The area north of Miniloft is changing fast, and now there's a great club just a hop, skip and a jump away. We're so happy that one of the last dilapidated, unrenovated buildings on Chauseestraße has been bought by some art-and-party oriented folks, instead of unscrupulous investors looking to make shoddy apartments and lots of cash.

The days may be darkening but the last leaves are still golden - enjoy the final days of this beautiful fall with a walk through Tiergarten and a stop for a delicious snack in Schleusenkrug. This popular beer garden, located at an odd corner at the corner of the zoo and the park, is worth a visit any time of year, with a cosy

The exhibition Navigating Darkness transforms Tape Club from a black-walled nightclub to a shadowy art world. The dark cavernous space is punctuated by a constellation of works that shine, reflect, or cast shadows.

Miniloft apartment's neighborhood museum, the stellar contemporary art behemoth Hamburger Bahnhof, has another wondrous winner of an exhibition. Visitors float in Tomás Saraceno's hanging bubble gardens and are immersed in utopian installations that shatter traditional concepts of place, time, gravity and architecture.

If the roundabout at Kottbusser Tor is the dirty, seething heart of creative Kreuzberg, the legendary club West Germany is a beating pulse. A small, grungy, venue up a grim staircase through an unmarked entrance, its show schedule may be irregular but they go for quality over quantity, with select concerts (mostly in the rock and experimental noise direction) and art exhibitions.

Tickets for a concert directed Daniel Barenboim are usually hard to come by - but not this weekend. Show up early with a picnic, blanket and sunscreen, for a free outdoor concert on the famous Bebelpatz. The Staatsoper presents Staatskapelle Berlin, performing Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 F-Minor, op. 36.

Each autumn the literary world descends upon Berlin for a ten day festival of readings and discussions. Meet the personalities behind the pages; follow their words on a rhythmic journey across nations and cultures in eighteen different venues across town.

The DesignPanoptikum, or Museum of Extraordinary Objects, is a treasure trove of the strange and unexpected. The shop front, in a dingy Plattenbau on Torstraße, looks like a strange junk shop, but visitors are soon led further into owner Vlad's bizarre collection. The museum displays historical everyday – and not-so-everyday – objects and curiosities from the history of medicine, the film industry, sports, aviation, construction, industry, and household goods.

For years, a quaint timbered building stood alone in the wasteland where East met West, one of the few structures to have survived the battle for the Reichstag in WWII. Today it enjoys a prime location, between the main train station and the new Ministry of the Interior building, and houses the gourmet restaurant Paris-Moskau.

Cocolo Ramen, a tiny, cozy Japanese restaurant, is completely addictive. Their delicious soups are a far cry from the 30-cent powder packages ubiquitous on college campuses. Rich, savory broths and chewy noodles are topped with artful arrangements of succulent pork belly, shrimp and pork dumplings, roast pork or smoked chicken. Or try the vegetarian miso option: they're all scrumptious, the best ramen in Berlin!