Visitors and residents new to Berlin - especially those who have been to other German cities - often have a common question upon first experiencing it: Why doesn’t Berlin have the typical ‘Altstadt’ at its center?

If you’ve been to other German cities and towns, they are all, to some degree, centered around an “old town” plaza that is centered on two anchors: a large, old church and a large, old town hall.

And Berlin does have this physical center area in Alexanderplatz - where the Rotes Rathaus is, as well as the Nikolaiviertel, the oldest part of the original city of Berlin. On its borders reside the Berliner Dom, the elaborate neo-Renaissance cathedral church of the imperial kaisers, and also the controversially reconstructed royal Berliner Schloss (Berlin Palace).

But it doesn’t really feel much like the center of Berlin, just one of many popular places in a very large metropolis.

Some have speculated that the total destruction of most of the city during the Second World War, plus 40 years’ of division during the Cold War are the reason for the lack of cohesion. And while those catastrophes certainly contributed, the truth is that Berlin doesn’t lack a city center — it has many city centers.

I once heard someone say that Berlin is not really a single large city, but “five medium-size cities in a trenchcoat.”

And I don’t think there could be a more accurate description. In truth, the real roots of Berlin’s urban sprawl lie in an event that happened earlier, on the 27th of April, 1920.

The Greater Berlin Act of 1920

On that day, the Prussian state parliament passed the Greater Berlin Act, official title: the Law Regarding the Creation of the New Municipality of Berlin.

The law, when it took effect the following October, instantly doubled the city’s population from 1.9 million people to 3.8 million by incorporating seven surrounding towns; 59 rural communities; and 27 estate districts1 all in one fell swoop. The land area increased from the 65.72 square kilometers of Alt-Berlin to 878.1 square kilometers of the newly created Greater Berlin.

The new city became the third largest city in the world at the time, with a population just behind London and New York.2

Though the change was sudden, the effort to enact some form of governance over the whole Berlin connurbation had been going on in some form for decades. The cities and towns surrounding Berlin had been growing toward the center in the last decades of the 19th century as the area had rapidly industrialized.

In the crowded industrial districts, workers lived in overcrowded tenements in unsanitary conditions. The growing metro urgently needed more oversight for housing, transportation services and wastewater management.

According to historian Herbert Schwenk, by 1900, the 151 towns and municipalities in the Berlin area had 43 different gas, 17 water, and 15 electricity companies working side by side.

Conflicts were unavoidable and increasingly frequent.

While (Old) Berlin used Lake Tegel as its main source of drinking water, for example, the towns of Reinickendorf and Tegel channeled their wastewater there.

A more centralized authority was increasingly necessary.

Even so, the idea of becoming one big city was not universally popular.

According to the information about the plan published on the Berlin government website, the final vote was close:

“For a long time, it looked as if middle-class conservative groups in the wealthy suburbs - such as Charlottenburg, Zehlendorf and Spandau - would be able to prevent the formation of Greater Berlin. The vote in the Prussian Constituent Assembly was close: the law was passed by 164 votes to 148 with five abstentions.

The Social Democrats (SPD), the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) and parts of the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) were in favour, while the more bourgeois parties Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DNVP), Deutsche Volkspartei (DVP) and the Catholic Centre Party opposed it.”

Out with the old

And so, overnight, posh villa districts like Grunewald and Lichterfelde, independent municipalities like Charlottenburg, Spandau, and Köpenick, the gritty industrial areas of Wedding, Kreuzberg, and Friendrichshain, and agricultural manor estates like Britz and Buch, all became one city—Berlin.

The Prussian Constituent Assembly, created in the aftermath of the 1918 abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and which had been tasked with transitioning the government from the Kingdom of Prussian into a self-governing Free State of Prussia, had the power to unilaterally order the annexation of all the separate entities into one.

The Prussian government legally had to compensate the surrounding Brandenburg regions, which lost a huge chunk of their tax base, but none could oppose losing the territory. Similarly, the private landowners who had had total administrative and financial control of the large manor estates located within the new city’s boundaries retained ownership of the land, but lost all administrative control — including the authority to issue and collect taxes and the responsibility of providing police and fire protection and other public services.

The new city was divided into 20 boroughs (known as Verwaltungsbezirke):

• six from the original city of Berlin (Mitte, Tiergarten, Wedding, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, and Friedrichshain);

• one each for the seven previously independent towns and cities (Charlottenburg, Köpenick, Lichtenberg, Neukölln, Schöneberg, Spandau, and Wilmersdorf);

• and seven new boroughs created for the remaining added areas, with each borough named after the largest village in the area at the time (Pankow, Reinickendorf, Steglitz, Tempelhof, Treptow, Weißensee and Zehlendorf).

