BERLIN — If you take even a moment to raise your eyes above street level in many parts of this city, you’re bound to see them: towering steel cranes, their outstretched arms as much a part of the cityscape as the limestone buildings over which they hover.
Their presence heralds this city’s continuing evolution, ongoing since the reunification 25 years ago between West and East Germany. Neighborhoods like Kreuzberg and Neukölln, which were once heavily populated with immigrants, including many Turks who settled there in the 1960s as guest workers, have been transformed into enclaves for highly educated young adults with an artistic, countercultural and idealistic bent.
In late November, I spent several nights and days wandering the city’s up-and-coming neighborhoods with 11 other young American journalists, learning about the German media landscape, the city’s development and Germany’s long and complicated history with war and oppression.
The cranes hanging over the skyline are just one particularly overt symbol of the city’s transition. The far more interesting and gradual changes are happening away from the city’s high-rises, in quieter places well worth exploring.
“There’s a lot of pockets that are still not finished,” said Aljoscha Hofmann, an urban development consultant who led our group on a tour. “There’s a danger of the place losing its spirit as one of adventure. Berlin of the ’90s was a massive urban playground. You could explore everything. There were so many things that were uncertain. Now, there’s more order, more regulation, and even the subculture has to pay higher rents.”
But compared to most other major European cities, Berlin is a remarkably cheap place to tour.
Nightlife in Kreuzberg
On the recommendation of some German journalists, I ventured into the booming Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, which is full of bars, cafes and music venues, to visit , a lounge on the second floor above several Turkish restaurants. The beer and cocktails were cheap, the music was loud, but not ear-splitting, and the smoke-filled room was occupied by dozens of 20- and 30-something Germans (and yes, many still smoke, and no, it hasn’t been banned indoors yet). Expect a 1- or 2-euro (a little more than a dollar or two) cover charge if there’s a name-brand DJ on the floor.
“Kreuzberg has always been a very alternative quarter,” Hofmann says. “It was always multicultural.”
Fortunately for tourists (myself included), even late at night Kreuzberg and Neukölln are a relatively safe walk.
I spent a single night in Neukölln, at a bar called Ratzeputz after our intended spot, Ä, across the way was standing-room only. The atmosphere was relaxed, the space busy but not overflowing (we managed to find a place to set down our coats and space on one of the couches). Large white candles added light and mystique to the relatively dark space. Eventually, with no incentive to move along to other bars with our large group of nine, we headed back to our hotel via the U-bahn, but first stopped at one of the many Neukölln restaurants serving currywurst and fries a few blocks from the train station.
Currywurst, perhaps the city’s most prominent fast food, is sliced pork sausage and french fries, smothered in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder. It was invented in Berlin in 1949. There’s even a city
It was 2 a.m., and the space felt like an empty diner. The family running the place looked upon us, a group of Americans, with some intrigue and conversed with us in fragmented English. The currywurst was just what we needed before ending another late night in Berlin.
A quieter corner of Mitte
The Berlin neighborhood of Mitte is the most touristy spot in the city and the site of its most prominent sites — the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, the Reichstag building, the Neues and Pergamon museums (and many others), the TV Tower.
But even in the neighborhoods better known to tourists, there are opportunities for local flavor — and respite.
German’s staple breakfast foods are cold cuts, rolls with butter or jam, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese and yogurt. By my second week, I was craving some variety. So, my wife and I walked 20 minutes from our hotel at the Westin Grand Berlin to Factory Girl!, a cafe and coffee shop on the outer parts of Mitte that serves breakfast all day long. After downing a fresh scrambled egg omelette and homemade lemonade and a cappuccino, we headed back out to explore.
The edges of Mitte, where Factory Girl! is, are much quieter, with a mix of apartments, residential buildings and cafes.
The city remains a remarkably cheap place to live and play compared to other European cities, though rents are rising.
Communism left eastern Berlin in bad shape, with new development largely occurring on the outskirts. Gentrification that had already slowly started moving through U.S. cities in the 1960s was kept at bay until the 1990s in Germany.
“You could always afford to live in Berlin,” Hofmann says. “By hardly doing anything, you could survive.”
Berlin — Germany’s capital since the fall of the Wall — continues to be heavily subsidized by the country’s wealthier cities, including Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt, the country’s financial center. But companies and start-ups are setting up shop here, taking advantage of the relatively cheap building space and a young and highly educated workforce. On her way out to meet me in Berlin a week after I arrived, my wife struck up a conversation with a 20-something American man who had left San Francisco six months earlier to work in a Berlin-based technology startup.
As more people move here, Berlin may lose some level of its alternative edge and luster. For now, though, its spirit is one of possibility.
Daniel Petty: 303-954-1081, dpetty@denverpost.com or
