To say that Berlin is beautiful is too nonspecific. Walls adorned in graffiti are not markers of socioeconomic failure in Berlin but of lived-in spaces, bustling places with chatter and commerce and culture. Internal neighbourhoods of the city do not function as single-purpose cogs in the wider city machinery as we have perhaps come to expect from urban living in the UK. Neighbourhoods are often self-contained mixed communities with more dining and drinking gems to be stumbled upon than is humanly or healthily possible over a mere weeklong visit.
Though trying is certainly to be recommended. Though to resolutely call it such is to offhandedly disregard the joyous excess of gay clubs, gay bars and queer art installations I pretended to understand scattered across the city like drag queen jigsaw pieces. Make a point of popping, as we did, in to some of the many scenic Parisian-style cafes in the area.
The zoo is huge and home to polar bears, lions, penguins, unfortunately dressed American tourists, giraffes, and elephants, to name but a few of its attractions. We got lost and find ourselves in Kreuzberg on our first evening, an area enriched with a spectacular concentration of not-particularly-expensive dining and drinking. We sampled currywurst from Curry 36, a delicious German delicacy curiously absent from menus home here in Britain and dropped in to Burgermeister and Que Pasa on other nights because the pull of the local food in Kreuzberg was simply overpowering to us hungry tourists.
Berliners have maintained a truly mixed city where spaces are shared cooperatively. Rich and poor have a shared stake in public transport in the form of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines, a fantastic contrast with other cities, Glasgow included, where public transport can feel second tier, even lowly.
It being Relaxed Berlin, of course, not once in the week were our tickets checked by anything remotely resembling an inspector, nor blocked by any barrier. Sweaty and irritable as I occasionally became, the coinciding of my visit to Berlin and the humidity-laden heat wave sweeping northern Europe shortly revealed itself to be a blessing. My pre-emptive notions of what Berlin was β grey, ugly, and architecturally severe β were swept away in the pleasure of al fresco dining and drinking in streets with aesthetic allures to rival that of Rome or Paris.