Although the city limits have largely remained the same since 1920 - even surviving the division of the country - the interior administrative organization has changed.

During the division of Berlin and Germany following World War II, the boroughs were reorganized by their respective governments and some new districts were added.

Following reunification, the boroughs were reorganized again. Administrative reforms passed in 2001 reduced the number of borough from 23 to 12, merging and combining some to reduce the total number.

Today, the 12 Berlin bezirke are:

• Mitte, (which includes the original boroughs of Mitte, Tiergarten, and Wedding);

• Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg;

• Pankow (which now includes the former separate boroughs of Prenzlauer Berg and Weißensee)

• Charlottenburg - Wilmersdorf;

• Spandau;

• Steglitz-Zehlendorf;

• Tempelhof-Schöneberg;

• Neukölln;

• Treptow-Köpenick;

• Marzan-Hellersdorf;

• Lichtenberg (which also includes Hohenschönhausen); and

• Reinickendorf.

We are all Berliners

In addition to the boroughs, there are hundreds of different small localities all over the city that harken back to a village or farming estate that was incorporated into it. Some of these places are older the original Berlin. And some have been assigned then re-assigned to different city boroughs over time, separating them from their historical context and obscuring much of their history.

For example, we live in what is now part of Friedrichshain, which was already part of Berlin before 1920. But, the area we live in is the former village of Boxhagen, which - together with the neighboring village of Rummelsburg - had been annexed into the city of Lichtenberg before it became part of Greater Berlin.

Today, the Boxhagener area is part of the borough of Friedrichshain, but Rummelsburg remains part of Lichtenberg.

To me, the area still “feels” like it goes with Lichtenberg, much more than it does the rest of Friedrichshain. And, Friedrichshain feels completely different from Kreuzberg, which is across the Spree River.

Fun fact: During the time of the DDR, Kreuzberg was in West Berlin and Friedrichshain was East Berlin—the river was the border.

So, if you have ever been in Berlin and noticed that one area has completely different architecture and even a different-looking street grid from a neighboring one, this is why.

It may have nothing to do with east versus west. But historic divisions from much farther back.

Sources

Urban planning for governing the metropolis – The case of Greater Berlin 1900-1920. by Christopher Bernhardt. Inventer le Grand Paris: Histoire croisée des métropoles, 2016.

The Greater Berlin Act. Berlin.de - The Official Website of Berlin. January 17, 2024.

Power and Powerlessness - A Series of Major Plans. Unvollendete Metropole. Unfinished Metropolis. An exhibition on the 100th anniversary of Greater Berlin.

1920 - A Crisis Year. Unvollendete Metropole.

The historic villages hidden in Berlin. The Berliner. March 2, 2023.

My friend Joe at ZenKimchi wrote a post a few days ago lamenting the Korean tourism industry’s promotion of curated, Instagram-ready tourist hotspots while neglecting many unique and more authentic experiences that tourists are more likely to enjoy.

READ: The Fish Versus Ducks Problem in Korean Tourism. ZenKimchi. May 14, 2026.

That made me think of Berlin’s double Venices. Two different districts nicknamed after the Italian city.

Neu-Venedig (New Venice), probably the better known of the two, is a neighborhood in southeast Berlin that is crisscrossed with canals. Residents and visitors get around the neighborhood with canoes and rowboats.

The neighborhood was first developed in 1890 when the city of Köpenick, now part of Berlin, acquired the property of the former Rahnsdorf manor and Hessenwinkel estates. The city originally planned to drain the marshy meadows near the Spree River for housing blocks. But instead decided to construct canals and develop them as villa district of vacation cottages for wealthy Berliners.

According to Visit Berlin, the original residents wanted to nickname the area Little Cameroon (you can maybe understand why, here) and it was only later that the comparison to the Italian city became common.

Klein aber fein

But don’t confuse Neu Venedig (New Venice) with Klein Venedig (Little Venice) as the person above seems to have done in the video titles!

Klein Venedig is a totally different area around the Tiefwerder district in northwest Berlin, near Spandau. There several oxbow lakes along the Havel River, are connected by manmade canals (the Smaller and Larger Jürgengraben and the Hauptgraben) that also lead to the confluence with the Spree.

The area contains the only remaining natural floodplain and pike spawning ground in Berlin, as well as remnants of old-grown riparian forest and natural wet meadows, making it an important area for species conservation.

Like Neu Venedig, it is also a popular area for recreation with people renting canoes and other small watercraft to travel around the lakes and rivers.

But why not pick another nickname? It’s not like there aren’t other cities with canals lined by pretty houses. Maybe change it up a bit.

