suggests to me that no one in the Stadtwerke had seen fit to dispose of it in the meantime, possibly because it was in fact not detritus - not even facetious detritus - but rather street art, which, given what else passes for art in Berlin, seems eminently plausible.

But Berlin is not just about grunge and dereliction - it is about regeneration, as exemplified by the gleaming glass facades of the Reichstag cupola. It also boasts several major department stores, notably Quartier 206, Galeries Lafayette and KaDeWe (short for Kaufhaus des Westens). Now, just as the remnants of the Berlin Wall are a palimpsest of torn posters and graffiti, so it is that I merely scratched the surface of the fragrance offering of these stores - and only found the perfume department in two of them! But in my defence, I shoehorned my visits in at the end of the day, and even so managed to more than sniff my socks off, such that I probably couldn't have faced an even larger selection of brands than I came across in the course of my random wanderings.

First up was the über-chic Quartier 206 in the Friedrichstrasse (thanks are due to Lady Jane Grey for the tip off!). With its graceful spiral staircases, black and white Italianate tiles and elegant armchairs, it oozed sophistication and luxury. I am sorry to say that despite repeated inquiries no one was able to direct me to a perfumery department or individual perfume shop within Quartier 206 - which appeared to be a collection of designer boutiques rather than a department store in the normal sense of the term. Instead I was despatched next door to Galeries Lafayette, where I spent most of my time in the concession of Sahling best of beauty, a chain specialising in an intentionally small selection of high end cosmetics and niche fragrances. These included Penhaligon's, Floris, Lalique, Annick Goutal, Costume National, Caron, Comptoir Sud Pacifique and Amouage. From the off I was captivated by the enthusiasm of the sales assistant, a lissom young man from Cuba called Alain.

Well, Alain was from Cuba to start with, certainly (I don't know if it was Havana specifically, but you can always rely on me to stretch a point in pursuit of a good pun!). His mother was a chemist and wore Hermès 24 Faubourg, of which he has fond memories. She instilled an appreciation of fine fragrance in her son at an early age, explaining that perfume is not just a luxury item, but that there is a secret behind each scent for the wearer to unravel... Then, when Alain was 10 his family relocated to Sweden, where he lived up until five years ago (so for at least 10 years, at a guess - maybe 15!). He learnt Swedish (no small feat) and worked as a fragrance SA in Åhlens, the mid-range department store chain, before moving to Germany about five years ago. "Right, so that is Spanish, Swedish and German you speak", I remarked admiringly. "And do you speak any English with that?" "But of course!" he replied in English, grinning broadly.

During the 40 minutes or so we spent chatting, Alain introduced me to a couple of Laliques I hadn't smelt, namely Equus and White. I particularly liked White, a light, peppery citrus, of which he gave me a sample. I also retested Fleur de Cristal, a pretty, powdery lily scent, and although he didn't stock it, Alain recommended I hunt down Flora Bella, created in 2005 by Bertrand Duchafour, and which he described as a hauntingly beautiful tropical floral with heady flowers like frangipani and tiare combined with a cold, salty vibe. Alain said that for him this scent conjured up a mysterious recurring dream set on a remote island paradise. It involved a surfer with long black hair and violet eyes whom - even in the dream, never mind in reality - he is not quite sure if has actually met... At least I think that is what he said: my German was starting to wilt a bit by that stage. : - )

Anyway, I ended up being completely caught up in the hypnotic effect that Flora Bella exerts on Alain, and on a whim tonight I went and bought it unsniffed from Cheapsmells! Haven't done such an impulsive thing in a long while... It was a snip (Schnäppchen) at £16.95 - and I'd say it will be well worth seventeen quid just to find out why the man is so bewitched. And if he loves Lalique White too, as I do now myself, the odds are surely good that I will like Flora Bella. And it is a Bertrand Duchaufour... Interestingly, 80% of Alain's scent collection are feminines. He suggested I try Bazar pour Femme from Lacroix, jointly created in 2002 by Jean-Claude Ellena, Bertrand Duchaufour and Emile Copperman. Well, if two of my favourite perfumers had a hand in it, how bad can that one be either?

This talk of Bertrand Duchaufour and Jean-Claude Ellena led on to a review of our all-time favourite perfumers. The others Alain particularly admires are Francis Kurkdjian, Christine Nagel of Encre Noir fame ("soft but present" was his summary of it), and Karine Vinchon Spehner, who wasn't on my radar at all, but turns out to be the nose behind Amouage Memoir Man, Opus III and L'Artisan's Coeur de Vétiver Sacré and L'Eau de Jatamansi. I have found a photo of her on the L'Artisan website, and as you can see, she doesn't look old enough to have even one perfume creation under her belt, never mind a handful!

