Buchwald Konditorei has been on the Bartningallee in the Hansaviertel since 1852 — which places it before the unification of Germany, before two world wars, and before the Interbau modernist housing project that now surrounds it was built in 1957. The patisserie is known for its Baumkuchen, the German tree cake built in concentric layers on a rotating spit: the process is visible through the window; the cakes are sold by the slice or by weight from a display case that has occupied the same counter position for as long as anyone has been asking. The interior is a Konditorei of the old type — lace curtains, bentwood chairs, the smell of butter and sugar at every hour of the operating day. The Hansaviertel itself rewards the walk: Alvar Aalto, Oscar Niemeyer, and others each contributed one building to the 1957 urban planning project, placing modernist architecture in a park landscape at the bend of the Spree.
Hansaviertel, Berlin, Germany