And 10 things that didn't make their own post

As I've been running round Berlin over the last five months, I've seen lots of things that say something about the way of life here. Some are significant and/or special to this city, like the wall or massive breakfasts on Sundays. And some are less so, but still give some idea about what it is like to live here. Most I've been able to catch on camera in some way and post about. But there are some that I haven't - and so here are 10 final things that I think makes Berlin brilliant and different.

1. Spielplätze. Every afternoon playgrounds across Berlin are filled to the brim with children and parents (mums and lots of dads). This is not only is this because the playgrounds are amazing - pirate ship climbing frames, trampolines and zip wires - but because since everyone lives in flats, these are people's gardens. And their communal nature is no bad thing for creating a proper neighbourhood atmosphere (well, in Friedrichshain at least) that many people elsewhere romanticise about where kids play together and neighbourhoods stop and chat.

2. Those weird pink tubes. According to the Pollems website, these tubes that wind across move groundwater around and away from buildings.

3. Spätis. Not only do these off-licenses have a pretty huge selection of beer and soft drinks (including about 7 types of coke, no monopoly here Coca Cola), they can double up as a cheap bar in the summer if you don't mind sitting outside on their benches and tables. Where else can you get a round for 70 cents per person? Perfect place to unwind when you get your Feierabend at 3am.

4. Ice cream. I remember spending all my pocket money on ice creams during a German school trip 15 years ago, and the love of ice cream has not diminished here. All summer long (and even now into autumn) there are huge queues outside ice cream parlours. Everyone says the one in Falkensteinstraße is the best, but my fave is Eispiraten on Grünberger Straße. Two scoops for a euro!

5. Broken and empty bottles. You have to watch you put your feet/ride your bike on Saturday and Sunday mornings to avoid the broken beer bottles that pretty much litter the streets. The homeless bottle collectors do a good job at weekends, and council street cleaners in the week (as my four year old brother put it 'they've cleaned up the party'), but they never get it all.

6. Pong. They love a bit of table tennis here, and have a couple of tables in every decent neighbourhood park or square. Good thing about it is you can play even if you're complete crap - but just watch out for the regulars who might challenge you to a game only to scare you off. Man in white cap in Travelplatz did this to us.

7. Rain. This summer has been a bit of a washout at times. But while there has been some drizzle, mostly when the rain comes, it pours. Which means you are often cycling along at 100 miles an hour, looking over your shoulder, and trying to make it home before the big, black thundercloud unleashes its shower over you. If you do, you can enjoy thunder, lightning and then double rainbows from the dry. If not, drowned rat sums you up.

8. Swimming in the lake. There are tons of great lakes around Berlin that you can have a dip in. The bottom is a bit sludgy and squelchy in some, but once you get over it, they are great. You can choose tiny patches of bankside that are more secluded like Schlachtensee or the pine forested north bank of Müggelsee (you might have to walk round a bit to find a spot), nudist sections (FKK) of the main beaches if that's your thing, or the Badeschiff if you prefer a trendy-infused swimming pool over lake water. But for a lovely, open, sandy bottomed beach - its got to be Strandbad Wannsee.

9. Leisure time more generally. Maybe its because I'm not working full-time here, but I do get the impression that Berliners take their free time more seriously than Brits. Everyone wishes you a 'Schönen Feierabend' (literally celebration evening, or happy end of work) and there is tons of organised (e.g. climbing and parcour clubs), semi-organised (e.g. 32 urban beach bars, grill-boats to rent, flea-market kareoke and u-v crazy golf) and non-organised (picnics in the park) to do.

10. Helping out during house moves. I've already blogged about how flats come with literally just the kitchen sink and you have to deck them out with washing machine, wire the electricity and paint the floors/ceilings/walls. Well the nice thing is that whenever people move here, they invite their friends to help them out and take them out for some lunch/drinks afterwards. Pretty essential if you're moving from the second to the fifth floor across town - and Joe and I are slowly banking up some points for when we need some help to move out of our flat next year.

The marathon

After over 500km and 50 hours training, and the more important 42km and 4 hours 19 minutes on the big day itself, I am coming to the end of this blog.

And now one week after the aches and pains have faded away (not helped by three flights of stairs and a job where renditions of 'head, shoulders, knees and toes' are obligatory), I am left with only the memory of a challenging but fantastic day. So much so that I've even joked about doing another...