Or, just let them become known for their own unique histories. Both areas are pretty cool. But they aren’t Venice. They don’t need to be. Why invite comparison?

Little Venices everywhere

And it isn’t just a Berlin thing. All over Germany, wherever you find an area with a lot of small rivers, streams or canals, it’s probably called some variation of Little Venice or New Venice.

A quick Google search tells me there are five besides the ones in Berlin.

• Bamberg (Bavaria): The most famous Klein-Venedig in Germany. It features a spectacular 17th-century row of half-timbered fishermen’s houses strung along the Regnitz River, offering actual gondola rides.

• Bad Kreuznach (Rhineland-Palatinate): A picturesque historical district located where the Ellerbach flows into the Nahe River, known for its houses built directly on the old 13th-century city wall.

• Wolfenbüttel (Lower Saxony): Famous for its surviving network of former Oker river trenches and grids that wind through the old town.

• Leipzig (Saxony): Often called “Little Venice” because of its massive web of rivers and canals, most notably the Karl Heine Canal.

• Hamburg: While formally referred to as “the Venice of the North” due to its 2,500+ bridges, various waterfront neighborhoods in the city are sometimes affectionately given the Klein-Venedig moniker.

Adding to that, Klein Venedig was also another name used for Welserland, the short-lived German colony in what is now Venezuela.

I mean, OK, but couldn’t you be a little creative?

Admittedly, the nicknames aren’t hurting anyone. But all of these places have their own stories to tell, they weren’t created as mini-Venice homages. They developed their maritime (is that used for rivers, too?) culture for their own reasons and in their own way.

Call them by their real name.

I am convinced that the biggest myth that needs busting about life in Berlin is not that it’s still ‘poor but sexy,’ or that non-millionaires can still get a new rental contract in Prenzlauer Berg.

It’s that taking a taxi when the bus is late will get you there on time.

I was reminded of this Thursday as I strolled past a long line of cars stuck in traffic on a small street near my apartment. Although I saw the occasional taxi or work van, behind the wheel of most vehicles sat a single, very frustrated driver.

I was almost sitting among them. Road and tram-line construction have created traffic bottlenecks all over Lichtenberg and Friedrichshain, leaving tram riders depending on replacement buses to complete their journeys, and drivers taking detours off main roads through neighborhoods.

I was coming back from a parent meeting at my son’s school (Lichtenberg) and waiting at a bus stop for the ride back to where I live (Friedrichshain). As multiple estimated departure times came and went - and the crowd of waiting riders grew to well more than a single bus could handle - I began eyeing the Freenow app on my phone.

Drivers were in the area - the closest one could pick me up in four minutes! So the app claimed. It would have been almost a straight shot down Weißenseer Weg to Möllendorfstrasse and on to my neighborhood. Admittedly, I was already only a little more than a mile and a half away.

But as I shifted my gaze to the street in front of me - the four lanes of traffic that had not budged in the 15 minutes I had been standing there - I remembered this was an illusion.

There was no way a cab could magically appear where hundreds of other cars were currently unable to transit. It would be stuck in traffic - probably right behind the replacement bus I was already waiting for.

I decided to hoof it.

Many European cities either have or are seriously considering implementing “car free” zones in their city centers. This video from the YouTube channel City Beautiful explains why and which ones have already been successful.

What is Berlin Autofrei?

Situations like these are what the organizers of Verkehrsentscheid Berlin Autofrei (‘Traffic Referendum for a Car-Free Berlin’) are hoping to address with their proposal - a law restricting private car trips inside Berlin’s central core.

Since January, they have been collecting signatures for a petition that would allow a referendum in September. It’s an uphill battle.

They have to get 174,000 valid signatures by May 8—that’s next Friday—in order to put the measure up for a public vote. As of April 2, organizers had submitted only 46,200 signatures to the State Election Office, though there are an unknown number of signatures that have been sent in to district offices.

You can read a draft of the proposed legislation here.

If the referendum is held, a majority of voters must approve of the new law and at least a quarter of all eligible voters must participate and vote to approve it, in order for the initiative to pass.

If it passes, the new law would:

• Allow only 12 private car trips per person1 inside the Ring each year, with exceptions allowed for people who are disabled and need to use a car; for commercial and delivery vehicles; and for public transit and public safety vehicles.

• Eliminate almost all long-term car parking on surface streets there.

  Alte Frau, New Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In 2003, the city of Seoul, Korea decided to rip out a major highway running through the middle of the city in favor of restoring a natural stream that had been there. Opened in 2005, the linear park along the stream is one of the city’s most popular areas.