What else? Well, I tried Annick Goutal's Le Mimosa which had been recommended to me - and it was quite pleasant, with an adorable polka dot bow, but it was not love: a sort of fruity, warm, woody, powdery floral - not as bright and sherbety as L'Artisan Mimosa pour Moi - and veering a little to the oriental richness of YSL Cinéma, the EDT version of which also features mimosa, come to think of it.

We also discussed the recent launches from Penhaligon's with Bertrand Duchaufour at the creative helm, and the way the brand is reinventing itself and moving away from its "traditional English" image in new and interesting directions. I tried Castile for the first time, a neroli scent of which I had read good things in a recent post on Katie Puckrik's blog, and found it fresh and soothing in a high quality soap kind of a way.

We also chatted about the imminent Royal Wedding, and agreed that on her big day Kate Middleton should go ahead and wear whatever perfume she feels good in, for example one that brings back memories of happy times spent with William. The olfactory equivalent of "our tune", if you will. I don't believe I asked Alain what his all-time favourite scent was - maybe it is Flora Bella - and, given our mutual appreciation of Bertrand Duchaufour, it was remiss of me not to ask if he likes Havana Vanille!

From Sahling best of beauty I popped next door to the concession of Intertrade Europe, which had a rather unusual selection of brands, including the more familiar Piguet and Miller Harris, but also Memo, Nez à Nez, Profumi del Forte and Ruinart, more famous for its champagne. I tested both the EDP fragrances in the Memo line and their selection of room scents (or "scented sprays", as they are known on the website). These were presented in regular perfume bottles and boasted whimsical travel-themed names ("I Miss Miami", "Ibiza Buzz", "Paris Passion" - and my personal favourite, "Kinky Kyoto"). Memo scents also come with helpful listings of the main notes on the bottle. I couldn't tell you which ones I liked best now, though I do remember a few scrubbers amongst the room scents: "Mad about Gstaad" (too piney?), "Back to Dubai Amber Ambush" (self-explanatory!), and the tuberose bombshell "Sexy St Tropez".

The Memo range, though extensive, doesn't have a scent set in Berlin. Elsewhere on the same floor, however, there was a display of Majathi "His and Hers" Berlin fragrances. The blurb on the back of the scent strip read:

"Open-minded like Berlin both fragrances start with fresh citrus notes. Berlin's variety and change are reflected in the fragrances after short time, too: the scent for women becomes sensual-feminine (eg vanilla, white musk, pimento), the scent for men aromatic-woody (eg sandelwood, lavender, thyme)."

I am sorry to report that the women's version of Berlin was crashingly generic and non-descript, and as ill suited to summing up the city as Swiss Army Perfume was to conveying the steeliness of a knife!

Time was running out by now, so I hared across to KaDeWe in Tauentzienstrasse for a quick whizz round their very well stocked perfume hall. There were too many brands to mention, including Les Parfums MDCI, which I had never seen in-store before. I was able to try La Belle Hélène at last, and gave it a resounding thumbs down - two treacly, I am afraid. Well, I am not even afraid, as MDCI are of course notoriously expensive. Then I tried Ananda and Black Ananda by Micallef, a duo of rich, fuzzy vanilla orientals that I didn't care for especially, also Clair Matin by Les Parfums de Rosine, a fruity rose floral I can't really bring to mind now, ditto Julia by Teo Cabanel. Finally, I scored a carded sample of Vivienne Westwood Naughty Alice (the peppery rose violet scent to which I am currently quite partial, and the only other sample of the day apart from Lalique White!).

So, if there isn't a Memo scent for Berlin, and the Majathi range is a poor attempt at civic branding, how would I describe my own scent associations with the city? Well, I will give that some more considered thought, but on the day itself I did so much sampling that I was a veritable patchwork quilt of perfumes as I headed back to my hotel. Indeed I was pretty much a scented version of this...





Photo of Berlin tenements from redbubble.com, photo of sperm pipeline from jamesberlin-whatintheworld.blogspot.com, photo of Quartier 206 from flickr.com, photo of Havana from studylanguages.org, photo of Flora Bella from parfumsdascher.com, photo of White from perfumezilla.com, photo of Karine Vinchon Spehner from artisanparfumeur.com, photo of Castile from luckyscent.com, photo of Memo Kinky Kyoto from ameblo.jp, photo of Majathi perfumes from ausberlin.de, photo of Berlin doorway from stamping-art.typepad.com