Berlin 1st impressions

A few days settling in including walking the streets to overcome the usual jet lag. I have been here briefly twice before so I am familiar with the place in the usual superficial sort of way. And also, as I am here for 6 weeks, there is no hurry to race from someone else's ideas of highlight to highlight. This visit will include some of the museums et al, but as the weather is now in its last sunny days of autumn the museums will wait for the colder and rainy days ahead.


I am in a room rented via airbnb in the suburb of Kreuzberg near the border with Neukölln. These are the areas I have been walking.

The park opposite is the local centre for drug dealers - all of African origin and apparently all fairly harmless, they could equally be selling sunglasses or souvenirs if it was a beach or in the centre of town but the locals apparently want drugs. The place also has many Turkish migrants and numerous Turkish places to eat, so all in all a bit rundown but with character and budget food.

My current ritual is up early and a short walk south into Neukölln that is like your average family suburb of 5 story apartments. Good for a morning coffee and to observe the continuous flow of mostly cyclists on their way somewhere - there are many children being taken on bikes presumably to daycare or to their grandparents. This place is good for a morning coffee with the morning sun, but this photo was taken in the afternoon from the cafe across the road with the afternoon sun. You might notice that the bakery is in a building with some character and presumably is one of the minority that survived the bombing - the building to the left is much blander by comparison and clearly post WW2.

And then there is recycling as only the Germans can do it. It is omnipresent. On one of my occasional visit to the usual German supermarket (there are at least 3 chains all clones of each other and distinctly cheaper than Aldi in Australia, and none so far like Woolworths or Coles) I noticed the price I was charged for the bottled mineral water was very much larger than that advertised. It included a large deposit €0.25 per bottle. To receive a refund of the deposit you put the empties into a machine (in every supermarket) that scans the barcode on the bottle (eg type of plastic), crushes the bottles, and then prints a docket to obtain a refund from the cashier.