It should be unfussy, in order to draw a mix of professors, construction workers, secretaries, and kids.
But just a block away, the setting looked like the rest of the central German capital: a mix of cranes, construction sites and creative parking.
The World Cafe Live at the Queen's main music hall, with its mix of new construction and rustic remnants from the old theater, holds up to 800 people.
The zigzagging route I took downhill to the old city was a fascinatingly horrific mix of agriculture, construction sites and sleepy shops, invisible to those who stayed in the picturesque and manicured old city.
Known by a range of names — jitneys, dollar buses, guaguas, colectivos — the minibuses carry an eclectic mix of riders: construction workers with their tools, corporate employees, the unemployed looking for work, late-night revelers in high heels and travelers lugging suitcases to inexpensive New Jersey motels.
"One of the reasons why we are having a larger mix of luxury construction at airports than in the past is land cost, which tends to be quite expensive," said Bjorn Hanson, who heads the hospitality and leisure practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "And so a higher room rate type of development — with a $450 average rate as opposed to $129 — helps make the land lease more affordable".
Sprawling over 360 leafy acres, the Wesleyan campus is the typical New England collegiate mix of old brick construction and modern glass-and-stone architecture.
Only open for lunch Monday to Friday, the tables are filled with a mix of politicians, musicians, construction workers and local fashionistas, all happily eating elbow to elbow.
At its worst, you have this ubiquitous mix of honking, heavy construction, loud individuals shouting on mobile phones or at each other, blaring commercials in the metro, on public buses and in the streets.
The latest data, taken from 2,000 cities, will show further deterioration in many places as populations have grown, leaving large areas under clouds of smog created by a mix of transport fumes, construction dust, toxic gases from power generation and wood burning in homes.
