Destination: Berlin

Spending time in Berlin (working on our new Rick Steves Berlin guidebook), I enjoyed getting to know several Berliners. And what really struck me is that almost none of them was originally from Berlin…and each one had a different story of how they came here. They also all spoke fondly about their loyalty to their own little micro-neighborhood, or Kiez. And they all expressed concern about Berlin’s recent surge in gentrification, which is changing the character of various Kieze virtually overnight.

Hearing all of these observations, I came to realize that the city-state of Berlin is practically its own organism. Like London, Paris, New York City, or other multiethnic, cosmopolitan cities, Berlin has its own strong and unique culture that’s distinct from the rest of the country. I wrote up these two new sections for Rick Steves Berlin, which ponder intriguing aspects of Berlin’s unique makeup. While people rely on guidebooks mostly for tips on where to eat, where to sleep, and what to see, at Rick Steves’ Europe we also like to provide readers with cultural context. I hope you enjoy this sneak-preview excerpt of our newest book (which hits bookshelves in September):

Berlin’s Kiez Culture

Berliners have a strong sense of community. They manage this in a big city by enjoying a strong neighborhood identity. Your neighborhood is called your Kiez (“keets”). This doesn’t refer to a large swath of the city (like Prenzlauer Berg or Kreuzberg), but a microscopic sub-sub-sub-neighborhood. A Kiez can be just a few blocks, barely big enough to contain a smattering of key services (grocery store, school, park), and typically named for a major street or square. People tend to live lives very focused on their Kiez, and rarely stray. Some Berliners venture to other Kieze only when entertaining out-of-town visitors.

Each Kiez has its own personality — but things are definitely in flux. As a traditionally low-rent district, once surrounded on three sides by the Berlin Wall, Kreuzberg used to be thought of as being home to two types of people: draft-dodging, alternative-lifestyle German squatters and hardworking, lower-middle-class Turkish immigrants. And to an extent, you’ll still see both groups in Kreuzberg. However, over the last decade or so, several Kreuzberg Kieze have gone through a predictable life cycle of gentrification: Artists and hipsters, lured by the Kiez’s low rents and ramshackle funkiness, move in. They open up gourmet ramen shops and fair-trade coffee houses, stoking a buzz. As these areas become hip and desirable, rents increase — often forcing out long-time residents and ultimately changing the face of the Kiez.

As you talk to Berliners, you’ll learn that these issues of class, gentrification, and socioeconomic stratification are a huge preoccupation. Some make a hobby of chasing the latest trendy neighborhoods around town before they “go mainstream.” Others grow disgruntled at having to move farther and farther from the center, priced out by über-rich yuppies. Throughout its history, Berlin has been a city in transition. And, I imagine, for just as long, the local pastime has been complaining about those changes…and today is no exception.

The Many Faces of Berlin

Like any cosmopolitan city, Berlin has relatively few born-and-bred “original Berliners” — many of the people you meet here aren’t from Berlin, or even from Germany. As you get to know the locals, you’ll come to understand Berlin’s melting pot.

Many Berliners are “internal expats” from elsewhere in Germany. The first wave of these came to West Berlin back when the Wall was up — lured by draft deferments and tax breaks designed to keep this little outpost of the West vital. West Berlin became home to an edgy combination of granola peaceniks and tattooed-and-pierced punks, squatters, and graffiti artists. Still others came to West Berlin for business.

A second wave of “internal expats” arrived immediately after the Wall fell — when East Berliners flocked to the West, abandoning their homes. East Berlin in 1990 enjoyed an “anything goes” anarchy that attracted German artists, students, recent graduates, and unattached singles eager to live on their own terms. This was the heyday for squatting in — and eventually renovating — abandoned apartments.

A third wave of expats — both from inside and outside of Germany — came in the 2000s and 2010s, as Berlin put behind the chaos of reunification and blossomed as a 21st-century cultural capital and all-around cool place to live. You’ll meet many Americans and Brits who came to Berlin as backpackers, fell in love with the place, and decided to stick around. One told me, “People move to Berlin when they want to live in an exciting, international city but can’t afford London.”

And, of course, Berlin is also home to a vast number of immigrants and refugees from the Middle East and North Africa. In the post-WWII years, with a decimated population, West Germany needed help rebuilding. Through the 1960s and 1970s, the government invited Gastarbeiter (“guest workers”) from poorer nations to live and work in Germany. With approximately 200,000 residents of Turkish descent, Berlin is considered the largest “Turkish city” outside of Turkey. These families — some now in their second or third generation — are an integral part of Berlin society.

