I have left Berlin.

Somehow I managed to be both sad to leave and impatient to move on. Three months is definitely long enough to start settling in – and that’s where living out of a single suitcase starts to grate.

Having so many things to do of an evening eases that somewhat. But you can’t do that every night. Not week in, week out, anyway.

This city casts a spell on you though. I can’t help but feel I’ll be back.

From Pankow to Kreuzberg

At the end of May I moved from my Airbnb to a furnished room in Kreuzberg. That’s been a good move – my new digs are cleaner, more spacious and generally quite pleasant. Thanks to the wonders of Berlin’s inner city train network, it’s 15 minutes door to door to betahaus Kreuzberg.

Kreuzberg is excellent. It’s a happening place with heaps of cool bars all within walking distance, heaps of green space, you can’t go wrong. There are street parties just about every weekend.

Work

It hasn’t been one big non stop party though. This was always meant to be the bit where I really knuckled down on getting work done, and I dare say I’ve lived up to that very well.

Having a coworking space has definitely helped with that. You show up to the office, get things done, and leave. It’s given me a lot more focus.

I’ve had a bit to show for that too. An infographic I knocked together got featured in Forbes and in the IT press, which was nice.

Earlier in the trip I did manage some useful networking too – one guy needed a few pages of website content written, another had an interesting project that I could blog about, others just had interesting ideas to share.

In just the past week though, I’ve found it quite difficult to focus on work. That’s mostly my natural rhythm I think – I’ve knocked a lot of projects over and now it’s time switch gears.

The thing is though, I’m off to the Adriatic coast next week, so it would really make sense to keep at it and take my break then. I just haven’t been able to do it.

Seeing the Sights

Between work, Berlin’s amazing nightlife, and the need to rest up now and then, I was never going to cram in a million hours of tourist stuff.

But still, I’ve managed to check out a few things around the place.

Grunewald

Berlin has a whole old growth forest within the city limits. The story seems to be that, during the 19th century, the wealthy residents of this area made sure their nearby forest was protected from development. Then through the cold war, this was the only section of forest that West Berliners had direct access to.

Walking from the train station, I saw that it’s still very much an upmarket area. This is no longer “poor but sexy” Berlin. There was more than one Ambassador’s residence with police guarding out front.

It’s not long before you’re in the actual forest though. I found myself by a lake, which was very popular with families and their dogs. Beyond this is the Jagdschloss, which is very pretty.

A little further in, I had the forest all to myself. There was a sign that warned that the wild pigs can weigh over 100 kilograms and charge at 50 km/hour, which sounds totally badass.

After some walking I was a bit hungry, so I found where the pub was on Google Maps and made my way to enjoy a nice salad and a Berliner Weisse. I found myself the only person under 60 in the area. I also managed to interact entirely in German, which was felt good.

I then disappeared into the forest a bit for a few more hours, climbed a big hill, and then went home to rest my tired legs. Grunewald is a great forest within easy reach of Berlin.

The Jewish Museum, the Holocaust Memorial and the Neue Synagogue

It’s very difficult for me to review something like the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. It’s a short but powerful experience.

The outdoor installation is of rectangular concrete slabs laid out on a grid. It looks very ordered and symmetrical from outside. What’s not visible from outside though is that the ground underneath slopes in all directions. The effect is that disappearing inside of it feels chaotic and confused.

The Jewish Museum also largely deals with the Holocaust. It too deals with it with a really unique and vivid architecture. Upstairs was a temporary exhibition that told some of the story of Berlin’s contemporary Jewish community.

The Neue Synagogue is no longer a house of worship, and despite the name is not really all that new anymore either. It’s instead a centre for Berlin’s Jewish Community, and contains a permanent exhibition of Jewish history in Berlin. It too of course deals with the Holocaust – but it gives you a wider look at who the Jews of Berlin were in the decades and centuries before all that happened. The building itself is quite impressive too.

Schloss Oranienburg

So it was, one Saturday, that. It’s relatively tiny, as palaces go. It’s more like a big mansion really. It’s gorgeous though.

There was a little medieval festival happening when I got there. I bought a ticket on the misunderstanding that it would mean that I could tour the palace as well.

The festival was a tacky little affair only really for children. I hung around for just a little bit and drank a cherry beer – I really only loitered for as long as I did because I felt silly about paying the money and then walking right out.

It wasn’t a wasted trip at all though. The highlight was the palace grounds. If the building itself didn’t seem fully palatial in scale, the gardens definitely were.

Oranienburg itself was a bit unremarkable. It just seems like an ordinary outer suburb of Berlin.

Potsdam and Schloss Charlottenburg

Two good friends of mine from Melbourne were in town, so we set of for Potsdam to see Fredereck the Great’s Sanssouci Palace.

I’m not sure what else to say about Sanssouci except.. wow.

It’s actually two palaces, the first of which is enormous and then the second of which is super ginormous. And then the gardens surrounding it are magnificent.

Potsdam itself is a beautiful little town too.

On our way home, we stopped past Charlottenburg Palace. This is a super impressive building – but seeing it right after Sanssouci is a lot to compete with. I forgot to take any photos while I was there.

Spandau and Tegel

A chap I’d befriended at the coworking space suggested a visit to Tegel, an area I’d only really known for the airport.

It turned out to be a good suggestion. There are plenty of old buildings left there, and quite a wide lake, with stalls set up for food, drink and music.

It’s not just the architecture that’s old though. I felt like the youngest person there by several decades; it seems very much like a retiree area.

Being just at the end of a U-Bahn line, it’s a super easy trip from the middle of Berlin. Highly recommended if you’re craving some proper water.

The weekend following, I went to Spandau. This was mostly to see the Citadel. This is a very old fortress that was rebuilt/refortified over the centuries.

It includes Berlin’s oldest building, a 12th century tower, which you can climb for a magnificent view. There’s also a number of small exhibitions there, that cover the history of the fortress and of the area as a whole. For just a few euros for all of it, it’s actually very good value for money I thought.

The Altstadt at Spandau is quite small but very nice.

Could I have seen more?

In the end, I saw a big chunk of Berlin. It would have been great to have checked out Poland, Hamburg, Rostock, Bavaria too.

But the problem with cramming in a whole lot of sightseeing is that you stop appreciating it. And, the more certain I felt that I’d be back here, the less urgent it started to feel to see absolutely everything.

In the meantime, I had 8 brand new countries in my immediate future.

Daily Life

Unlike where I’m from, Berlin seems built for people to live much more of their lives outside their homes. The apartments have modest kitchens and not a lot else beyond the basics of a place to sleep and shower.

That’s okay though, because the trains come every few minutes and run in every direction. The street food is everywhere, affordable and delicious. So going out doesn’t have to be a major event – you might just go hang out somewhere after work instead of watching TV.

There’s always a trade-off. One thing that kicked ass about my last place in Melbourne was the backyard. We had a vegetable garden, had dug a fire pit, a big shed, a lemon tree and oodles of green grass. Perfect for parties, small gatherings, or just hanging out on with my housemate and the neighbourhood cats.

There was kind of a shared backyard for the apartments in Kreuzberg, and maybe you could set up a charcoal grill there. But that’s still not quite the same. You can’t have everything.

The main thing though is that I felt a lot less isolated with Berlin style living. That’s saying quite a lot, given that nearly everyone I know lives in Melbourne. It’s easy to meet people and make new friends in Berlin.

I miss Berlin already and can’t wait to be back.