Map of Brian's Berlin route As they sipped their macchiatos, dipped their sashimi and soaked up the rays on the last warm pavement of autumn, it’s hard to surmise exactly what the urbane inhabitants of east Berlin made of the garish individual clomping past them in full hiking gear, with a laden rucksack, a map in one hand and a chilli bratwurst in the other.
Perhaps they opined that the outfit, though daring, was unlikely to catch on. Or that people will go to any lengths to sweat off a few pounds these days. It is faintly possible, though, that one among them turned a modishly coiffured head to the others and exclaimed: “Aha! Now that chap’s ‘urban trekking’.”
For, indeed, urban trekking — in essence, treating the concrete jungle like the real one, and seeking out adventures and explorations where others find only shoe shops and parking tickets — seems to be very much on the up. The Americans, unsurprisingly, are the source of the trend, cluttering the internet with personal missions to walk every street on Manhattan island, or every slope in San Francisco, while in the UK, urban adventure races — endurance trials that involve yomping around our city streets — have cropped up in Bristol, Edinburgh and elsewhere. While the sentiment that you only understand a city by walking it is scarcely new — it’s pretty central to the plot of most Woody Allen movies, and has spawned a global industry of guided sightseeing walks — urban hiking seems different in its pursuit of genuine physical endeavour and its search for city life away from the sights. If you’re really going to understand a modern city, it seems, you need to cover some miles and reach the ’burbs.
With that in mind, I chose Berlin, with its reputation for vigorously reinvented and contrasting neighbourhoods, to make my debut urban hike. The challenge of choice was to cross from the gently staid western boroughs into the edgy northeast before swinging down into the latest incarnation of the city, Turkish southern Berlin. A journey of about 19 miles, it would make for the perfect weekend stroll of discovery. Or, if you’re a moron trying to prove he’s as fit as any Manhattanite hiker, you could try doing it all in a single day. Guess which I chose...
DAY ONE
Or, on Planet Idiot, daybreak. I snoozed with the commuters on the dawn train out to Charlottenburg, and paused at the suburban station cafe for the first of many caffeine and starch bursts, before setting off down the oddly titled Lewishamstrasse — and, in what would be a recurring theme, immediately being distracted by a quieter, more interesting-looking street, and wandering off my carefully planned route.
Side-street west Berlin is all the clichés the Germans don’t mind living up to — clean, genteel and discreetly, politely loaded. Shoals of cycling commuters share the roads with Mercs and Audis, while galleries and brasseries line up beside shops selling ergonomically perfect kitchens and pointlessly pricey polo necks. I strolled sheepishly up the most elite street, Fasanenstrasse, and turned onto the borough’s more democratic boulevard, Kurfürstendamm — the two-mile-long shopping strip that once exemplified the success/decadence of the thriving/rotting West Germany. At its end lay Zoo station, the unlovely transit centre that the rock group U2 used to crystallise Berlin’s resilient global image as a gritty, arty, punky sort of place. Nowadays, Zoo is gleaming, noisy and a tad dull, and I lurched gratefully towards the green pleasantness of Tiergarten, Berlin’s central park.
Now, strolling a canalside footpath might be seen as cheating on an urban hike, but, as I was discovering, the point of this lark is more watching the people than the architecture or sights, catching snapshots of life being lived, not commemorated or monumentalised — and the duck-feeders, t’ai chiers and time-wasters who populated Tiergarten’s wooded nooks were far more diverting than the park’s bountiful statues.
That sentiment strengthened as I crossed central Berlin, taking a dutiful sightseeing route that was big on Germanic grandeur but small on Germans, foreign coach parties now pottering where I strode. On Friedrichstrasse, Berlin’s astonishing achievement in creating a new global commercial centre in just 16 years has to be tempered with the fact that it looks, well, like any other global commercial centre, and I was hankering after another neighbourhood to watch. Crossing through the gorgeous museum district (I’ll look inside another day: this is a hike) and heading north, I found just what I was after.
Scheunenviertel is the city’s old Jewish quarter, mixing dark history with a colourful future. The Jewish cemetery is a melancholy spot — 12,000 graves, one gravestone standing — but the New Synagogue is a glory in gold leaf, and the surrounding streets are now a culinary league of nations, catering to a trendy, studenty population. Determined to march on a full stomach, but with a light backpack, I grazed on street food, from felafel to curried bratwurst, all of which added to the evidence that Berlin is the one euro-zone capital where the living is still cheerfully cheap. Just £1.20 for a chicken sandwich that needed both hands? As one wurst-seller’s sign put it: “Eat here! Then go home and diet.”
With dinner options galore and a fine hotel, Scheunenviertel would be an excellent point, nine miles in, to end your first day. Unless you really want a new pair of knees for Christmas...
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DAY TWO
Or 2pm, and 10 miles to go. I struck out northeast, through leafy squares and past raucous school playgrounds, to Prenzlauer Berg, the prettiest and most thoroughly gentrified of east Berlin’s neighbourhoods. Fashionistas, loafers and creative-looking sorts cram the graffiti-garnished cafes on Kastanienallee, their confidence in their own hipness rising like steam from a miso soup. Did I feel out of place in my crinkling all-weather gear? Hell, yes, and I cut off into the silent side streets.
Blessed with lovely residential squares to match the buzzing main drag, Prenzlauer Berg went to the top of my “If I lived in Berlin, it would be here” list. And, as this is a city where they’re seriously considering flattening homes to generate just a quiver of house-price inflation, I could probably afford it, too. Take the open-top bus and you might think Berlin is a lot like London. Take the hike, and they’re poles apart.
Swinging southeast, my gently complaining legs assisted by a downhill slope, I reached Karl-Marx-Allee, the linear temple to Soviet giganticism, an arrow-straight avenue of neoclassical wedding cakes just waiting for a military parade down the highway. With pavements as supersized as the buildings, it makes for marvellous walking.
And where the boulevard ends, Friedrichshain begins — the scruffy neighbourhood that, in the unforgiving politics of urban cool, is now declared to have torn the crown of bohemian chic from Prenzlauer Berg’s grasp. Grungy bars sit alongside thrift shops, gothic costumiers and purveyors of sex toys that would make Ann Summers’s eyes water. It’s a heady blend of alternative living and entrepreneurial vim — you could imagine a Kerouac or a Dylan emerging from here — but with enough urban grit in my eyes, and daylight on the wane, it was ever onwards to the bucolic Landwehrkanal towpath, and into my final ’burb.
East Kreuzberg is home to Berlin’s booming Turkish community. It’s notably noisier and more densely populated than the other boroughs, the streets combining halal family butchers, bakers and grocers with yet more shabby-chic nocturnal haunts. At the district’s southern edge lies Viktoriapark, its hilltop offering one of the best views over Berlin — and thus serving perfectly as a finishing marker. I grimaced up the slope, sought out the pinnacles of the city I’ d just crossed, conquered and, I think, to best express the city-trekking experience, befriended — then sat down, sighed and seized up.
Urban hiking — what a wonderful idea for a weekend.
How to take the trek: Air Berlin (0870 738 8880, www.airberlin.com) flies from Stansted, Manchester and Glasgow; from £40 return. The Andechser Hof hotel (00 49 30 2809 7844, www.andechserhof.de) is quiet, clean and bang on the halfway point — doubles from £45. If your tastes are more elegant, Design Hotels (00 800 3746 8357, www.designhotels.com) has three stylish city-centre properties; doubles from £96.
