And going to the store

While we’re on the subject of the Christmas season in Berlin, I’ll drop a few lines on my visit to Kaufhaus des Westens, the iconic Berlin department store that’s the second largest such (after London’s Harrods) in Europe. (Well, with Brexit, I guess it’ll become the actual largest, eh?)

The concierge at the Radisson Blu my first day sniffed at the notion—aside from the food hall, he said, there’s nothing particularly special about it. And Harrods has a much better food hall. Well, okay, but I’d been hearing about KaDeWe (as it’s known) for donkeys’ years. I didn’t care about the big shopping malls he directed me to, I wanted to see the granddaddy.

Besides, it gave me a chance to ride the metro and tram system.

The store was built in the first decade of the last century, which is evident by some of the exterior features:

Kaufhaus des Westens was originally owned by a Jewish firm. Under the Third Reich it was “Aryanized”, then it was obliterated in bombing during the war, and it only gradually grew to its original size and more. It’s now owned by a Thai conglomerate.

The holiday window displays had too much glare to get a good shot; you’ll have to trust me when I tell you that this involves little ornament men grilling sausages hanging from a stick:

A regular old window has... this:

The big display on the ground floor (cosmetics and luxury goods) was impressive:

Note the festive, traditional Christmas music.

Here are some of the elements:

This one reminds me of Notorious RGB:

As I was getting closeups of some of the ornaments, an older woman told me that if I wanted some photographs, I should go to the fifth floor. Turns out she was right: that’s where all the ornaments are for sale, viz:

These wreaths were…different:

And this poor guy has already had a hard life:

Then I went to the food hall, which is on the top floor. Yes—it’s not Harrods, but still, plenty of restaurants, including this, which struck my fancy:

And my favorites:

(The lipsticks are Laurent-Perrier.)

And some of the foods; stuffed dates:

Stuffed figs:

And, from the patisserie:

Yep, KaDeWe was well worth the visit.