I guess all first time marathon runners don't quite know what they are letting themselves in for. You can't really know as the most you're advised to run before the day itself is 30km. And most of that is bearable. In fact - despite being late and starting at the back amid discarded water bottles, jogging tops and plastic wraps of the other runners - the run out through the Tiergarten, past the Siegesaule and through Moabit and Mitte was fantastic. Getting into my groove down my regular routes of Karl Marx Allee and Kreuzberg, I felt on top of the world - even as my mate, who had only decided to run the marathon one week before, motored off into the distance. But then comes the hard bit.

At 21km, the route started its massive 15km loop out towards Zehlendorf. And the further I ran away from the direction of the finishing line, the more it felt like no-man's land. I was not used to running in the late 20kms, and I had never been to this bit of town. I desperately needed a friendly face to let me know where I was. And a madly waving boyfriend and friends provided me with that at 32 and 37km. I was so happy I even mustered enough energy for a wave and a smile. And then head down for the last, hellish 5km where the kms got longer and longer, my knees got sorer and sorer and I was seriously considering whether anyone would notice if I took a shortcut up Friedrichstraße.

And finally, there it was, the finishing line - albeit a unexpected and unwanted 200 meters further on than the Brandenburg Gate. It was done, and all that was left was to pick up my medal, to collect my free alcohol free Erdinger beer (who else would sponsor a marathon in Germany?) and to look forward to week of eating and drinking what I wanted.

So despite not being friends at times, thank you Marathon, for giving me something to get out of bed for, showing me around my new town, and making me feel ok about eating cheese for breakfast!

Elections!

About a month ago, large A2 photos of beaming people started appearing on every streetpost. They look very friendly, I thought, I wonder what they want? Answer: my vote on the 18th September, when Berlin goes to the polls to choose their local political representatives, who then in turn will vote for the Mayor of Berlin.

As these are local elections, I can as a EU citizen take part in them. But who do I choose? Almost knowingly the next volley of posters appeared with some clear manifesto commitments, which the parties presumably hoped would set them apart from each other. 'No' to privatisation of the S-bahn, fewer 30km an hour speed limits and minimum wage in all sectors (which, as a waitress, would be most welcome). The Piraten Party as you might expect took a slightly different tack - instead of proposing solutions in their posters, they simply promised to ask the questions and listen to our solutions.

For a bit more in-depth understanding of the parties and their politics, there are a couple of good on-line tools. The first (here) allows you to 'agree', 'disagree' or be 'neutral' against 30 or so main policies. It then matches you with your most similar parties, and then gives you a break down of how each party voted on each issue, from voting from 16 years old, to civil partnerships being given the same status as marriage, to quotas for women in management boards, to tax on hotel stays, to crackdown on far right and far left extremism, and to the preservation of the Templehof airport as a green space. This one gives a more detailed still breakdown on what each of the local candidates for your neighbourhood thinks on each of the issues.

With just two weeks to go, the parties have been bringing out the big guns too. Although not directly voted for, the mayoral candidates have a huge influence over how people vote locally. So there are huge posters across the city of Claus Wowereit, the incumbant SPD Mayor, and Renate Künast, the Green Party candidate, who at one point looked strong enough to follow Stuttgart in having a green majority, but is now wavering in the polls. And Angela Merkel has been throwing her support behind the CDU candidate.

Despite being local elections, Germany's federal set up makes these as important as national elections. With visible and well thought out marketing strategies, and Sunday voting, there is a clear drive to gain maximum voter turnout. Although it has been decreasing over the past few years, turnout across Germany is above 70% in federal elections, compared to around 65% in UK general elections (it has been as low as 59%) and only 38% in local elections.

Stolperstein

When you walk, run or dawdle round Berlin - or other towns in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and other European countries - you may catch a glint of a bronze cobble stone under your feat. There are around 30,000 Stolperstein (or stumbling stones) in total, 2,900 in Berlin each acting as a memorial of Holocaust victims that died in the concentration camps in Germany and eastern Europe. Into each one, the artist Gunter Demnig has engraved the name, date of birth and date and execution camp of death of the victim, and placed it in the pavement infront of the place where they used to live.

According to the artist (see this Youtube clip), it is a way of giving names back to people who were considered by the Nazi authorities merely by numbers, and providing the ancestors of the victims with a way of remembering them.

