Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Sun 3pm; museum €2.50, tours €4;
T
030 536 06 37 19,
W
sdtb.de), an observatory
with the longest refracting telescope in the world. Check the website for stargazing
sessions. he park continues north of Puschkinallee, where you'll also find
Haus Zenner
(see p.200), a riverside
Gaststätte
whose origins go back to the eighteenth century.
East of here is the
Insel der Jugend
, a small island in the Spree reached via the
Abteibrücke
, an ornamental footbridge built by French prisoners of war in 1916 to
link the island to the mainland. he end of Treptow's summer festival is marked by a
firework display from this bridge, an event known as
Treptow in Flammen
or “Treptow
in Flames”. he island was originally the location of an abbey, but now the main
attraction is the venue
Die Insel
(see p.214).
Returning across the bridge, you can walk northwest back to the S-Bahn station via
a grass-lined boardwalk - rowing boat and paddleboat rental are available nearby (from
€8/hr). At the northern tip of the boardwalk, you'll find a very tasty
Imbiss
stand serving
fresh smoked fish. Southeast from the bridge lies the closed
Spreepark
, a popular GDR
amusement park that awaits reinvestment. Until then the surrounding
Plänterwald
woods, which cover a couple of square kilometres, are the main draw. Just to the
southwest of Neue Krug is the
Plänterwald
, a largish
Gaststätte
that makes a good
stop-off. You can also take a cruise around the surrounding waterways (see p.25).
7
Neukölln
Much like Eastern Kreuzberg,
Neukölln
is a district dominated by Turkish-Germans
and other immigrants; walking along its arterial roads
Karl-Marx-Strasse
and
Sonnenallee
, between budget department stores and Middle Eastern greengrocers,
it's not hard to imagine yourself in the Istanbul suburbs. But as rents rise in
Kreuzberg, the district has become the new frontier for hip young bargain-seekers,
particularly along the leafy roads beside the Landwehrkanal and by Volkspark
Hasenheide four blocks south. Here shabby-chic bars and associated businesses are
taking hold, but besides these, and the occasional good budget ethnic restaurant,
there's not much to draw visitors. he only sight as such, if you're on the look-out
BERLIN'S GROWING PAINS
“Yuppie scum” shouts gra
ti on Weserstrasse, the Neukölln back-street near U-Bahn
Hermannplatz that in 2011 was labelled “the epicentre of cool” by London's
The Guardian
newspaper. Both descriptions illustrate larger trends: as Berlin becomes a world city,
gentrification
- and the attendant legions of young, footloose foreigners - is sweeping
aside many long-time incumbents while creeping from district to district.
By and large the decade-old process has been relatively smooth, but in 2011 some six
thousand people took to Neukölln's streets to march against soaring rents. In the same year
Lunapark
, a large anti-capitalist festival, was organized in the Spreepark (see above) to protest
against the city's increasing internationalization. While presenting a coherent argument about
how the onslaught of soulless corporate venues and projects across the city is robbing it of the
very ramshackle cultural landscape that makes it great, the festival also called for a tourist tax
and gently ridiculed tourists themselves: one popular attraction was to have a picture taken
while pretending to be a tourist at Checkpoint Charlie.
But gentrification has its own fairly inescapable logic and momentum. It's unlikely that any
of the Neukölln bars displaying “no tourists or hipsters” signs in their windows can stop change,
but just as invevitable was the fact that the young people who took over the Prenzlauer Berg
of the 1990s grew wealthier, had kids, changed their priorities and became part of the
establishment they had once eschewed.
Attacks and unpleasantness against new waves of young would-be creative types are sure to
continue, which is why
Hipster Antifa NeuKölln
(
W
hipster-antifa.com) has won so much
international attention. They aim to fight xenophobia in the city under the slogan: “Tourists,
Hipsters, everybody is welcome - party like it's 1945!”
