After a short rest at the hotel, I got back to exploring Berlin. I got on the U-Bahn at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and went a couple of stops up to Eberswalder Straße, a station above ground in the busy Prenzlauerberg district. I had struggled to remember exactly where I stayed on that trip to Berlin in 1998, just remembering that it was somewhere in East Berlin, where there was a busy intersection and an U-Bahn station above ground with some magnificent ironwork. I looked in my old journal from that trip – instead of bringing guidebooks that would weigh down my bag I simply got a notebook, filled it with information from each book, copies of maps and metro systems, and left space at the back to write a journal of the trip, five weeks around Europe on the trains. No smartphones in those days. I had kept a separate journal for more detailed and personal writing (lot of time to write on trains and in hostels) but in my main one I wrote down when I arrived and left, what I did, who I met and where I stayed. When I went to Berlin, it was not from an overnight train but a shorter journey from the pretty city of Lübeck where I had slept for a couple of nights at a hostel, and had met a couple of Australians called Pete and Kat who were also going to berlin the next day. We went together, and after arriving at Zoobahnhof we were right away being approached by people offering places to stay at hostels or otherwise. This it turns out was very normal especially in the Eastern European cities, and Berlin I suppose was the furthest East I’d been yet (in my life). An older woman called Frau Wurst (Mrs. Sausage) offered to rent us her small apartment for a few days, and being in our fearless early 20s we all said yeah why not. This was many years before the concept of AirBNB. She took us on a bus, getting angry with the ‘Wessis’ (who were very rudely just minding their own business and not bothering her at all) for sitting in the front seats upstairs, she was scolding and scowling at them, to their (and our) confusion. I learned that ‘Wessis’ were West Berliners and ‘Ossis’ were East Berliners, and Frau Wurst it seemed was no fan of a Wessi. Me and my two new friends who were both Aussies (not to confuse things) just looked at each other like, what have we got ourselves into here? Frau Wurst told us all about Berlin from the top of that bus, all in German that I translated for the two Australians as best I could, and especially about life following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I learned about ‘Ostalgie’, the nostalgia for the life in the old DDR. It was an education. We ended up in the area which I now realize was Prenzlauerberg, and I wrote down the address in my little journal so that decades later I would remember where it was we stayed – Schliemannstraße. Frau Wurst told us how she had lived in the flat before the Wall fell, and then after German Reunification she suddenly had to start paying rent and had all these other unexpected living expenses, so she converted the flat to rent out to tourists and was making extra money that way during the summer. It was the 90s though, so instead of posting online she had to literally go to the station and talk to people getting off the train. She had a fascinating story and I’m really glad we met her and stayed up there, as it was an interesting and convenient place from where to explore Berlin, but it still felt like two cities with two vibes. Not so much any more. I walked around the neighbourhood, finding the street where I had stayed with two Australians all those years before. It was different, very busy, diverse, lots of cafes and shops, and I sat outside a fast food joint on the corner and sketched the view of the station while Berliners whizzed past on e-bikes.

Everywhere I had read told me that Prenzlauerberg had gone very upmarket and was one of the trendier parts of Berlin, but I didn’t feel that so much. Buildings were covered in graffiti, which seemed more the norm in Berlin that other cities anyway and it added character, but it was scruffier than expected, but again I didn’t mind that. I walked to a little park that cuts across Schliemannstraße, where people were playing games, reading, talking, walking their dogs and in my case, sketching a big green metal water pump, which had a dragon’s head for a tap. I found a nice bookshop opposite the park and had a look around in there (no sign of Detlef Surrey’s book), and wandered about a little bit more before heading over to Mauerpark. I found one of those Photoautomats, the old-school instant photo booths found all over Berlin that all the hipsters want to find. I had to have a go (see below). In the first couple I didn’t realize it was even working properly, in the third I held up my sketchbook, and in the last one I held up my blue plastic ukulele that I’d brought along to play while sat in the park.

Mauerpark is a grassy space just a short walk from Eberswalder Straße. As the name suggests, it is a park next to what was a stretch of the Berlin Wall, and was part of the infamous ‘Death Strip’. These days it’s a lively park where they hold a flea market and regular open-air karaoke, but there are always people spraying new graffiti designs on the stretch of concrete on tope of the steep embankment. I sketched the wall and listened to a group of four teenage artists debate over what to paint and how, the familiar sound of cans being shaken and music being played over tinny speakers. One of the kids said that he could not be out too long as his mother had called him home for dinner. I found it fascinating watching the street artists at work, and I sketched that part of the wall before sitting on the steps strumming my ukulele as the sun started to go down. A pretty good evening in Berlin.

I took the tram back to Eberwalder Straße and walked about a little more, checking out the Kulturbrauerei (finding another little Photoautomat, above), before deciding to grab some groceries at the supermarket and head back to the hotel. It was dark by now, and I was hungry. I ended up going for a late dinner at the much more Bavarian Hofbräuhaus, near Alexanderplatz, where I had a hige liter-sized ‘Maß’ of Bavarian beer and some schnitzel, while listening to some Bavarian oom-pah music (not very Berlin but very fun), and trying not to overhear the conversation an Irish man was having with his date behind me, I say conversation, more like monologue. I tried to sketch it all in pencil, Monday night in Mitte. And then, home to bed.