What opponents are saying

The opinions I have seen in opposition range from very reasonable to fundamentally misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the concept. So here is my attempt to objectively look at the arguments.

(Disclosure: Longtime readers know that our family doesn’t have a car and we live inside the Ring. Our two kids are teenagers and old enough to bike and use public transport by themselves. This, obviously, colors my perspective.)

We don’t need this, the entire area inside the Ring is already a low-emission zone. Reducing car traffic is about more than improving air quality. The goal is to have more of a balance in the use of public space between the huge amount currently dedicated almost exclusively to cars and what is available for other uses, like better sidewalks, efficient public transit, and safe bike lanes for the 51 percent of Berlin households who don’t own cars. Think about the huge amount of land currently dedicated to on-street parking, parking lots, and parking decks. Then add in multi-lane streets of bumper-to-bumper traffic, as I mentioned above. The slogan for Berlin Autofrei is literally “more space for Berlin.”

Public transit is not ready to support the additional demand. This is a very reasonable concern. While the Berlin inner city has some of the best public transit in the world—a subway system, commuter rail system, extensive bus network and a tram network—it is often not very accessible to people with disabilities or those with babies and young children.

(Yes, I too have seen people in wheelchairs using the bus system and been crammed in next to multiple moms pushing those giant prams on a tram. But I also don’t know how they cope with inaccessible transit stops in the rain, as well as the many times the elevators at the train stations aren’t working.)

The proposed legislation calls for a four-year transition period during which the transport companies would use to prepare for the increased ridership. We know how that can go. However, nothing motivates like a hard deadline - so the law could be the needed kick in the pants to get the access issues addressed.

On the other hand, the ‘my bus is always late’ argument is an example of not understanding the root of the problem. Buses and trams are late because they get stuck behind cars or get into accidents with cars and that makes them late. Reduce the number of cars - and consequently the number of idiots who do things like this - and transit times would improve.

I have a disability or need a car to do my job. The law contains explicit exemptions for people who depend on automobile use due to disability and for commercial vehicles.

It will hurt the local economy and make traffic outside the Ring worse. Multiple other cities - from Paris, to Oslo to Barcelona - have already implemented large-scale measures to reduce car traffic in their city centers and have found the opposite to be true.

Enough people transitioned to transit alternatives that it did not result in floods of traffic through the outer areas. Plus, people who would have been discouraged by the hassle of traffic and parking were drawn to the pedestrianized areas for shopping, dining and recreation.

Berlin also has a number of smaller, localized projects that show overall positive results. In Kreuzberg’s Graeferkiez, for example, where the district has removed over 700 parking spaces since 2023, a majority of residents and business owners there say they are happy with the changes.

Even the very car-friendly current Berlin government announced plans to make the central shopping street, Friedrichstrasse, friendly to pedestrians again. A 500-meter section of the street was closed to cars from 2020 to 2022, but reopened to cars after a court ruled the previous government acted improperly.

Public space should be for everyone (my response to the ‘freedom’ argument)

There are definitely reasonable arguments to be made on both sides of the current proposed law.

But nothing gets me going more than the arguments put forward by the local CDU and BSW parties - who are both using their opposition to the law to rally support from their bases in suburban Berlin, where car ownership is highest.

The law would force a “radical lifestyle experiment” on citizens who should be able to “choose” their preferred mode of transportation, whether that be car, bike or transit, according to an argument put forward by Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner.

The problem is, the only choice they support (and heavily subsidize) is the choice to drive a car. The status quo protects and prioritizes the car drivers’ choice at the expense of everyone else’s.

I would choose to ride a bike. But the Berlin government has attempted to remove bike lanes wherever it can and halt construction of new ones because they feel they impede car traffic.

They also don’t enforce parking regulations. Nine out of every 10 bike trips, I deal with cars parked on the bike lane or illegally parked along city streets, limiting sight lines for pedestrians and bike riders, alike.2

But nothing epitomizes the absurdity of the city’s car policy more than the number of city residents keeping junk cars parked on the street and using them for storage, rather than renting a storage unit, because the resident parking fees are cheaper.

We need to more equitably balance the wishes of car drivers with those of the community at large.

I don’t hate cars and I think there are times when cars are necessary and useful. But I think the idea that everyone should be able to freely drive their individual car wherever they want to and park it directly next to each destination is ridiculously wasteful, inefficient, and harmful to the environment.

It’s probably too soon

As I said above, it seems unlikely that Berlin Autofrei will get enough signatures to hold its referendum this year. But I believe its day is coming.

