It’s a deep grey and icy day here in Berlin, one of those days where it feels like someone has put a filter over the city, a slightly hazy, fuzzy scrim. There are icicles (what’s the cute name for these?) hanging off bikes and car side mirrors. This is one of those days here in Berlin where it feels especially dark and cold. Par for the course, obviously, but with still three months to go before the glorious summer, it can get one down.

On days like this, I like to go for a walk, counterintuitive maybe, but I figure it’s a case of “the only way past is through”, just bundle up and face the real-feel wind chill, minus-five weather, and take it all in. Maybe find a nice coffee shop, all steamed up with the breath of a thousand other depressed people looking for refuge in the cold and dark, and have a pastry and (hopefully) a nice cup of coffee for under five bucks. Berlin gets a lot right, but sadly coffee is hit and miss.

What Berlin does really have is an endless supply of strange little shops that are so niche sometimes, and sometimes are open for two days a week with limited hours, it’s hard to understand why they exist and how they exist. I mean, just financially, and in terms of paying rent. Around the corner from our apartment is a store that only deals in bespoke-made guitar pedals, another store deals in mini little jars of sand, another is a sound museum, and another deals in designer psychedelics and mind-altering substances that are in a cat-and-mouse game with the German government.

It’s one of the things about this city that I love: that really there are endless rabbit holes to go down, if you just take the time to walk in and/or open the door, you may just find something magical, weird, or totally unexpected.

So, not all doom and gloom.

The other evening, after meeting a fellow theatre human from South Africa working on a show at the Neukölln Oper here on tour, we met for a beer to catch up. After our beer, we walked them to a theatre where he was taking in a show, and right next door we found a totally hidden gem of a little theatre bar restaurant. We wandered in and, in my fairly okay German, asked for a table, and sat down and started to take it all in. It felt like we had found a secret.

It was basically empty, except for the four really lovely people working there, and the jazz singer and pianist who were singing sad, soulful jazz on a small stage. The decor made no sense, but then it was filled with candles, masks, and any number of strange things. Just wonderful. I could have sat there for hours.

So all to say, it’s not all that bad. I am constantly reminded that Berlin, like life, often just requires a little more effort to find what you’re looking for, and being open to discovering something you didn’t expect.