Most welcome arrival of the Architect again. It was to be the final visit and departure but now there is this period of another month's grace. Hurrah. We visit the Landscape Architect in his spacious apartment, a newly converted attic of a turn of the century solidly bourgeois building into a contemporary loft up some six flights of stairs. No wonder he is so slenderly athletic. It is elegant, filled with paintings, some his own, artworks, both a grand piano and an upright, and of course many large impressive plants. My favourite being the Madagascar Palm with its' tall spiky trunk and two leaves in hibernation. After fragrant white tea that is, I think, from Lychee leaves, we had an elegant dinner at the Austrian, but with a French touch, Borchardt's restaurant. With my calf's liver the mashed potatoes were a vivid viridian green, because pureed Ruccola had been added. That was a delicious first. Afterwards we walked and looked at new trophy architecture built since 1989, including Jean Nouvel's Galerie Lafayette, and were showen more of Berlin's hidden places and passages.
