Berlin

8th of August 2019

Right now it is 09.19 on Saturday the 10th of August 2019. I sit in the bus from Berlin to the Gdansk, on my way to visit Poland for the very first time in my life.

The Flixbus left right on time at 9:00 from Berlins Central Bus Station ZOB. The two days before mark the beginning of my journey towards my final destination: Estonia.

But let´s begin from the start.

Berlin. Probably Germanys coolest city and the one with the most character. When you are in Berlin, you know you are in Berlin. You recognize the freedom and tolerance, the raw and nice chracter of the people as well as a few personalities, that seem to have escaped from a Disney movie.

Berlin is definitely one of a kind with a clash of cultures and subcultures and also after my third time there, I am definitely not used to it. A family park turning to a hub for drugdealers at night. A Kebab store serving the top 1%. A graffity wall next to the Bundestag. A military tower next to an elementary school. All of this describes Berlin for me and – in this city – fits so well together.

I arrived in just after three hours of leaving Kassel – my home – behind for probably the next 4 months.

I had been to Berlin before and saw most of the main attractions, with the Tiergarten and the Musea Island being only things on my list, for my third visit of the capital. After arriving in the cozy Circus Hostel in Berlin-Mitte – surrounded by hip bars, pubs and co-working spaces – , I went on to walk alongside the Berlin wall – which proved to be a lot more demanding than expected.

After being in Berlin for just around two hours I already realized that I will always be a village boy by heart. My enthusiastic greeting to everybody that came my way was either responded with a confused look or a mumbled, hasty ¨Hallo¨ with high attention paid to avoiding eye contact.

This would have been a scandal where I come from.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the walk and it was really interesting to see the direct differences in architecture between east and west Berlin, which I never realized that much, the former times I have been there. Apart from that you could also see that the east side of the wall had a lot more parks next to it, replacing the former military space of the Soviet Union.

I eventually made it to the Bundestag – with people gathering in front of it and the evening sun – and took a couple of minutes rest from my walk, which took me the better end of three hours (the hostel said that it would take me around an hour, so I am either a bit slow or they lied to me..). Afterwards I went to the Brandenburger Tor, took my obligatory picture, and headed back to the hostel in the hope of finding a nice place to eat.

This proved to be not very difficult – Berlin is on top of the list of the european food culture – and I found a middle eastern diner around 300m from my hostel. There I also met a middle-aged German who told me about his life of working in Berlin and living in Munich and also had some interesting information about my final destination – Estonia – which made me even more excited about it.

In the evening of the day I still went to a CouchSurfing meetup in Berlin – after I had desperately tried to get a CouchSurfing place myself, I thought I can at least join the event to meet some people. It was quite a lot of fun and after a night walk back to my hostel I went to sleep, excited for the next day.