For me, this type of memorial is way more powerful than the specific places built to commemorate the atrocity, which you might make one - or maybe two - visits to. Also, it is too much for me to take in and really reflect on while I am there, even the accessible Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, which I have gone back to on a number of occasions. While these cobblestone memorials do not dominate everyday life and tie future generations to the actions of the past, they provide a regular reminder to everyone to ponder in their own time and place.

I don't know quite what I expected when I came to live in Germany. I had heard about the laws banning Nazi salutes and symbols, so I had probably assumed that it would be rarely brought up in conversation. In the UK, the 'don't mention the war' mentality is often still quite strong. But this period of history is not a taboo. Quite the opposite. Learning from the past is a firm part of German education and as you should expect from a couple of generations on, comfortable and serious about discussing it. Like passing the small stones in the street - not weighed down by what went before, but conscious of it.

Biking in Berlin

It was Berlin that four years ago gave me the confidence to get back on my bike. With less than half the population owning a car, most people have a bike. Various surveys say that there are 400,000 cyclists (or around 12% of the population) on the cities cycle routes each day, and 5% of all journeys are biked (compared to 2% in London). Which means cyclists rule the road.

Unlike London, cycling in Berlin makes you feel safe and sexy. Cycle lanes, wide streets, traffic lights that turn green first for cyclists, and a look the other way attitude to cycling on pavements means that cycling in Berlin is pretty safe. This in turn makes helmet wearing rare, so that despite the rain, the occasional tramline and the wobbly effect the cobbled streets have on your arms, cycling feels pretty carefree.

There are bikes for every purpose here. Huge boxes at the front of bikes are used by post men and women to deliver letters, and by homeless guys to collect bottles (which they recycle for cash), parents take their eager kids to kindergarten or school in seat or a trailer attached to the back, and dog-owners give their pets a lift when its a bit too much, fresh-faced workers commute across town on the 1,600 km of cycle paths, and more tipsy night owls wobble over the bridge between Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg as they continue their night out. Fixies and pimped bikes are on the up, but because of those dastardly tramlines, most prefer a fatter wheel. Tourists have a choice of eight seater circular bikes, beer and bar bikes (where you drink, peddle and sight see), tandem bikes, Dutch bikes or your common all garden regular bike. Best ones are Boxi Bikes on Boxhagener Platz (28 euros for three days) or Fahrradstation on Dorotheenstraße in Mitte (really good selection, including trailers, but bit pricier).

With a couple of exceptions, everyone I've taken out on a bike has loved it, despite riding a bike I bought from a guy in the bar for 10 euros and a pack of fags, or having me riding on their rack after someone got a flat. We've either stuck to the city centre, doing the touristy sites and going out to the amazing Café am Neuen See in the Tiergarten, gone down along the canal in Kreuzberg and picked up an ice cream from Aldemir Eis in Falkensteinstraße, gone out to old town of Köpenick and the enormous Müggelsee lake (taking the train there costs 1 euro 30) or precariously balanced beers and lettuce leaves in our baskets on the way to a picnic in Treptower Park. And some have even been inspired to dust down their Pioneer Prestiges back home.

Volkspark Wuhlheide

At 27km, this run was my longest so far, and according to my training guide, 3km short of the longest I should do before the big day itself. So inevitably, it required a new park to run through. Leaving the city parks behind me, I headed out to Volkspark Wuhlheide, which is just by Köpenick, a once medieval town south east of Berlin that has now been engulfed by the city's administrative borders.

 As I ran down along the river by Treptower Park and into the woodland of the Volkspark Wuhlheide, I noticed how many different ways people were using the parks. After the previous day's sunshine when people had been pedalo-ing, ping-ponging and picnicing, people were cycling, walking, playing and even raving at an all-weekend festival in the park.

Its my impression that Berliners seem to use their parks and green space much more than people in London other European cities I've visited. This may be because the bigger parks - like Volkspark Wuhlheide - have more on offer. As you can see from the map, there are walking and cycle lanes, football pitches and skatebording areas, horseriding centres, an organic garden, a model village of Berlin and Brandenburg buildings, openair swimming pools and theatres, and of course the obligatory children's climbing frames. They were simply designed for people to spend a lot of their free time here.