When I was walking my unexpected 1.5 mile trek earlier this week, at no point did I wish I had a car. That would have just put me in the traffic jam with everyone else. I did wish I had brought my bike helmet along, as I passed several rental e-bikes and e-scooters, and other people zipped by me in the bike lanes.

I was lucky, though, that the weather was sublime and I actually found myself enjoying the walk.

Cities all over the world that are de-prioritizing private cars are thriving. And if Berlin wants to continue to thrive, it will eventually have to get on board.

In the meantime, if you are a German citizen and live in Berlin, you will probably see volunteers out collecting signatures this holiday weekend. Consider giving them your support.

More About Berlin AutoFrei

RBB24 - RadioEins. Berlin autofrei: Was steckt hinter dem Verkehrsentscheid?

Volksentscheid Berlin Autofrei: Konzept für eine autofrei Berliner Innenstadt.

Yes Magazine: Can a Major City Go Car-Free? Berlin Might Know Soon Enough.

ADFC Berlin: Verkehrsentscheid: ADFC Berlin teilt das Ziel einer lebenswerten Stadt

More About ‘Car-Free’ Cities in Europe

EU Urban Mobility Observatory: Nine European cities paving the way for car-free living.

Fast Company: What happened when Oslo decided to make its downtown basically car-free?

Bloomberg. Barcelona will supersize its car-free ‘superblocks.’

I woke up our first morning in Gdańsk the same way I fell asleep, lulled by the church bell at the nearby Basilica of St. Mary chiming the hour. Cool air wafted through the kipped windows of our hotel room in the heart of the city’s historic center, the Główne Miasto or Main City.1

Fun fact: The Main City has most of the historic landmarks, but is not the same area as the Old Town (Stare Miasto), nearby. The area in the Główne Miasto was founded as a separate town by the Teutonic Knights in 1343.
But the surrounding city dates to around the year 980. So after the Main City was merged into the rest of Gdańsk, the older area became known as the Old Town. The Główne Miasto is still very old, just not as old.

I moved the curtains to watch the sun rise over the tops of a row of brightly painted townhouses while my coffee brewed. The city was almost completely silent.

Gdańsk has everything I love about travel - historic landmarks, museums, beautiful architecture, lovely scenery, delicious food - without the overwhelming crowds of tourists and high prices that plague so many other cities.

Just five and a half hours by train from Berlin, it has become one of my favorite vacation destinations. We have been multiple times and I have barely scratched the surface of my bucket list.

One drawback: I do recommend visiting later in the spring or summer, because the weather on this visit (in early April) was freezing. The wind coming from the nearby riverfront sometimes felt like it was going to blow me over.

From the Old Prussians to the Teutonic Order and beyond

For a history buff like me, a visit to Gdańsk is like taking a kid who has never tasted sugar to a candy factory.

From the 10th through the 15th centuries, control of it shifted back and forth between the Polish monarchy and the German Teutonic Knights, all the while remaining a powerful member city of the Hanseatic League.

Subsequent centuries also saw the city change hands between Polish and Prussian, then German, rule.

Each of these huge transitions left indelible marks.

Two different times, it became an independent city-state, the Free City of Danzig, once under Napoleon and then again after the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I.

The first shots of World War II were fired here when a German ship attacked a Polish military outpost on the Westerplatte peninsula.

Second fun fact: Following the destruction of 80 percent of its buildings during World War II - city leaders decided to rebuild the Main City with its landmarks - but not in the way it looked just before the war. They reconstructed it as it appeared during the Renaissance, when it was under Polish rule and at the height of the Jagellionian royal dynasty. 2

The Museum of the Second World War, located along the Motława River near the Gdańsk Shipyard, tells the story of the war and its aftermath from the Polish perspective. It is well worth a visit, even if you think you know a lot about the history of that war.

In the modern era, the city was also the birthplace of the Polish Solidarity movement, which led the overthrow of the postwar Communist government of Poland and the country’s transition to democracy and independence from the Soviet Union.

The European Solidarity Center, located within the Gdańsk Shipyard, tells the story of the movement and its impact on the end of the Cold War.

Shopping and eating

I know for most people vacations are about more than museums and historical markers. And Gdańsk doesn’t disappoint there, either.

In addition to ship-building, its known as the world’s amber capital, producing 70 percent of the world’s amber products.

Boutiques, galleries and workshops along Mariacka Street, as well as Długa, and Długie Pobrzeże are the best places to see the work of local artisans and to shop for amber jewelry and other products.

I have heard that you can even find nuggets of amber washed up along the beaches of Gdańsk and the nearby cities of Gydnia and Sopot, but I haven’t done this myself.

