Like at Circleculture Gallery, which deals exclusively in urban art, and whose exhibitors include big names like local based artists Nomad and Anton Unai.

Today there’s an exhibition by Stefan Strumbel. At first glance, an intricately carved wooden cuckoo clock could be an artifact you’d find in any shop on the Black Forest tourist route. But the equally intricate white wooden skull and crossbones, peeping eerily from underneath this seemingly twee piece, is enough to throw the most balanced audience off kilter.

The mounted head of a healthily fattened pig is topped with an ornate crown. But the apple it would normally hold in its mouth has been swapped for a finely carved hand grenade, replete with the required safety pin. His other pieces show fluorescent-pink wings, yellow rodents, hearts and guns — an almost pretty reminder of the violence contained in modern culture.

At the Intoxicated Demons gallery, Christopher Logan’s ethereal but striking figures sport oversized limbs and Afro features. Collages on canvas include hastily cut photos of human faces, pasted on viscous oil-painted bodies. Colours and forms drip and melt into each other, with female figures at once fairy-like and formidable.

Ohio boy Stephen Tompkins is another name in this gallery’s portfolio. Remember the Smurfs? Think of these cute creatures going urban, throw in a little punk, crank up the colours and stretch them on canvas. You might just arrive at something close to what Tompkins creates.

Urban art is big business in Berlin, with its roots lying mostly in street art and graffiti. Now there are plenty of galleries that have placed this stuff on more traditional media and brought it indoors.

It’s a stark introduction to the city’s visual jewels, but for those of us uninitiated into the scene, it’s a new view on life. Or, at the very least, on fine art.

I don’t really need a guide, but Jan Meyer is a local with a love of the city and a self-confessed passion for everything urban. Be it art, design or architecture, he knows something about it.

And as a part-time street artist he has both knowledge and time on his hands.

With little more than 24 hours for a quick injection of culture from the UNESCO-declared City of Design (and a little nightlife thrown in) he’s just the man to give me the quick tour.

There’s plenty to keep anyone culturally, visually and mentally buzzed up within the easily walkable area of Mitte in the city centre.

It’s a challenge to go more than two metres without encountering a billboard advertising some type of art exhibition, theatre, music or dance show.

Going more mainstream after the morning of street-cool, we do a rapid cruise of the galleries that populate every nook and cranny around Unter den Linden, Mitte’s eternally stretching boulevard.

At the Deutsche Guggenheim, there’s a tour with Deutsche Bank’s Global Head of Art. He takes us around the latest exhibition, a gutsy collection of collages and installations by Kenyan Wangechi Mutu, Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year.

Back outside, the architecture keeps you on your toes. One minute we’re peering at some grandiose reminder of the days of Prussian rule, and the next we’re bang up against some ultra-functional communist-era design.

Like the white highrise blocks covered in sentences from a novel in Alexanderplatz. When Alfred Döblin wrote his book about this place, it’s unlikely he ever thought his words might grace the outer walls of someone’s living room.

I even get the odd glimpse of some of Berlin’s best graffiti art splattered on the walls of the city.

Heading to Hackesche Höfe, it’s high time for a little rest and relaxation. An utterly fashionable place to hang out — you can eat, shop, pray, browse a gallery and catch a show while you’re here.

Of the eight immaculately restored courtyards just off Rosenthaler Strasse in the Spandauer Vorstadt Jewish area of Mitte, nearly all the cafés and restaurants have a special menu featured on blackboards outside.

“It’s spargelzeit, white asparagus season, here right now,” Jan tells me.

Weisse spargel, which Germans like to call their royal vegetable, tops every menu from late April to late June.

“One of the lesser-celebrated facts surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is that 25 hectares were planted with asparagus that year in the area of the former East Germany. Today there are about 16,000 hectares, so there’s plenty of the stuff to go 'round.”

Catching the stadtbahn (train) at Hackescher Markt station, a stone’s throw from the Höfe, the decorative arches and ornate panelled walls are a real eye-grabber.

But the microscopically pristine recycling bins, which locals use to separate the garbage version of wheat from the chafe, are nearly just as impressive. Berliners get serious when it comes to the business of sustainable living.

Next on the list is a date at Liquidrom, where I get to float in a dimly lit pool, feeling ‘liquid-sound’ first hand. This place in Möckernstrasse wouldn’t be possible without a computerized multimedia system created in 1999 by the artist Micky Remann. The technology diffuses light, sound and images both above and below the water.

Live DJ Chris Bekker is playing a bevy of mixed electronic and downbeat sounds.

It’s pretty unique on the spa front — you can only get this at a handful of venues around the world. I’m just sorry I won’t be around for the scheduled underwater reading by Ilke Metzner, if only to be able to add it to my list of ‘bizarre experiences to brag about’.

Liquid-sound adventure under my belt, Jan escorts me back toward where we were earlier, for some nighttime entertainment. Just a little further down from the Hackesche Höfe between Hackescher Markt and Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, I get the lowdown on the options.

“We could hit Oxymoron, it does some really great house nights. Or there’s the Sophienclub that does everything from Brit-pop to funk . . . but it could be a little mainstream . . .”

Not mainstream enough for me though, and I ask if he could widen the possibilities. At nearly 10 p.m., the long day of tramping from one artistic outlet to the next is fast catching up.

“How about cabaret at Chamäleon?” he suggests, a light bulb going on in his head. “The late show’s just about to start.”

The foyer is buzzing with all types. A group of Middle Eastern men clad in ankle length white robes are drinking Coke, while locals in jeans and a group of elderly American tourists sporting blazers are ordering at the bar.

In the restored art nouveau ballroom, the stage at the centre with the audience surrounding it, lithe performers contort and spin, twisting on ropes suspended from the ceiling.

The show is Versus, and according to Jan, “it’s about defying limits through body art.”

There’s no denying it — Berlin is a happening place right now.

Or in urban speak — this city’s just too cool for school.