In The Last King of Scotland, James McAvoy’s character selects the destination of his overseas adventure by stopping his finger at random on a spinning globe. This seemed to me an appealingly romantic way of determining my year-abroad whereabouts, but despite my assurances that I’d brush up on my Brecht in Vanuatu, my German tutor was keen to press home the rather prosaic matter of actually being able to speak the language that I’d signed on for. Instead I was left pondering a straight choice between Düsseldorf and Berlin, and I realised with a heavy heart that Miramax would perhaps not be optioning the rights to this particular year of my life. I picked up my pen, dispelled the last lingering dreams of cinematic adventures in exotic dictatorships, and ticked the box marked Berlin.
That isn’t to say that things didn’t get exciting pretty quickly. My Russian roulette approach to geographic choice might have been vetoed, but I was soon finding other entertaining methods of self-sabotage. Following a six-month séjour in France (key benefit: newfound ability to drop pretentious Gallicisms into conversation), I booked my flight to Berlin for the 12th of April. The 11th rolled round with one minor consideration still unresolved: I had nowhere to live. I was on the verge of applying for a room at the unpromisingly titled ‘youth crisis centre’ when a man called Andre finally got back to me and told me I could live in his flat.
Andre provided my first introduction to two of Berlin’s most important characteristics. Firstly, this is a cheap city. I was able to live by myself in Andre’s nice flat in a central part of town for about €350 a month. Given that my pricy stay in France had accustomed me to bank statements bearing more red ink than Wayne Rooney’s GCSE scripts, this was a pleasant surprise. Secondly, everyone speaks English. I would spend half an hour painstakingly composing an email to Andre, with one hand propping open my German dictionary while the other worked the keyboard, and would inevitably receive a chasteningly swift reply containing words like ‘kitchenette’ and ‘acquiescence’.
I was living in the Prenzlauer Berg district, a short walk from my workplace as an intern for an online newspaper. As this is a travel blog rather than an internship blog, I won’t focus too much on the job, except to say that I was extremely well looked after by my very friendly expatriate colleagues, and given plenty of interesting stuff to do.
My tourist guidebook described Prenzlauer Berg as “bohemian”, which turned out to mean, “crawling with unwashed hipsters”. On my first weekend, I decided to stretch my legs in the area’s Mauerpark (which incorporates some of the territory formerly occupied by the Berlin Wall), but had reckoned without the advent of the weekly flea market. Oddly, this alfresco orgy of tat enjoys a reputation as must-see cultural jamboree, and my more open-minded workmates seemed somewhat downcast to learn that I had not enjoyed the enriching experience of being accosted by punks hoping to barter their ketamine for some Leo Sayer LPs or Lebanese candlesticks.
However, those were minor quibbles, and I was soon seduced by the relaxed and unstuffy charm of my new neighbourhood. Cheap and cheerful is a British expression, but it’s hard to think of too many places in this country it actually applies to. It is however, a perfect description of the ambience of Prenzlauer Berg, and indeed much of Berlin. I even grew inured to the ubiquitous try-hard edginess, and by the end of my trip would think nothing of bidding a cheery ‘Guten Tag’ to a passing stranger with a face full of ironmongery.
Two months is nowhere near long enough to offer anything like a comprehensive perspective on the city, but I was able to make a few exploratory trips away from Prenzlauer Berg on my weekends. Like many capital cities, Berlin has its share of contrasts, but here the differences are magnified by the city’s comparatively small size and rapid public transport. You can shuttle quickly between Kurfürstendamm, the main shopping district, a gleaming altar to consumerism whose fancy bistros hum with the chattering traffic of slick-haired men and their glamorous wives, and Museum Island, a floating sanctum of tranquil intellectualism. Potsdamer Platz, the city’s main financial district, a metropolitan jungle densely forested with towering glass monuments to modern Germany’s economic ambition, is just a short hop from Kreuzberg, an intense and occasionally squalid crucible of jostling subcultures where over 30% of the inhabitants do not have German citizenship.
The city’s main tourist sites, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and even the original Wall (it really is just a crumbling block of concrete) are, pardon the heresy, best glimpsed from one of the ingenious tourist buses, where you can avoid the footslog and the substantial crowds. Lesser-known gems like the East Side Gallery (a section of the wall covered in eclectic paintings by international artists) and the Pergamon Museum are more worthy of a lingering visit.
Before my trip I had emailed a friend who was more clued up on all things Teutonic, who described Berlin as “full of edgy cafés with artfully mismatched chairs.” It’s a pretty good summation of the spirit of self-conscious trendyism that pervades the city: Berlin is young, cool and vibrant…and it knows it.
But if you can get past your British curmudgeonliness, there’s much more to like than dislike. For a start, not only can you have lunch for a fiver, you can do so in any number of culturally diverse and charmingly stylish establishments. And there is a spirit, both seductive and impressive, of openness: the streets are wide and welcoming; the public transport network is mostly above ground and readily comprehensible, rather than shrouded in subterranean mystique; and immigrant and homosexual cultures enjoy both tolerance and prominence.
The Berliners themselves are the modern face of a modern country: friendly, urbane, wealthy, active…and above all confident. Whether politely but firmly resisting your faltering attempts at German with a disarmingly witty English remark, or proudly bronzing their dangly bits in the middle of a crowded public beach, Germans do it all with a smile of utter self-assurance. It’s a smile that says, “We don’t care what you think of us. We are the masters of Europe, we hold your country’s destiny in our hands, and soon enough you won’t even be able to use the kitchenette without our acquiescence.”