When you get hungry, you can find restaurants specializing cuisines from both Poland and around the world. In addition to the famous pierogis at Pierogarnia, and the awesome Neapolitan-style pizza at Ostro, there were spots for tapas, ramen or Mexican food in walking distance from to our hotel.

We also liked the food hall, Słony Spichlerz, which has 10 different food concepts and two bars. It is conveniently located just across the river on Granary Island and we liked that we could walk over the pedestrian Holy Spirit Bridge (Kładka Grzegorza) to get there.

Sopot and Gdynia

Gdańsk is part of the Polish Tri-City (Trójmiasto) a conurbation with the nearby Baltic beach resort town of Sopot and the port city of Gydnia, all located on the shores of Gdańsk Bay.

In warmer weather, taking the SKM rapid transit commuter rail to either or both is an easy way to spend a day at the beach while you are staying in Gdańsk.

Sopot is known as the Riviera of Poland and is home to several white-sand beaches, plus the longest wooden pier in Europe. Another attraction is the Sopot Lighthouse, built in 1904.

Gdynia is a bigger city, and a major port (several luxury cruise lines dock there) but also has several lovely beaches and a waterfront that features numerous museum ships and other activities.

Getting there and getting around

If you visit, I recommend staying in the Main City. It is easily accessible to the main train station (Gdańsk Główny). It was about a 12-minute walk from there to our hotel near the basilica. You can also take a tram to within about a five- or six-minute walk.

Cars and buses are restricted from traveling inside the historic area, which means you won’t have to worry about being awakened by car traffic or getting run over in the cobblestone streets. But if you have a lot of luggage or need to travel by cab for accessibility reasons, you would need to schedule one through your hotel. We saw some parked in the rear parking lot of our accommodation, so they must be allowed in for single trips.

Public transit in the city is awesome. There is an extensive and easy to use bus and tram network in Gdańsk, and the SKM commuter rail that runs along the coast and provides access to all of the cities and towns in the TriCity region. Gdynia and Sopot also have their own local transit networks. The Metropolitan Ticket is an all-inclusive ticket that lets you ride on any of the transit in the TriCity region, including the commuter trains.

Gdańsk is a pretty bike-friendly city, even outside the pedestrianized Main City. There are numerous cycle routes for sightseeing along the river and around the harbor. I am definitely a fair-weather biker only, so we did not rent bikes this time. But my husband and son did ride a lot on a previous visit.

Read More

If you want more detailed information about Gdańsk and travel tips from some locals, check out these posts from other writers. They are where I found some great ideas and recommendations.

• Into the Bloom: 26 Best Things to do in Gdańsk (A Local’s Guide)

• Inside Laura’s Head: A Complete Guide to Gdańsk, Poland

• Visit Gdansk: A Good Time for Gdańsk

• In Your Pocket: The Royal Way

Leave a comment

My husband just passed his Leben in Deutschland test, with a perfect score—33 out of 33 questions correct.

This is important because it was the last required task before he could apply for permanent residence (the Niederlassungserlaubnis). Leben in Deutschland (literally, “Life in Germany”) is the official Einbürgerungstest, the same test you take if you want to become a German citizen. But it’s required for permanent residence, too.1

Because David is here on an EU Blue Card, he can apply for PR after just three years. Non Blue-Card holders (like me) have to wait for five.2

He is our anchor here - in more ways than one. His job with an international tech company allowed us to move here in the first place. His security as a permanent resident will mean that we won’t have to leave if he changes jobs or loses this job and has to look for another one.

This is important as layoffs in the tech sector become more common…

Read more

Berlin is in the midst of a lovely false spring after experiencing its coldest winter in 16 years. Despite my earlier attempts at positive winter spin, I have never been more ready to see the end of the season. It feels like Christmas was six months ago.

I’m not so foolish as to think that actual spring has arrived.

I know we can expect at least one more hard freeze, if not another round of snow, before the end of April when sun + higher temps are more reliable.

And if the city has taught me anything in the three years we’ve lived here, is that when you see the sun in March, the housework, school work (and blog updates) can wait.

So posting will continue to be light over the next several days is what I’m saying.

In the meantime, check out these links to things I’ve been reading, watching and listening to, recently.

Read more

It is a mystery that has puzzled European historians for hundreds of years and is still hotly debated. Who constructed the thousands of narrow, empty, underground tunnel networks scattered all over Europe?

Known as ‘Erdstalls’ — the etymology is from the Middle High German erde for ‘earth’ and either stelle for ‘place’ or stollen (mineshaft) — they are most heavily concentrated in southern Germany and Austria. (There are more than 700 in Bavaria alone.) But they have also been documented in Hungary, Spain, France, Ireland and Scotland.

I first heard about them from this article in the newsletter, weird medieval guys.

