Late night grocery blues

Sunday morning in the Berlin neighbourhood of Prenzlauer Berg. The sushi bar on the corner is doing a roaring trade in toilet paper, while the newspaper shop adjacent is selling tights like they were in danger of being rationed. And both shops are breaking the law.

Whatever your vice - beer, drugs or kebabs - you can get it in Berlin at any hour of the day or night. But trying to buy a litre of milk in Berlin on a Sunday is like trying to lay your hands on a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf: impossible, if not illegal.

And it's not just Sundays. On weekdays, shops in the city are obliged by law to shut by 8 p.m. and on Saturdays by 4 p.m., with many shops shutting three hours earlier. Berlin may be a late-night party city, but it's not a late-night shopping city.

Supermarkets at noon on Saturdays are filled with catatonic ravers who look like extras from Return of the Living Dead. They may have only gotten home at 5 a.m., but if they don't get to a supermarket before 1 p.m., they won't have a wurst in the house until Monday.

Berlin's city government recently introduced new laws permitting longer trading hours and allowing Sunday trading, but attached a bizarre list of conditions. Shops may now open for 40 Sundays a year, but only those in the city centre and only those selling one or more of the following: "souvenirs, swimming equipment, soft drinks, fruit, sweets, cigarettes, flowers, newspapers, dairy products or other daily requisites for immediate use or consumption".

Beate Kaden opens her clothes shop on Sundays knowing she is probably on the wrong side of the law: "You change your clothes daily, don't you? That's what I call a daily requisite," she says defensively.

The interior decor shop next door also opens on Sunday, but the owner has played it safe. He has just installed a postcard rack outside the shop, thus technically sells souvenirs.

Berliners have mixed feelings about longer trading hours, with some worrying that smaller shops will be forced out of business. But long hours are not problem for Max in his Prenzlauer Berg "newspaper" shop where he does a brisk Sunday trade from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. He will keep selling everything from washing powder to beer, saying the prospect of a DM100,000 (£40,000) fine doesn't bother him.

"The people want to be served, and it's my own business if I wear myself out," he says. Customers like Sabine Schumann have no problems with the shadowy world of illegal trading in Berlin. "In this neighbourhood there are a lot of places where you can still shop long after the lights go out," she says.