Vietnam in Berlin PhilipFriday, 3 January 2014 2 Comments

Hi,
Yesterday Kira (the co-owner of this Blog) and I visited a surrounding in Berlin, which isn't really known. Yeah, it's in the deepest east of Berlin. Many of you may remember the time when Berlin was divided into two parts, West-Berlin and East-Berlin. It's still weird for people from the former West-Berlin to go into the former "DDR", also for both of us although we just know Berlin as one city. Another special thing in the east of Berlin is the tram. There isn't any tram in the west. You may describe East-Berlin with drab, grey and many ugly prefabricated buildings, but if you skip those prejudices you'll see a beautiful sites, like this what I'm writing here about. But I guess you're asking yourself now about what I'm talking... I'm talking about the Don Xuan Center in Lichtenberg, a district of Berlin. It's also called "Little Vietnam", because this is just another world. About approximately 40.000 Vietnamese people are living in Berlin. Many don't know this part of Berlin, even when they was born here. Now I'll finally start with this article.
You can easily reach the Don Xuan Center by the tram M8. If you're coming from the famous Alexanderplatz it just takes you about 20 minutes to get there. Just walk or take the subway (1 station with the U2 in the direction "Pankow") from the Alexanderplatz to the Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Right there is the tram, take the M8 in the direction Ahrensfelde. When we entered the tram we were quite surprised about the ticket machine. Okay, we have to admit that we almost never go by tram but never mind. You just had to press a button, insert the money and get the ticket. The other ticket machines in Berlin are equipped with a touchscreen system.

That's the ticket machine in the tram

After about a 15 minute drive we arrived at the station Herzbergstraße/Industriegebiet. It was all very ran down. From the station it's just a one minute walk to the entrance of the centre. It's opened everyday except on Tuesdays from 10am to 8pm. When you come in you see many halls, written on it "Großmarkt" which means wholesale. But you shouldn't be scared of that, because they also love to have individual consumers.

It looks like that when you're leaving the tram

That the view from the entrance of the Don Xuan Center

After entering one of the halls, there is one central gear, from which you can enter every shop on the right or the left. It's an impressive impression that you get. 

That the gear to walk through the centre

The first shop that we've seen was an apparel shop, with many many clothes that were cheap like water. Kira already bought something and yeah since this aren't real shops you can also negotiate which the sellers to get it cheaper. We've also found a lot of toy stores, with everything you want. 

That's Kira in one of the many toy stores

That's one of the many apparel stores

Our next stop was at hall number 2, we've seen a lot of flowers. Yeah, this shop was full of flowers, but the odor of the shop was a bit weird. After looking more accurate we found out that no flowers was real. It was a shop for fake flowers, quite weird for us in Germany. But this shop was amazing, all the colors and so on, you just felt like it's already spring or summer.

That's the fake flowers store

You can find the typical Asian beckoning cat in every shop and not just one. We even found a shop that was just selling those sweet cats.

Many many waving cats

At the beginning and the end of every hall you find walls for advertisements in Vietnamese. You found on them Tenders for Jobs, Advertising for shops and much more, as you can see in the following picture.

That's the wall for advertisements

After leaving the hall 6 we've seen a big blue Bubble Tea factory, on which we unfortunately haven't found any more informations. On the right was an abandoned and dilapidated building. It was the perfect scenery for some pictures which you can see there:

That's the title of the hall 6

That's the bubble tea factory

That's the abandoned building

That's Kira

That's me

No words about that picture

That are Kira and me

Already 4 hours were passed when we finished with that. We both were tired so we sat down in one of the many nice and cozy restaurants. We both ordered a soup for 6€. After five minutes our meal already arrived. It was a big bowl full of chicken, noodles, onions and herbs and it was the best soup that I've ever eaten in my life. But it was too much. I had to give the half full bowl back, because this made so full. We both got a mandarin as a dessert for free. This is a tradition in Vietnam.

That's the entrance of the restaurant were we've eaten

That's our soup with the mandarines

We both enjoyed this day a lot and went back to our tram, to take the journey back home. This day was amazing but also impressive. We discovered a part of Berlin that we haven't known and you can really compare this market a bit to Chinatown in New York. When you're there you feel like you're in Asia and not in the cold Berlin.

That's our tram back home

I hope you've enjoyed this article,
Philip