With Germany in the grip of Euros fever, all eyes are on the capital
Nick Redman - 12 June 2024
Certain “postcard” destinations in Europe are tailored to types. Paris is for lovers, Milan for fashionistas, while Athens attracts ancient-world seekers. Berlin? There’s something less definable. It lacks a landmark to truly rival the Eiffel Tower or Parthenon, although some of its more apocalyptic clubs are (in)famous globally – just google Berghain.
Berlin is simultaneously glamorous and gritty. Sprawling yet neighbourly. A place of verdant expanses and Communist-era concrete, Michelin stars and rough bars. It was once – accurately – labelled “poor but sexy” by an out-there mayor. All true. So which weekender is it for? One thing’s for sure. If you’re a Fußball fanatic, it’ll be your kind of town for the next month or so, with the final of the Euros at the Olympiastadion on 14 July. Founded in 1936 under the watch of the Third Reich, the colossal arena has a disconcerting history, numbering Hitler’s approved architect Albert Speer among the creators: National-Socialist-neoclassical in style, it remains a monument of brutality and beauty in contrasting measures.
Image: The Olympiastadion
That’s not untypical of the city, either, as in many ways Berlin is beyond traditional brochure-break territory – deeper, darker. From its status as Weimar-era Weltstadt – “cabaret central”, alternative, expressive and gay – it metamorphosed, through deadly Nazi rule, into the dour HQ of the four postwar Allied powers, riddled with ruin and espionage. Then came the Cold War and the big East–West split.
The wounds of Berlin’s bitterest decades are still on the surface for the visitor to see. Take Bernauer Straße. Here is a preserved stretch of the Wall that kept the Socialist side – aka the German Democratic Republic capital – imprisoned from the free world from 1961 until its destruction by a million public hammers in 1989, hastening German reunification the following year.
Ascend a viewing platform and see the “death strip” – the end of the road for countless hapless would-be escapees. Next, proceed to the Stasi Museum – the hated control centre for surveillance across East Germany – and gawp at displays including technology such as bugs, hidden cameras and weapons.
Whenever I’ve visited the city I’ve been both shocked and seduced. The first time – in 1984, as a language student – I struggled to reconcile a week in neon-lit, round-the-clock West Berlin with a long day in the Soviet East. In the former: McDonald’s and decadent nightclubs including Dschungel (“jungle”), where a regular with a rat on her shoulder skulked to the sounds of Prince and Chaka Khan. In the latter, beyond Check-point Charlie, dismal shops displayed the sparsest foodstuffs in greasy windows.
I remember giant Ostmarks (like those childhood-Christmas chocolate pennies) that officialdom obliged travellers to acquire (to spend on nothing, basically); and, unforgettably, an interminable performance of Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder at a stuffy theatre – the GDR adored Bertolt Brecht, and vice versa, but nightclub-knackered me wasn’t feeling the love that evening. Otherwise, I invariably have.
Image: Berlin Canals
There’s not really a wrong time to visit. I’ve been to Berlin in January, with the canals thickly iced over and the café windows of elegant Prenzlauer Berg and Schoeneberg steamed up from the heat of the coffee and doughnuts being consumed within. There were always the grill-pungent Turkish restaurants of Kreuzberg, glowing orange or fluorescent-white long into the night, cheek by jowl with such landmark clubs as SO36, where the LGBTQ+ descendants of Berlin’s Asian diaspora get down.
By day, not far from the Brandenburg Gate, stands the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe – a maze of tomb-like stelae. Elsewhere are testaments to Berlin’s positivity. The Bauhaus Archive holds century-old art and furniture of pathfinding modernity, facsimiles of which f ill fashionable homes worldwide.
Berlin is simultaneously glamorous and gritty. Sprawling yet neighbourly. A place of verdant expanses and Communist-era concrete, Michelin stars and rough bars. It was once – accurately – labelled “poor but sexy” by an out-there mayor. All true. So which weekender is it for? One thing’s for sure. If you’re a Fußball fanatic, it’ll be your kind of town for the next month or so, with the final of the Euros at the Olympiastadion on 14 July. Founded in 1936 under the watch of the Third Reich, the colossal arena has a disconcerting history, numbering Hitler’s approved architect Albert Speer among the creators: National-Socialist-neoclassical in style, it remains a monument of brutality and beauty in contrasting measures.
Image: The Olympiastadion
That’s not untypical of the city, either, as in many ways Berlin is beyond traditional brochure-break territory – deeper, darker. From its status as Weimar-era Weltstadt – “cabaret central”, alternative, expressive and gay – it metamorphosed, through deadly Nazi rule, into the dour HQ of the four postwar Allied powers, riddled with ruin and espionage. Then came the Cold War and the big East–West split.
The wounds of Berlin’s bitterest decades are still on the surface for the visitor to see. Take Bernauer Straße. Here is a preserved stretch of the Wall that kept the Socialist side – aka the German Democratic Republic capital – imprisoned from the free world from 1961 until its destruction by a million public hammers in 1989, hastening German reunification the following year.
Ascend a viewing platform and see the “death strip” – the end of the road for countless hapless would-be escapees. Next, proceed to the Stasi Museum – the hated control centre for surveillance across East Germany – and gawp at displays including technology such as bugs, hidden cameras and weapons.
Whenever I’ve visited the city I’ve been both shocked and seduced. The first time – in 1984, as a language student – I struggled to reconcile a week in neon-lit, round-the-clock West Berlin with a long day in the Soviet East. In the former: McDonald’s and decadent nightclubs including Dschungel (“jungle”), where a regular with a rat on her shoulder skulked to the sounds of Prince and Chaka Khan. In the latter, beyond Check-point Charlie, dismal shops displayed the sparsest foodstuffs in greasy windows.
I remember giant Ostmarks (like those childhood-Christmas chocolate pennies) that officialdom obliged travellers to acquire (to spend on nothing, basically); and, unforgettably, an interminable performance of Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder at a stuffy theatre – the GDR adored Bertolt Brecht, and vice versa, but nightclub-knackered me wasn’t feeling the love that evening. Otherwise, I invariably have.
Image: Berlin Canals
There’s not really a wrong time to visit. I’ve been to Berlin in January, with the canals thickly iced over and the café windows of elegant Prenzlauer Berg and Schoeneberg steamed up from the heat of the coffee and doughnuts being consumed within. There were always the grill-pungent Turkish restaurants of Kreuzberg, glowing orange or fluorescent-white long into the night, cheek by jowl with such landmark clubs as SO36, where the LGBTQ+ descendants of Berlin’s Asian diaspora get down.
By day, not far from the Brandenburg Gate, stands the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe – a maze of tomb-like stelae. Elsewhere are testaments to Berlin’s positivity. The Bauhaus Archive holds century-old art and furniture of pathfinding modernity, facsimiles of which f ill fashionable homes worldwide.