…

Read more

This is probably the most common misconception many people (particularly Americans) have about moving to Europe.

That everyone gets “free healthcare.”

It is true that all countries in Europe have what is known as “universal healthcare,” meaning that all people in a given country or region are able to get the medical care that they need, when and where they need it, without financial hardship.

And, it is true that the governments in all of these countries assumes some degree of responsibility for ensuring this — whether it is by a single-payer, government-funded system (like the UK or Sweden) or a system that combines the use of public and private health insurance (like Germany, France and Italy), these systems are all supported by taxes paid by the people benefiting.

Remember what I wrote here about our taxes almost doubling when we moved to Germany?

It’s not free.

And, in Germany, we still pay insurance premiums and have some very limited out-of-pocket…

Read more

After a brief interlude where the temps climbed above freezing and the snow and ice melted away, the cold returned again last week and with it the ice-covered streets, sidewalks, lakes and streams.

This January was Berlin’s coldest in 16 years, according to the German weather service, with the average temperatre just -1.9C. (That’s 28.6 Fahrenheit, FYI. It just always sounds more hardcore in Centigrade.)

Although such winter weather used to be much more common here, it seems Berlin has grown unaccustomed to dealing with long periods of ice. Doctors’ offices and hospitals reported record numbers of injuries from people slipping on frozen sidewalks and streets.

State law requires inidividual property owners to keep the public sidewalks in front of their properties free, but there seems to be almost no enforcement against those who don’t.

This year did seem particularly bad to me - the sections of sidewalk that were actual…

Read more

In Berlin’s Schöneberg district stands a secondary school named for Sophie Scholl, a member of the White Rose resistance movement executed in 1943 for resistance to National Socialism.

She and her brother were caught distributing leaflets on the campus of Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University urging passive resistance to the Nazis. They were put on trial, convicted of high treason, aid to the enemy, and distributing subversive propaganda.

The Berlin school is one of many streets, schools and plazas all over Germany and Austria that are named in honor of the young woman revered by Germans, today, as one of “our best.”

Read more

Powdery snowdrifts crunched under my feet as I trudged along a busy Goethestraße in Charlottenburg last night. Soft flakes blurred my vision and collected in the folds of my coat and messenger bag. Strangely, the new surge of winter weather lightened my mood.

Earlier that afternoon, I had been struggle-stomping my way to an appointment along those same ice covered streets, trying to avoid slipping and falling, cursing the lack of enforcement of the Räumen- und Streuenpflict (clearing and ‘gritting’ obligation).

Somehow the new-fallen snow added some traction and walking became less like unexpected ice skating and more like walking on a sandy beach - if a very cold and dark sandy beach.

Instead of studying the ground in front of me for every step, I could look up and appreciate the scene - snowcapped roofs, bright shop windows, people pulling their young children and/or th…

Read more

So, despite all my bitching and moaning about New Year’s Eve in my last post, it was relatively calm over by us.

I think we have the weather to thank for that, rather than any human-led effort. There was quite a lot of rain between 1 and 3 a.m., which seemed to have put a damper on things.

While we did have to deal with people setting off firecrackers in our hof all night, that’s nothing compared to last year when it sounded like people we setting off bombs on the roof.

There was significantly less garbage all over the park to clean up the next morning, which was nice.

That’s not to say I was completely wrong about the outcome. There were still an unacceptable number of injuries and property damage. But, by Berlin…

Read more

Every year around this time I begin to see the same kinds of posts on social media.

I’m coming to Berlin on New Year’s Eve!

Where should I go?

Is the S-Bahn safe to ride late at night?

Where is the best place to see fireworks?

This always brings to mind the advice I got when we first moved here - which are still the words I live by on Dec. 31:

Be where you plan to stay by 7 p.m. and don’t leave there until after sunrise the next day.

Yes, the S-Bahn is generally safe, even at night. And unlike most nights, the trains will be running frequently all through the night.

It’s everywhere around the S-Bahn that isn’t safe on Silvester.1

Unless you are the kind of person who enjoys throwing incendiary devices at others or having them thrown at you, then I advise watching some fireworks from a balcony or bridge early in the evening and then staying inside (shutters closed, if you have them), for the duration.

Think I am exaggerating?

Here is a short list of highlights …

Read more

Today is Black Friday. Yes, even in Germany — though it mostly exists in that virtual no-man’s land of online retail, not in brick-and-mortar stores.

(It’s also called ‘Black Friday,’ instead of the German ‘Schwarzer Freitag,’ in in open acknowledgement of its status as an American import.)