More recently, refugees have formed another strand of Berlin’s cultural tapestry. In 2015, Chancellor Angela Merkel offered asylum to people fleeing war-torn Syria — and 1.1 million took her up on it, in that year alone. While many have since resettled elsewhere, hundreds of thousands remain in Germany. Syrian Berliners have opened Middle Eastern bakeries and restaurants, and the Pergamon Museum actively recruits Syrians as tour guides — allowing them to proudly show off the masterpieces of their homeland’s ancient culture.

If you really want to understand Berlin…take the time to get to know some Berliners. And be sure to ask about their own personal story. You’ll never hear the same one twice.

In my last post, I explained that I just got back from researching our new Rick Steves Berlin guidebook. One of my favorite new additions to the book is this explanation of the classic East German automobile. (Thanks to our Berlin researcher extraordinaire, Gretchen Strauch, for suggesting some of the jokes.) Enjoy this sneak-preview excerpt from our newest book (which hits bookshelves in September):

Communist East Germany (a.k.a. the DDR) is forever linked to its trademark automobile — the Trabant, or, affectionately, the Trabi (TRAH-bee). Built in Zwickau, Saxony, starting in 1957, the Trabi was the DDR’s big play to compete with the popular West German Volkswagen Beetle. But its design and engineering (limited by a centrally-planned economy) were nowhere near VW standards.

A ride in a Trabi was cramped, bumpy, and smelly. To gas up your Trabi, you’d open the hood and pour a gas-oil mix into a tank above the two-cylinder, two-stroke engine, which used gravity instead of fuel pump. The body was made of a recycled, cloth-reinforced plastic resin called Duroplast. (So the body was as “green” as the engine was polluting.) On the upside, the construction was so simple that handy East Germans (who, out of necessity, were excellent do-it-yourselfers) could fix just about any problem with a hammer, a screwdriver, and a wrench. Because production was limited, for the privilege of owning a Trabi you’d sign up on a waiting list, and be prepared to wait many, many years.

In the summer of 1989, when Hungary suddenly opened its borders, whole fleets of Trabis were left behind by East Germans who went to vacation on Lake Balaton…and decided to flee West, never to come home. The Trabi remained in production until 1991, totaling more than 3 million cardboard boxes with lawnmower engines on Eastern Europe’s roads.

The best thing about the Trabi were the jokes it generated:

• Why is the Trabi the world’s quietest car? Because your knees cover your ears.
• How do you double a Trabi’s value? Fill the tank.
• “I’d like two windshield wipers for my Trabi.” “Sounds like a fair trade.”
• How many workers does it take to build a Trabi? Three: One to cut, one to fold, and one to paste.
• Why is the Trabi’s back window heated? To keep your hands warm while pushing.
• When does a Trabi reach top speed? When it’s being towed.
• What’s the longest car on the market? The Trabi, of course, at 60 feet long — 6 feet of car and 54 feet of smoke.

Like the Ampelmann (traffic-light man), the Trabi is enjoying a renaissance as a bit of “Ost-algic” communist kitsch. Old Trabis are being rehabilitated and souped up for tourist trips. Just be ready to get out and push.

I’ve been quiet on my blog the last couple of months. That’s because I’ve been 100% focused on producing a brand-new Rick Steves Berlin guidebook. For fans of our books, here’s an inside look at how America’s bestselling guidebook series adds another title to its ranks.

Rick and I are both big history buffs — especially 20th-century history. So naturally, we’ve always dreamed of creating a guidebook to Europe’s most fascinating 20th-century city, Berlin. Last year, our publisher gave us the green light: Berlin would sell. So we began the process of putting together the book.

Berlin has long been well-covered in our Rick Steves Germany guidebook. But our Berlin and side-trips coverage was bursting at the seams — at nearly 150 pages, it was practically a book in itself. (Whenever Rick — or another researcher — goes to this fascinating city, it’s hard to resist coming back with piles of new material.) At long last, Berlin would find a proper home…and some much-needed room to breathe.

