Berlin keeps becoming itself: a guide to a city that won't sit still

There’s an apartment building on the Reichenberger Straße in Kreuzberg where the courtyard, in the back, has six different layers of paint visible on the wall depending on where you look — anarchist black, communist red, post-Wende beige, three rounds of graffiti and one polite mural. Nobody who lives there has ever painted it over completely. They’ve added. This is, I’ve come to think, the metaphor for the whole city.

Why I keep coming back

I first came to Berlin in 2004 with two hundred euros, slept in a hostel above a kebab shop, and stayed eleven days. The Wall had been down for fifteen years. The east still looked east. Rent was nothing. An entire generation of artists and DJs had moved in to take advantage of cheap space in the formerly walled-in West and the suddenly post-state East.

I came back almost every year. In 2010 the city was — by its own admission — the bohemian capital of Europe. By 2018 the rents were no longer trivial and the techno clubs were tighter at the door. By 2024 Berlin was richer, sharper, more globally visible, and arguably less interesting on its surface — and yet, like a lot of cities that have been hyped, it remained more itself underneath than I’d have predicted.

Where to base yourself

Kreuzberg (around Kottbusser Tor or Görlitzer Park) — Still the central energy of the city. Multiethnic, food-loaded, slightly chaotic, walkable to the river and to Mitte. The neighbourhood I keep returning to.

Neukölln — Younger, cheaper, the southerly extension of Kreuzberg’s energy. Excellent natural-wine bars and Turkish bakeries on the same street.

Prenzlauer Berg — Belle-époque streets, family-friendly, organic bakeries, the cleanest version of Berlin. A useful base if Kreuzberg sounds too loud.

Mitte — Convenient, central, occasionally sterile. Fine for two nights, dull for a week.

Friedrichshain for the proximity to the clubs, if that’s what you’re here for.

What to actually do

Walk the entire course of the Wall, at least the central section. From the Brandenburg Gate to the East Side Gallery. The path is marked with a double row of cobblestones in the road. You’ll cross it three or four times without noticing. The point is to feel how trivial it now looks and how absolutely it once divided a city.

Visit the Pergamonmuseum if it is still partially open during the renovation (the building is in a long phased closure through the late 2020s; check the Staatliche Museen website). The Ishtar Gate, reconstructed from blue Babylonian tiles, is one of the great experiences in European museums. If Pergamon is fully closed, the Neues Museum next door has the Nefertiti bust and is, on balance, the more emotionally resonant of the two.

Spend a long afternoon at the Berghain perimeter. Whether or not you try the door (mostly you won’t get in; sometimes you will; the rules are deliberately illegible). The surrounding area on a Sunday afternoon is unique: a converted power station, a former no-man’s-land, queues of people who travelled here for this single building. Even from outside, it tells you something about the city’s relationship with what it does at night.

Eat döner the way the Turkish-German community invented it. The doner kebab in its modern form was invented in Berlin in the 1970s. The best ones are in Kreuzberg and Wedding. Don’t expect a queue — that’s a tourist sign. Mustafa’s Gemüse Kebab is famous and slow; the smaller ones around Kottbusser Tor are faster and as good.

Take the S-Bahn to Wannsee in summer. The lake is huge, the lido (Strandbad Wannsee) is a 1920s public swimming construction that still works on the same plan, and you can hire a small boat. The S-Bahn goes there directly from Mitte in 40 minutes.

Visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Walk into it, not around it. The Stelenfeld field of grey concrete pillars is engineered to disorient and to silence. The information centre underneath is, if you can stand it, essential.

Where to eat

Berlin’s food culture has matured significantly. There’s now serious bistronomy alongside the döner, the currywurst, and the Turkish breakfasts.

Lode & Stijn (Kreuzberg) — A small Dutch-run kitchen serving a refined seasonal tasting menu in a relaxed dining room. Reserve weeks out.

Nobelhart & Schmutzig (Mitte) — One Michelin star, fanatically local sourcing, ten seats around the kitchen counter.

Mrs. Robinson’s (Prenzlauer Berg) — A young, smart fusion kitchen.

Markthalle Neun (Kreuzberg) — A Thursday-night street-food market in a 1891 market hall. The naan stand, the Italian pasta counter, the kimchi-and-rice place.

Konnopke’s Imbiss — The classic East Berlin currywurst stand under the Eberswalder S-Bahn arches. Eat it standing up.

A Turkish breakfast is the great Berlin meal — bread, olives, cheeses, jams, eggs, herbs, sometimes seven small plates, sometimes twenty. Manouche in Neukölln does an excellent one.

When to come

Late spring (May, June) and early autumn (September). The summer is now too hot and too long. The winter is grey but the indoor culture, the museums, and the cheaper rents are real compensations.

If you’re here for clubs: any weekend, but the Sunday afternoon shift at Berghain is the unique one.

Practical notes

• Visa: Schengen.
• Money: A surprising number of restaurants and clubs in Berlin remain cash-only. ATM up at the airport. Card is increasingly accepted in cafés and shops.
• Transport: The U-Bahn, S-Bahn, and tram together are excellent. A 24-hour ticket is around €10. Bicycles are common; cycling infrastructure is improving but still patchy compared with Amsterdam or Copenhagen.
• The clubs: Door policies are real. They are also not personal. Berghain is famous for selectivity; Sisyphos and Watergate are easier; Hoppetosse runs through the day. Don’t argue with the doormen; turn around politely.
• Sundays: Almost all shops are closed by law. Stock up on Saturday or eat out.

A final thought

Berlin is the European capital I have written about most often and felt most ambivalent about. It has the surface attractions — the history, the architecture, the nightlife, the food — but the deep reason to keep coming back, for me, is the city’s particular tolerance of the unfinished.

No other major European capital allows so many of its public spaces to look incomplete, half-painted, half-occupied, half-something. Tempelhof — the former Nazi airport, now a vast public park where Berliners cycle down the runways — is the perfect example. There is no plan to finish it. There is barely a plan to maintain it. It is, simply, there, and the city walks across it.

The lesson, I think, is that the polished city, the finished city, the city without contradictions, is the city without people. Berlin has people. It has contradictions. It has six layers of paint on the courtyard wall. The wall is fine. Don’t paint it over.