As the purported first shopping day of the Christmas season, this time of year is particularly stressful for Americans in Germany looking to send gifts back to friends and family. Well, unless they are very good at planning ahead.

( And I am not.)

International shippers require packages to be mailed very early to make it to a destination outside Europe by December 25. DHL, which operates Deutsche Post’s package delivery service, requires parcels to be mailed by November 26, for standard delivery - by December 3, if you pay for premium service. Christmas cards can be mailed as late as December 6.

Every year, my good intentions of sending handmade ornaments found in o…

Read more

It was the largest general strike ever in the former West Germany and I had never read anything about it.

I can’t find any mention of it in English-language sources, likely because American and British news outlets were focused on the Berlin Blockade and subsequent Berlin Airlift that were happening at the same time.

(Note: All excerpts and quotations below have been translated from German into English.)

Inflation, currency reform and low wages

On November 12, 1948 - 77 years ago this past Wednesday - around 9 million workers in the American and British sectors (this is out of a total workforce of 11 million) staged a 24-hour work stoppage to protest unaffordable food prices coupl…

Read more

The 9th of November is known across Germany as a “Schicksalstag,” a “fateful day” in the nation’s history. The first German republic was proclaimed on this day in 1918. But it is also the day of the Hitler Putsch (also known as the Beer Hall Putsch) in 1923.

It is the date the Berlin Wall came down, but the event that led to the reunification of Germany is commemorated on a different day - October 3, the day the country was officially reunited.

It is also the day of the November pogroms - a wave of coordinated attacks against the Jewish population that occurred all over Nazi Germany between November 9 and 10, 1938.

When I was growing up in the United States, we learned about these events by another term, “Kristallnacht.”

Translated as “The Night of Broken Glass,” we were taught it was a wave of vandalism that targeted Jewish businesses, escalating the legal and soci…

Read more

We were at the Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History) on Sunday for the opening of Berlin Science Week.

At a time when it seems like respect for scientific knowledge and research is increasingly undervalued around the world, it was gratifying to learn about the many different research efforts that are underway in Berlin and across Europe.

The Einstein Telescope, for example, is a cooperative effort by scientists from research institutes across Europe to build an underground gravitational wave observatory. Current plans call for its construction in the border area of northwest Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

On Sunday, visitors could view a VR presentation about gravitational waves and learn more about the project.

I was interested in the research underway …

Read more

I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning to my husband already in the kitchen brewing coffee and feeding our two dogs.

I got up, summoned my inner German, went down the hall, and rage-whispered into the darkness, “It’s Sunday! Why are you feeding them so early?”

“It’s almost five,” he shrugged. (Note: That’s when when normally get up during the week, though we’ve gotten the dogs used to sleeping a bit later on weekends.)

“It’s not!” I hissed back, flashing him the front of my phone screen.

The time change strikes again.

It always sneaks up on us and ruins my day, one way or another.

This time, my husband’s internal circadian rhythm woke him up at the normal weekday morning time, which was now an hour earlier than clock time.

In 2019, the European Parliament voted to end the time change across the EU starting in 2021, but member states have been unable to agree which tim…

Read more

The title of this post should really be, “Five things I thought were European but aren’t.”

But I don’t think I am the only American to have cobbled together a fantasy pan-European culture in my mind—a Eutopia, if you will. One where everyone has ‘free’ healthcare and takes their lunch daily at the nearest sidewalk cafe.

We Americans can come up with a lot of preconceived notions. We imagine life “in Europe” to be as homogenous as life in the U.S. largely is, just different.1

But Europe is comprised of 50 different countries, 27 of which are in the European Union, each with their own unique culture, language(s) and history.

I got the idea for this post from watching a Paris apartment tour video by another creator. She mentioned something in the kitchen as being “pretty standard for Europe,” only to be quite put out by the number of commenters from different parts of Europe (okay, a lot of them were from Germany) informing her that it wasn’t like that …

Read more

I don’t know what it’s like in your neck of the woods, but autumn has definitely arrived in Berlin. The leaves have already started to change and there’s a definite chill in the morning air.

The sun is already setting around 7 p.m. At the height of summer, it doesn’t go down until almost 10.

This weekend we got a nice last gasp of almost-summer with temps in the low 20s (that’s mid-70s Fahrenheit, by the way). But the mercury is headed back down below 10C next week,1 so it was time to bring in the outdoor plants and get my indoor plants (and me!) ready for the long winter.

That involves finding everyone a resting spot near a window and bringing out all my artificial light sources from storage (grow bulbs, fairy lights and candles).

I wrote more about preparing for a north German winter in this post from last year:

That coupled with all the paperwork and schedule adjustments accompanying the new school year took up most o…

Read more