The decision to create this book was partly inspired by a couple of top-notch researchers, who — in successive years — updated our Berlin material and came back with lots of suggestions. Gretchen Strauch, our resident Germanophile (who actually vacations in Berlin when she’s not working there), pointed out that our Berlin coverage had not quite evolved at the same breakneck pace as the city itself. (Rick wrote his original Berlin chapter in the 1990s, back when the notion of “East Berlin” and “West Berlin” still meant something. And, while we’ve definitely updated our vision of the city over the years, the time had come to tear down this Wall — in our guidebook coverage — and start from scratch.) And Robyn Stencil — who updated our Berlin chapter last year, and was also instrumental in designing the new Rick Steves Best of Germany in 13 Days Tour (which enjoys a grand finale in Berlin) — offered us ample suggestions for new hotels and restaurants. If you love using our books, be sure to raise a mug of Berliner Weisse to the folks pictured on the “Credits” page at the back — just a few of the unsung heroes who make Rick Steves guidebooks the best, and the bestselling, in the USA.

Another area for improvement was our coverage of Berlin’s museums. While people may not think of Berlin as a “museum city” (like Paris or Florence), the fact is that Berlin’s art and history museums are astonishingly good — easily ranking alongside any in Europe. We had a scant few pages apiece on the Pergamon, the Neues Museum, the Gemäldegalerie, and more — but we wanted to turn each one into a fully formed, self-guided tour chapter. Enter Gene Openshaw, Rick’s high school buddy-turned-art historian-turned-travel writer extraordinaire. Gene has written (or contributed heavily to) many of the wonderful stop-by-stop self-guided tours you’ll find in our books.

Last summer, Gene went to Berlin to hit all of the big museums, incorporating material Rick has written over the years with his own insights. He came back with about a half-dozen museum tours, plus self-guided walks through Berlin’s most famous neighborhoods. Now, I had toured Berlin’s Old National Gallery probably a half-dozen times over the years. But test-driving Gene’s brilliant tour was the first time I really enjoyed it. Gene has a knack for making you realize, much to your surprise, that you actually adore German Romanticism.

Starting with so much great material made our job easier…in most respects. But there were so many great ideas, it was a challenge to simply sort through them all. In writing our guidebooks, we usually find there’s one “best” way to experience a destination: The sights line up along a handy axis, the hotels and restaurants conveniently cluster in a couple of fun neighborhoods, and it’s easy to prioritize your limited sightseeing time. But a handful of problematic destinations have a “many ways to skin that cat” problem — and Berlin is the textbook example. Five people with different interests (art museums, Hitler and Cold War sights, foodie/hipster culture, etc.) could have five entirely different trips to Berlin, all have a blast — and never once cross paths. More than just about anywhere in Europe, Berlin is a “choose your own adventure” city.

For this reason, we’ve endlessly tinkered with our Berlin coverage over the years. This new book presented an opportunity for a head-to-toe overhaul. Before my trip, I spent a couple of weeks putting all of the great ideas into a centrifuge, giving it a spin, and pulling out the best of everyone’s suggestions. With thoughtful input from Rick, past researchers, Managing Editor Jennifer Davis, and the head editor for the Berlin project, Carrie Shepherd, we came to a consensus about how to best present Berlin to the reader. And our “mappies” (in-house slang for “cartographers”) even took the time to rough up maps that would fit our planned new coverage.

Before I flew to Berlin, I organized all of this raw material into separate chapters, printed each one as an individual “guidebooklet,” and taped the map to the back page. I was ready to test-drive everything in person.

In late February, I landed in a chilly Berlin, dropped my bag at the hotel, and immediately headed out to take the first of our new chapters — Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate Walk — out for a spin. Most of my past visits to Berlin have been in the summer or fall. Being here in the winter, I came to the conclusion that it’s not the best off-season city. The weather is cool, drizzly, and windy (with the occasional, glorious sunny spell — what Seattleites call “sunbreaks”). And the sun sets early — after about 5:30, I’d be stumbling and squinting my way through our new walking tours. 

While I managed to get my work done, this trip reminded me that Berlin is a fair-weather city. Berliners are never so happy as when they’re outside, and on a sunny day, the parks, riverbanks, and outdoor cafés are jammed. Off-season…not so much. But they try. Bundled-up Berliners huddle on biergarten benches and try to ignore the windchill.

