Prancing around Prenzlauer

After arriving in Berlin on that accursed train from Frankfurt (Edit: I pushed that one straight to the archive to save your inboxes), I slept like a brick in Dillan & Donna's peaceful apartment. Dillan and Donna are my friends from university: I was in the same first and second year accommodations as Dillan, and he started dating Donna in first year so she has been in the crew for a while.

The first day was an intentionally slow one. Dillan and Donna were both working but Dillan took a longer lunch to show me around the neighbourhood. Their central suburb of Prenzlauer Berg was leafy and cobblestoned, with a remaining tinge of grunge pointing to its recently gentrified history. Think hipster young parents with microbangs, tattoos, leather, and front-packs. The strong rental laws mean that quirky niches can survive, resulting in a kaleidoscope of interesting shops within walking distance. We also popped into their friendly local bike shop to fix my rear brake, only 10 Euros!

After two weeks in SE Asia with constant indigestion despite being very careful with food, I was so excited to be able to drink tap water and eat fresh vegetables that I gorged with reckless abandon. Ironically, this resulted a horrible stomach bug in my first 24 hours in Europe, eventually spewing on all fours into a gutter. I'll quickly move on from this part; the important bit is that it seemed to iron out the last of my travel stomach issues, and things have been very regular since 😅

Day 2, Saturday, involved a walk around Dillan & Donna's favourite local haunts. This included Rüyam Kebab, which had a line winding out the door, fillings that really changed my definition of a kebab, and seemed to be served entirely by ripped Arab men with huge forearms.

We also walked through a weekend market. I was stoked to see that the price of food was almost half that of New Zealand - so with the conversion from Euro applied, it ended up being similar. I had been bracing for paying double what I was used to for food, so this was a pleasant surprise. It was also a reminder of how high the cost of essentials are in NZ though, which was a bummer.

There was also a “New Zealand-style" real fruit ice cream truck, run by an actual New Zealander! Dillan had legit been thinking of setting one up to plug the gap in the market (did you know real fruit ice cream is really hard to find outside of NZ?). He expressed his interest in working for them part time slinging scoops over summer, and took their card.

In the evening, we went down to the Holzmarkt, a pedestrianised green space along the Spree river. It was packed to overflowing, with buskers, food trucks, street art, and revellers of all ages. Impeccable vibes!

Donna’s friend’s smoked eggplant babaganoush

This was a staple at their apartment, totally mindblowing, and apparently easy to make! I think you just mix the following:

• a jar of smoked/grilled eggplant - I must find these in NZ. Gamechanger when you don’t have to roast the eggplants yourself!

• greek yoghurt

• crushed garlic

• olive oil

• salt & pepper

A taste of the Berlin club scene

[imagine a photo of us here looking fab here]

On Saturday night, after a collective afternoon nap, I felt good enough to try for a Berlin club experience. Clubbing in Berlin is a wholly different experience to that of the Commonwealth, with notoriously rigorous bouncers, no-phone policies, strict dress codes, and rules around safety/consent and inclusivity. This is to maintain the reputation and experience of the club, which each have their own unique culture. One great (intended) result is that they tend to have much fewer drunk British-lads-on-tour types, or people that are just there for the ‘gram, who - let's be honest - don't help the vibe of any environment. Instead, there are mostly folks who are there for the music, dancing, and self-expression.

Given my limited travel wardrobe, I luckily fit some of Donna's outfits, and a group of us biked over to the club we had in mind. It's a “change when you get there" situation, and there are no phones allowed inside, so we didn’t get any group photos with our fits. Rest assured they were high effort. To give you an idea, Dillan's involved patent leather platform heel boots and thigh-high black socks (not his first rodeo).

We showed up at 10:30pm, and there was no line yet (there had been a big event the night before, maybe it was that?). The bouncer was a silver-haired version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He wore a tight black t-shirt with the words ABSOLUTELY NOT, which would have been funny if we weren't angling for an “absolutely yes”. He looked us all up and down, then interrogated the boys on their outfits. “What [the fuck] is this [normie basic non-dress-code-compliant shit]?”, he rumbled, disapprovingly nodding his head at their shorts and shirts (he was a man of few words but the tone helped my imagination fill the gaps). They promptly got out their phones to show him mirror selfies of the outfits they would change into once inside. He looked in their bags to prove they actually have their outfit pieces with them. When asked if we’d been here before, Dillan said yes but also added “just once, and these guys haven’t” (pointing to me and their friend Eduardo) which I thought was very honest of him. Then again, Dillan has successfully got into Berghain before so he probably knows how sensitive the Berlin Bouncer Bullshit Radar is. With a final down-up eye sweep, he silently nodded us all through (no interrogation needed for Donna and I, wahoo!).

Inside, the atmosphere was immediately friendly and welcoming. The staff at coat check, also dressed in theme, stored our bags after we had changed into our outfits. This particular club is a multi-storey maze. There were different stages playing variations of techno, plus a number of smaller rooms/nooks, bars, even a swimming pool and sauna. My favourite was the small stage that played electronic mashups of bollywood and dabke, but the main stages with the more hypnotic/industrial techno was exhilarating also. Even though there had been no line outside, it was quite full inside, and by 1am it was packed. I'm very unfamiliar with electronic music, but I finally understood the hype - with the lights, the sound system, and a crowd of people who are very much there because they love it, it was infectious. We explored the whole club twice through, dancing at the various stages, and time flew by.

