Although it’s a little bit cold and rainy in Berlin at the moment, when I left it several weeks ago, Spring had definitely sprung. Everyone was out in full force, enjoying the warm weather with many table side cafes and the wonderful biergartens (no translations necessary) where the British have something to learn from the efficiency of German people serving beer. There is simply no mucking about!

Above is a picture of one of the streets I pass regularly on the way to work. Quite a distinct contrast from its leafless, sombre brown branches I barely saw in the dark back in January.

And one of the aforementioned biergartens, this one fairly well known, called Prater Garten.

Working and living in Berlin, you notice a lot of tension between the locals and the concern about the rate of gentrification the city undergoes. The fact that there is plenty of interesting things to do, plenty of interesting people to meet and the fact that it’s one of Europe’s cheapest capitals are all obvious drawing points that mean people with reasonable amounts of cash can come in and enjoy themselves much better than they could in other places. This, of course, only serves to accelerate the rate of gentrification with more money flowing and the environment working to match the needs of the more affluent people.

Here’s an interesting video worth watching to get a flavour of just the tension that exists in Berlin today.

I came across it from this original post, and this original English article.

It’s nice being able to spend some time in berlin. There is literally tons of things for people to do including many museums (plenty of history abounds) and many tours including some fun ones like a Segway tour. One of the ones recommended to me by a work colleague was the Berlin Underground tour, a tour that takes you to a bunker below one of the U-Bhan stops and attempts to ensure the memory and the stories of the people at the time live on. It’s a really great tour, and very popular with apparently up to 200, 000 people doing it every year.

We then headed over to the Märkisches Museum stop, where we found there was a couple of bears out in the open. Even though I’d stayed in the area, I had no idea these bears were there. There’s a bit of controversy about them because the bears don’t seem to have that much space. I’m sure it’s an okay life but not quite the same conditions as being in the open.

The bear just doing some circling around.

We then made our way down to Tempelhof Central Airport, a decommissioned airport that everyone uses for a buzzing amount of outdoor activities. We saw plenty of riding, running, kiting and many out door activities.

Even a bit of wind boarding that looked particularly hard.

Plenty of fun!

Berlin’s got something for everyone. Our latest social outing to this blacklit mini golf course held underground is just a perfect example of it. It took us a while to find the place. It was that underground. For those looking for its location, it’s found in the basement of Cafe Mitz Isa, next to Cafe Edelweiss downstairs.

The course is made of 18 holes, each increasing in difficulty. Some had fun loop the loops, some fairly straight forward ones, and the necessary frustrating holes that take forever. Great value for only €4.50. I think it took our two groups of seven people about two hours each to finish the course.

A great evening out.

See the rest of the pictures here.

Every year, Berlin has an evening where all the museums open until the wee hours of the morning. Or at least until 2am. They call it, the Long Night of the Museums. It’s great value, costing only €15 for access to all museums including transport.

We started our evening visiting Berlin’s townhall located near tourist-central, Alexanderplatz. Like many European central cities, Berlin’s townhall is majestic, housing plenty of art work and, on this evening, a number of performances, including a weird dance-performance art troupe that blocked the stairwell to the exit/entrance for sometime.

Admission to the townhall was free, and we ended up diverting for dinner and drinks at a bar making it not really worth our while going out to the rest of the museums with only a couple of hours to spare. I’m still keen to go and visit the awesome looking Computer Game museum (yes I’m a geek), and a handful more but I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to see.

Although I felt a bit disappointed not being able to make the most of the evening, we still had great fun with great company (see above!)