I spent 10 intense days in Berlin (including some side-trips), working my way through our mountains of material, and scouting new additions. For years, we’d described Kreuzberg — the sprawling neighborhood south of the historic core — as the “Turkish immigrant quarter.” While that’s still partly true, it’s only one piece of today’s story. And with the help of two excellent local guides (Maisie Hitchcock and Caroline Marburger), I got a much better look at what’s becoming Berlin’s trendiest, most enjoyable-to-explore neighborhood. The best of what I learned in Kreuzberg — from the bustling riverside Turkish market, where you can buy mint tea and dried fruits, to the über-trendy Markthalle Neun food hall, Berlin’s answer to London’s Borough Market — went straight into the new book.

I had the help of other outstanding guides, too. For my money, Berlin has the highest concentration of top-quality tour guides anywhere. (Rick Steves’ Europe Tours has more lead guides living in Berlin than in any other city.)

Lee Evans — an American expat whom I’ve been meeting up with since the early 2000s, back when he was selling couchette reservations to backpackers at Zoo Station — took me to a fantastic Georgian feast (a reminder that some of Berlin’s best food is not German). Over khachapuri fry bread and walnut spreads, Lee helped me finally understand what was so important about Frederick the Great.

Holger Zimmer walked me through Prenzlauer Berg, where he lived as a squatter in the early 1990s. Fresh out of college, Holger moved into an apartment vacated by an East German family who’d pulled up stakes and moved West.  Holger discovered that the apartment came equipped with a telephone (already a rarity) that permitted unlimited long-distance calls…and the bill never showed up. But then, one day, the phone stopped working — so Holger had to wait in line at the public pay phone, like everyone else. His stories inspired me to write a new self-guided walk of that neighborhood for the book.

Torben Brown guided me through the now-trendy Scheunenviertel (“Barn Quarter”) — explaining the history of Berlin’s Jewish quarter and fleshing out the book’s new self-guided walk of that area.

And Carlos Meissner brought me to the Scöneberg City Hall steps — where JFK said “Ish been ein berleener” — and helped bring real meaning to the dreary area around Checkpoint Charlie and Hitler’s old government zone. If I’d had more days, I’m sure I could have filled them with even more top-quality guides.

While our existing Berlin coverage was already strong, it was gratifying to be able to flesh it out and fill some gaps. I wrote up Tempelhof Field and the Berlin Airlift (in which the Western Allies supplied the Soviet-blockaded people of West Berlin by running continuous supply sorties, round the clock, for nearly a year); a collection of jokes about the classic communist-era East German car, the Trabi (“When does a Trabi reach top speed? When it’s being towed”); Treptower Park, with what must be the most grandiose Soviet War Memorial you’ll find outside of the former USSR; and a couple dozen enticing restaurants, from “budget foodie” street food to hipster sidewalk cafés to elegant splurges. I even wrote a sidebar called “Why Does Berlin Smell Like Farts?” (I’m still a little surprised the editors let that one slip through…but, let’s be honest, it does! It’s built on a swamp. Why else is the city’s unofficial anthem called “Berliner Luft”?)

I also picked up some wonderfully long and precise German words: Trockenwohnen (“dry living”) was the practice, common in Berlin’s late-19th-century housing boom, in which tenants would move into a building so new, the slow-drying mortar was still wet. Their body heat would help cure the mortar, but their health suffered. Those same people might take on a Schlafbursche (“sleep guy”) — someone who works the night shift and rents out your bed to sleep in during the day. Much later, those same apartments were upgraded through a process called instand besetzen — fixing up a place while you’re living there (a common practice among 1990s squatters). And in the waning days of communism, the courtyards those buildings surrounded were spruced up by residents, who chipped away the concrete to plant inviting little gardens (that’s Hofbegrünung — “courtyard greening-up”).

I returned with a stack of heavily marked-up guidebooklets and a couple of big notebooks overflowing with ideas. I spent two intense weeks writing up all I’d learned, marking up the maps, organizing my photos, and turning it all over to our top-notch Book Department. They took it from there, editing and wordsmithing and tidying it all into a solid book. Our “mappies” put the finishing touches on all those new maps, and handpicked hundreds of photos to illustrate the text. And just a few weeks after I returned, we sent it all off to our publisher. Rick Steves Berlin, First Edition, is scheduled to hit the shelves (and our Travel Store) by September of 2017.

As you can see, producing a new guidebook is a real team effort that requires a lot of shoe leather, red ink, and thoughtful, talented people. Our publisher assures us that Rick Steves Berlin will be a big seller. But — real travelers at heart — we’re not really motivated by the bottom line. As Rick always reminds us, our measure of success is not the number of copies we sell, but the number of trips we improve. And by that metric, we’re confident this book will be a smashing success.