The culture of Berlin clubs, with the strictly enforced rules mentioned above, meant that it was a very open and inclusive experience all around. I really enjoyed seeing people of all ages, ethnicities, genders, and body types dressed up all fun and sexy, with no self-consciousness or wariness around photos/social media. I would hesitate to go to a club/rave by myself in NZ, but here I could totally imagine it being safe for a confident woman to go alone.

We walked out of the club around 4am to find that it was sunrise! We unlocked our bikes and headed home. Something as simple as biking to the club with friends felt so novel to me. Having lived car-free in Auckland, I often do cycle to parties and bars, but I'm usually the only one. Being able to head to a club, and then head home in a totally sober peloton of friends was a cherry on top of a great night.

Die Zukunft fährt Rad! (The future is by bike!)

Despite having conked out around 6 hours prior, I felt quite perky when I woke up at 11:30am. So when Donna asked if I wanted to go to a big bike protest in half an hour, I immediately said yes. Thank goodness I did, because this turned out to be one of the major highlights of the weekend!

Joyful coincidence, this particular Sunday was the 50th edition of Berlin's annual Sternfahrt. It’s one of the largest bike demonstrations in the world, where tens of thousands converge on Berlin and ride on cordoned off roads, including the Autobahns (highways), ending at the Victory Column opposite Brandenburg Gate. It’s organised by the German Cyclists' Association (ADFC) to promote better cycling infrastructure and safety, much like Critical Mass or other cycling advocacy groups (NZ has ones like Bike Auckland, Cycling Action Network, and Spokes).

Zooming out the door, we quickly converged with 30,000 other cyclists, easily filling up 2 lanes and several kilometres of road. I had never seen so many cyclists in my life. The photos do it little justice, and there didn't seem to be any official drone footage, which seems like a missed opportunity!

I honestly felt emotional seeing not only such numbers turn up for this protest, but such diversity. In New Zealand, cycling seems yet to fully break its image of lycra-wearing elites or dungaree-wearing hippies (or puffer-jacket-wearing Christchurch people). But here, I saw everyone from elderly women, to smartly dressed suits, to gangs of teenagers with studded belts and baggy jeans (tucked into socks on the right side), riding bicycles of all kinds. Almost everyone was wearing plain clothes (this was also the case during normal commuting). Cycling is just so normalised! And the bikes themselves - I could have taken a hundred photos of interesting bikes, but here is a very short shortlist:

Not pictured:

• Cargo bike pushing a stage, on which there was a piano, and a man was playing that piano

• My friend Alva's dad was there with his ice cream truck bike, weighing 120 kg!

• Many many toddlers and young children being pulled, pushed, carried, or self-propelled

• Many cargo bikes with DJ setups & huge speaker sets.

The route took us all around central Berlin, including onto the Autobahn! We coasted along the smooth wide paved road with thousands of others, bangers blasting from cargo bike DJs all around us.

Even though Berlin still has room for improvement, it is certainly miles ahead of New Zealand. Everyone keeps saying “wait until you get to the Netherlands" and I’m so excited even though I can barely imagine what could be better!

I finished off the day with a salsa dance at sunset, by the Spree river near the end of the cycle route, with some of Dillan & Donna's friends. Knackered but stoked!

Slow breath before my first (solo) multi-nighter

I spent my last day in Berlin relaxing and getting through some admin (groceries, laundry, route-planning, etc.). Since everything seemed to be at most 10 minutes bike away, it was easy to get around and explore the different suburbs.

This included that key travel delight: a foreign supermarket. There were so many interesting snacks and cheeses for such reasonable prices, I had to remind myself that I have very limited storage on my bike. I did end up stuffing my bag to overflowing and cycled home along cobblestone streets with a literal basket of strawberries dangling from a handlebar, which felt very Romantic with a capital R.

For dinner, we went out to a Georgian restaurant called Tsomi, a 10 minute walk from the apartment. Dillan and Donna had spent two weeks in Georgia previously, and loved the food there. It was a cuisine I hadn't tried before, and it was delicious. It felt both Middle Eastern and somewhat Asian, with dishes like khinkali (giant soup dumplings, like xiao long bao from China, but huge), salmon tartare (in a teriyaki-like sauce but with pomegranate seeds), and khachapuri (a large soft bread filled with cheese, where a raw egg yolk is spun into the hot melted cheese by the waiter).

Having been to Berlin before and seen most of the touristy sites, I had wanted to experience what local living was like for my friends who had lived here 8 years. I think it was a pretty ideal four days, and a perfect settling in to my two and a half months in Europe. I’m looking forward to seeing Dillan & Donna again in a few weeks at our friends Jack & Holly’s wedding in Ireland.

As I finish off this post, belly full of khachapuri, I'm feeling a little nervous about my 3-4 day bike ride to Dresden (Edit: I wrote this on my last night in Berlin, even though I’m sending it over a week later). There aren't many campgrounds in between, and I'm worried about spooking myself when camping alone. That will mostly be a mind-game thing though. The days here are so long, hopefully it means I can get tucked into my tent with my book before sundown when things are still dusky and golden (and therefore less Blair Witch Project-y). I'm also sure these concerns will clarify once I'm on the bike!