A little trip to Berlin

I think I've only travelled by plane four or five times in my life. A trip to Jersey when I was a teenager, then not again until I was in my twenties, doing a PhD and jetting off to a conference in Denmark. I think there was another trip to Denmark at some point, and last year I went to Norway - all for work. 

This week Peter and I boarded a plane together for the first time and went to visit our friends in Berlin. 

From my photos, it's quite difficult to tell we were in Berlin. I'm ashamed to say I didn't take a single photograph of our hosts together, and only about three photos of Peter. My eye, it seems, was drawn to things growing on balconies. 

Most people in Berlin live in flats, and a lot of them have balconies, and many of the balconies are filled with flowers. I even saw grapes growing in a couple of places. I loved looking at these little gardens in the sky, thinking of people sitting up there drinking tea (or probably coffee, more likely), watching the world go by. 

Of course, I didn't only take pictures of balconies.

There may have been a cafe or two involved too, although I regret to say the only place to get a decent cup of tea was at home with our hosts. Earl Grey and coffee creamer? I don't think so. 

As is usual with our holidays, we didn't really do a tour of the tourist hot spots, although as my knowledge of Berlin history was woefully inadequate, our hosts did suggest we went to the open air Berlin Wall museum, and then did us a personal tour of the path of the wall near their home. 

I think I found the short film clips of people escaping from the East most moving, and was appalled and ashamed by my own ignorance (whilst also realising that my ignorance extends to so many other things too). The line of the wall is traced in cobbles and signs throughout the city, so once you know what to look for, you see it everywhere, dividing the streets. 

There is plenty of green space in Berlin, and we spent lots of time just wandering around looking at things and taking in the scenery. I love a good bit of urban hiking, and I reckon we walked at least thirty miles while we were there. 

Because we were staying with friends, we did a few things that we probably never would have done had we been by ourselves. On two evenings we went to a global band competition, with bands from Berlin who had members from all over the world. As we speak almost no German, the announcements and jokes were largely incomprehensible but it was interesting to see just how much we could get the hang of through a vague understanding of the context. 

We also visited this exhibition, put on by a camera company presumably to demonstrate their cameras. You signed up and were given a camera, and then got to keep the memory card with your photographs at the end, although I got rather muddled and just ended up using my own camera and my own photographs are mediocre to say the least. You can see some more interesting ones here. 

Apart from balconies and pancakes and the wall, three things stood out for me in Berlin. The profusion of places to eat in the evening - cafes and restaurants and candlelit pubs, all quietly thriving without being rowdy, tables out on the pavement, people just chatting late into the night. That felt really different to an English city, and very nice.

Oddly, the second thing that stood out was graffiti. I don't know whether it was particularly prevalent in Berlin, or whether it's just quite rare where we live, or whether my eye was drawn because I didn't know what it said, but it seemed like there was writing everywhere on walls.

The third thing, which should really be the first thing, was the sheer number of bicycles. I loved how many bicycles there were. Berlin is pretty flat, and there are cycle lanes between the road and pavement (quite alarming when you're not used to them), and people do just seem to hop on a bike when they need to go somewhere. Most sensible if you ask me. 

Altogether we had a most excellent time. Our hosts, John and Hassina, were perfect - entertaining and feeding us, translating in the supermarket, giving us a history tour worthy of any tour guide, and distracting us when it became apparent that our mortgage broker had made a mistake which may have cost us the new house (fortunately this appears to be mostly sorted out now - no thanks to the broker - but I have rather more grey hairs than I did last week). 

We spent a lot of time just sitting in their flat, drinking tea and watching the sparrows on the balcony. 

Do you think they'd mind if we went back again this weekend?