But it also seems that people here relish spending their free time in the great outdoors - even if that is within the city boundaries. The Timeout equivalents - Tip and Zitty - have been featuring outdoor activities since I've been here; the 10 best lakes, undiscovered outdoor escapes etc. Doing a cycling tour out to one of the surrounding lakes, forests or towns seems to be way more popular here - for those in their 20s as well as 70s. And the neighbourhood parks are busy early into the evening with people having a beer and/or BBQ. Why this is - fewer gardens, or colder winters - I don't know, but whatever the reason, its good news for summertime runners.

The TV Tower

Its only on really dreary days like today that you cannot see the 368 meter high TV tower from pretty much everywhere in the city. From the centrepoint of a clearly and proudly designed vista up the long stretch of Karl Marx Allee, to a backdrop to an unlikely sunset spot overlooking Warschauer Straße station, to reflections in glass fronted department buildings, the omnipresence of the tower lets you know you are in Berlin.

 

Which is, I guess, what kind of excuses a friend of a friend's question over 'why there are so many of those tall tower things in Berlin?'! But is also part of the reason behind its construction in the first place. Built in the 1960s, at the same time as the space race between the US and the Soviet Union, it was designed to show the strength of the DDR/GDR to those living West of the wall.

Those East Germans also knew how to show their sense of humour however. According to our landlord it was the subject of a number of April Fool's jokes during the 70s and 80s. And it has been affectionately known as both the TV asparagus and the Pope's revenge due the the cross it makes when the sun shines on it.

The Turkish Market and Landwehrkanal

I said right from the start that I did not move to Berlin because I was pushed away from a London that I could no longer bear. Quite the opposite. I was pulled by the attraction of doing something different which was just enough to tempt me away from the area of North-East London that I live in and love. So it is no surprise that I have ended up living pretty near an area that it pretty much Dalston's Berlin equivalent. Running or walking down the Landwehrkanal, which runs from the Spree in the east, through Kreuzberg to the Tiergarten and beyond, reminds me of the Lee Navigation that then turns off into the Hertford Union Canal as runs past Victoria Park towards Islington. There is a extremely strong Turkish community here, as there is in the strip of road between Dalston and Stoke Newington. Both sell great falafels, although the ones here are much more cinnamony. And there are concerned mumbles from the original community about the influx of young trendies to the area, especially Neukölln, pushing up rent prices and turning every second shop into the 'conceptual space'.

The canal is a pretty busy place. Pleasure boats go up and down it, joggers run alongside it, people relax by it, laying out on its banks in the afternoon sun, playing a game of pétanque just down from Glogauer Straße or mini golf by the inland harbour further along.

Every Tuesday and Friday, there is a huge Turkish market by Kottbusser Damm which sells fruit, veg, flowers, mounds upon mounds of feta cheese, olives, bread, dried fruits and baklava as well as fabrics, clothes, more types of buttons than I have seen in my life and handmade mustard (even whisky mustard). The real find though, that my Swedish friend introduced me to, is a guy selling Ghanaian food there. For 4 euros you can get a bowl of veg stew, beans, rice and cooked banana and some mind-alteringly hot sauce. Amazing.

While I'm on the subject of canals, if you're looking for an altogether different canal experience then you should give the Spreewald a try. Its an area of tiny waterways and canals about 100km south east of Berlin that were created when the land was irrigated. I spent the weekend there with friends, paddling around in the sunshine, past meadows with baby goats and cute little houses and places to stop off and get a beer. All very wholesome and wind and the willows.

 

Currywurst

Ok, so Currywurst might be on every tourist's to-do list, but locals eat it too! And contrary to what every Currywurst virgin I've met thinks, it is not made out of curried meat. Rather it is a normal sausage with either a very mildly curried tomato ketchup and curry powder, or tomato ketchup and curry powder.

It is pretty popular - according to Wiki, 800 million portions are served each year. It is a firm part of Berlin popular culture - and it has a book, song, film and museum (in Berlin) dedicated to it.

I was a total sceptic at first, but am now a complete convert. There is much debate about where serves the best Currywurst in Berlin. This Curryfenster in Lichtenberg unfortunately does not feature in any of the top ten lists, which are headed by Curry 36 in West Kreuzberg (Mehringdamm 36), and Konnopke's in Prenzlauerberg (Schönhauseralle 44) (the oldest one in town). You can pretty much find them anywhere, and if you're in a queue for a club, they can often come to you. Late at night, guys with a mobile grill worn as a rucksack, wander around the streets serving currywurst. It might not be the best, but at 4am, it works.

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