Berlin

Day 402 (August 4, 2019) – Berlin, Germany

Our first impressions of Berlin weren’t the greatest. Honestly, our first thought was that Berlin was kind of a dump. We got off the metro near our apartment and there was graffiti everywhere, a small, unkempt park with severely overgrown grass, pages of newspapers floating down the street in the wind, and a group of disheveled people taking shelter under the train station, which reeked strongly of urine. Berlin exuded grittiness, at least around the neighborhood we were staying in. It was a bit of a shock after coming from Stockholm and Wrocław, which by comparison seemed so pristine and polished it was like they had jumped right off the page from a fairy tale book. Not a speck of trash was to be found on any of their streets. Although to be fair and to put this in perspective, Berlin probably looked no different than downtown Philly, so you can interpret that how you want.

It also didn’t help that we had, hands down, the worst Airbnb apartment of our entire trip. Berlin was expensive and we were in one of the cheapest accommodations we could find, but there are still certain standards you expect from an apartment rental. The problem was that the host still lived there. We think he probably vacated his apartment whenever he made an Airbnb booking, probably staying at a friend's house or something like that to make some extra money over the summer. That in itself would not have been an issue, but the apartment was a total mess. I mean, a disastrous, unclean, hazmat suit required kind of mess. I don’t need to go into details, but we debated for a long time if we should leave and stay elsewhere. We ultimately decided to stay put because we had limited time in Berlin, and we didn’t want to spend it running around trying to find a new place to live that was likely to cost twice as much. So instead we spent the next morning going to the grocery store to pick up cleaning supplies and laundering all the bed sheets and bath towels at a nearby laundromat. After cleaning up the apartment to a point where we could feel slightly more comfortable, we finally went out and had a chance to explore Berlin.

We were super excited to finally make it to Germany. Travis had studied German in school and spent some time there as a kid with his family on a home exchange. When I was younger my family hosted a couple au pairs from Germany, so we both had a familiarity and fondness for the country. We had also decided that some time spent in Germany was well worth the cost. Our budget doesn’t exactly cover travel through most, if any, of Western Europe, but we were only going to be there for a week, so we went all in.

We were staying in what was primarily a residential neighborhood, but only a few streets away were all sorts of bars, restaurants, and shops. We didn’t have to walk around the neighborhood very long one evening until we stumbled onto a beer garden. Somewhat hidden behind the main buildings along the street, it opened to a huge space with at least 50 picnic tables set up underneath enormous trees. There were dozens of bikes parked out front, people chatting and snacking on pretzels, and lots of families trying to keep track of their kids who were running around everywhere. It seemed like such a quintessential German experience that we had a blast just sitting there for an hour and talking with each other over a couple half liters of wheat beer. We left the beer garden just in time for us to get stuck under an overpass as a torrential downpour covered the city. We waited it out for 15 minutes before making a run for it to a restaurant where we finished the night with giant plates of wienerschnitzel, pork knuckle, and potatoes. We could certainly get used to this hearty German cuisine. It wasn’t a bad start for our first day in Germany.

We spent most of our time in Berlin walking around the city and exploring the history, both new and old. We walked for a long time along the remains of the Berlin wall and visited the associated museum one afternoon. On another day we visited the Museum of Terror, which documented the events surrounding World War II, and walked to the site of Hitler’s bunker, which is only marked by an information sign. It’s now a parking lot in the center of apartment buildings. We also visited Checkpoint Charlie, but it was a total tourist trap where the focus was more on selling souvenirs and getting Instagram shots than it was on anything historical, so we quickly left. After continuing our walk through the huge maze of concrete blocks that was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, we ended up at the Brandenburg Gate. It seemed that anywhere we walked in Berlin there was always something of historical significance and always something to learn about.  

A reconstruction of how the Berlin wall used to look.

Checkpoint Charlie was highly overrated, but other historical sites were not.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Brandenburg Gate.

We also caught up on Germany’s more modern history during a visit to the Reichstag building, home to German parliament. There was an audio guide that we listed to as we walked up and then down the circular walkway inside the building’s glass dome. While the guide covered the buildings early history, it also talked a bit about Berlin’s more recent history as well as Germany and its role in the European Union. The roof of the building also provided some pretty great views of the surrounding city.

Inside the glass dome of the Reichstag building.

A few other activities we did for fun included going to a concert and to a movie. We attended an hour-long string quartet concert inside the Bode Museum. The building of the museum itself was beautiful and an interesting place to host a concert. Afterwards we had a chance to walk around and admire the artwork too. Travis had also found an outdoor movie theater that showed movies in English. We went one night to see Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie all about the band Queen. It was a really fun experience. The theater provided lawn chairs and wool blankets. There was a beer bar too, but most people seemed to bring their own food and drink with them. We had just eaten a huge German dinner so were plenty full, but we did pack two tiny bottles of Jägermeister (when in Germany…). The movie was exceptionally good, but I think all the Queen songs are going to be forever stuck in our heads. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

The outside of the Bode Museum...

...and the inside.

Waiting for Bohemian Rhapsody to start.

The week that we were in Berlin also happened to coincide with a huge beer festival. What luck! We never would have known about it had it not been for Google Maps, which actually highlighted the area of the festival in bright blue, which caught our attention. We decided to check it out and it was, in fact, a proper beer festival. A huge one too. For at least a mile down this street were hundreds of tents offering every kind of German and European beer you could imagine. We sampled all sorts of things. We were looking in our guidebook for a list of all the German beer types and then going from tent to tent to find them all. There were hundreds of picnic tables set up outside so everyone who wanted to could get a seat. There were even a few large beer tents set up with music blasting and people dancing on tables, but they were so packed it was almost impossible to get a spot in them. I also liked that the beer samples were always served in real glass mugs. Not like the US where you get a plastic cup or tiny fake beer mug. At this festival the proper mug with the beer’s own label on it was used, even for the 0.2 L small-sized pours. There was a deposit for it, usually a euro or two, but we got it back when we returned the glass. The festival was a ton of fun, and on top of all the German beers we tasted we had a chance to finish the night with a couple German sausages and bratwurst too. They were being cooked under grill tents and could be smelled from miles away so we couldn’t refuse.

At the beer festival.

Despite the rough start to our time in Berlin, we grew to really like the place. It may not be the prettiest city in Europe, but there was so much history to learn about and there was a kind of creativity and artiness that permeate the air. You could spend weeks visiting all the art galleries, ordering coffee from quirky cafes, and dining at trendy restaurants. Or you could stick to the more traditional activities, like spending a lazy afternoon at a beer garden or getting heaping plates of German staples from one of the many long-established restaurants in the city. Berlin seemed to have so much happening and so much to offer. It would certainly be worth a return visit if we ever find the time.