Crossing Berlin off the bucket list

Photo by Håkon Sataøen on Unsplash

Take two lifelong friends and one vague plan for a weekend away and what do you get? A wonderful, friendship-affirming adventure in Berlin several months later. 

Berlin had been on my bucket list for some time. Artistic and achingly cool, Germany’s capital didn’t disappoint. But there’s so much more to this city than its hip credentials. Berlin carries the weight of a dark and troubled history, which it addresses in its many museums. 

With only two days and two nights to play with, we had to make every minute count. By Sunday evening, we flew back to London feeling sleepy and satisfied that we’d done Berlin justice (and knowing that we’d have plenty more to do whenever we return).

Where to stay

We stayed in a suitably cool and sparsely furnished Airbnb in Mitte, Berlin’s most central borough. Berlin is huge, so you’ll never be within walking distance of everything. But Mitte is about as convenient as it gets, and the neighbourhood is home to many of the city’s most famous sights. 

It was an easy subway ride to pretty much everywhere we went, and it was also quick to reach our apartment from Berlin-Tegel Airport. 

Where to eat and drink

If you’re a self-confessed pancake addict like me, head straight to Le Bon. I would go so far as to say they do the best damn pancakes I’ve had in my whole life. My friend Juliet opted for the banana bread and confirmed that the resulting sugar coma was worth it. The actual restaurant oozes cool and it was a pleasure to spend the morning chatting and munching there. 

Like all good brunch spots, you can expect a bit of queue. But trust me, it’s worth it. We even took the opportunity to go for a stroll around what turned out to be a seedy park nearby (I probably wouldn’t recommend that part), but either way you should stick out the wait. 

Another great brunch spot is House of Small Wonder, a cute Japanese café with an excellent selection of tea, coffee, eggs and sugary brunch treats (the croissant French toast was seriously tempting but the eggs won out in the end). 

Speaking of treats, Brammibal's Donuts is the perfect place to satiate your sweet tooth. After seeing signs for Brammibal’s Donuts everywhere we went, we finally managed to sample them before heading to the airport on our last day. Not only are they delicious and fluffy, they’re also vegan. I went for a turmeric flavoured doughnut, which sounds weird but was insanely good, trust me. 

For any avid cyclists (or avid fans of a good open sandwich), head to Steel Vintage Bikes Café. Part bike shop, part café, it’s a cool place to have a relaxed bite to eat. We filled up on orange juice and mushrooms on toast for an early dinner before our journey back to London.  

I’ve saved the best place until last. Katz Orange, a beautiful oasis of a restaurant nestled at the end of a tree-lined lane. After some desperate Googling on the Saturday afternoon as a darkening sky reminded us that we needed to pick our dinner destination, we found Katz Orange. A combination of its popularity and our disorganisation meant that we had to sit at the bar, but the bar’s vintage charm only added to our experience. We enjoyed a feast of creamy burrata, pumpkin mash, homemade bratwurst, vegetable pie and cheesecake, washed down with a German wine (I forget the name but unsurprisingly, it was delicious). 

The museums and sights

Since we only had two days in Berlin, we wanted to dedicate any museum time to learning about the tragic Nazi history and soaking up stories of the city’s residents. 

Our first stop was the German Resistance Memorial Centre, the historic site of the attempted coup of July 20, 1944. The memorial centre consists of a peaceful courtyard where a bronze monument of a young man with his hands bound stands, along with a plaque bearing the names of the officers executed there in 1944. There is also a permanent exhibition preserving the courageous stories of resistance against the National Socialist dictatorship. This was an extremely moving display, and we spent a good hour reading through the collection. 

Later that day we visited the Topography of Terror, the former headquarters of the Gestapo. The official website calls it ‘a place where terror is tangible’ and ‘a warning from history’. The permanent exhibition documents the crimes perpetrated by the Gestapo and SS with its vast collection of photographs and in-depth descriptions. It made for a heavy afternoon but it’s an important stop for anyone wishing to explore Berlin’s dark history.  

We concluded our historic tour with a trip to the Jewish Museum. The permanent exhibition was being remodelled at the time of our visit, but there was plenty more to see. We spent a couple of hours losing ourselves in the museum's self-proclaimed architectural highlights - the Axes, the Garden of Exile, and the Holocaust Tower. The Axes contained a fasinating and tragic display of personal stories of persecution and exclusion, emigration and the Holocaust. The intimacy of the items displayed was very moving and brought the stories to light in a much more human way than I've ever experienced. The architecture of the museum is as important as the exhibitions themselves, as its design elicits a feeling of disorientation. The whole thing is beautifully done and is surely a staple of any visit to Berlin. 

It’s worth noting that all of the museums we visited were free, which made for a very reasonably priced weekend.

The Berlin Wall

My knowledge of the Berlin Wall prior to this trip was embarrassingly sparse, so I was looking forward to plugging the gaps in the city of the Wall itself. Checkpoint Charlie was particularly useful for this, with several large placards documenting the Wall’s timeline. But the highlight of this part of our trip had to be the East Side Gallery, an open-air gallery packed full of murals proudly painted onto a long stretch of the Wall. The fraternal Brezhnev Honecker kiss is probably the gallery's most famous mural and you'll find many people queuing to take a selfie with it. All of the murals have their own charm though and it was actually more pleasant to stop and linger at the less touristy ones.

The East Side Gallery was the very last thing we saw in Berlin and there was a reason we saved it for the end. It served as a reminder that beauty can be borne out of a former instrument of division and that in a city that has seen terrible atrocities, art and life prevail. 

What to read

Before the trip, I read Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada. The story centres around a working class couple’s acts of resistance against the Nazi regime. Based on a true story, it makes for a compelling read about anger and rebellion in a terrorised city.