Beating the heat in Berlin

Traveling around Europe in the summertime can be sweaty business. It is damn hot in many parts and we do our best to avoid as many sweltering days as possible. If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that I do best when temps are in the high 60s. Lately I’ve learned to tolerate the low 70s, but that’s just me trying to be flexible, otherwise I’d make Steven miserable with my kvetching.

So far this summer we have done a fairly good job of outrunning the high temps. When we left Vienna, we had planned to go to Bratislava, Slovakia, but it was going to be seriously hot there, like over 80 degrees, so we skipped it and headed right to Prague. When we left Prague for Berlin, temps were forecast to be 10 degrees cooler. We had considered staying in Dresden along the way, but it was still too hot so we continued on hoping we’ll get back there someday. 

In any case, Berlin is a city we were looking forward to exploring and were happy the temps would be tolerable. We booked ourselves into a campground for four days. The campground was pretty close to the city, about eight kilometers or so, on a lake with a large beach area. It must be the only beach within a day’s drive of Berlin because when we arrived, hoards of people were lined up at the pay gate. There were so many cars parked and people milling about we couldn’t even see the entrance gate to the campground and passed right by it. We thought surely there was a concert or big event going on, but no, this is apparently a typical crowd for a sunny day when temps hit the high 70s. Anything below that and the place is deserted, which we witnessed first hand when temps cooled and no one showed up the next couple of days. Nice! 

We got settled into our spot which was located far from the beach, thankfully, and just chilled for the rest of the day. We rarely do much else on a long travel day other than just get ourselves settled and get the lay of the campground land. 

The following day we rode our bikes into the city intending to take the Hop On, Hop Off tour. We have taken a lot of these tours over the years, in the States and a few in Europe, and for the most part I really enjoy them. It’s a good way to get to know a city’s hotspots and it helps us decide if we want to spend further time visiting a particular place. I am not as fond of the tours in Europe because rather than an upbeat, informative guide pointing out this and that and recounting fun stories and history, we get a recorded monotone voice droning on and on about something, usually one of the buildings we are apparently passing by. I can never be sure which building is being talked about, so I mostly spend my time just looking around, people watching and enjoying the views. Even with that I think it’s still worth doing.

Of course we were interested in visiting the Brandenburg Gate, the structure that stood between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. Do you remember seeing those images on TV, the electrifying moment when thousands of people from both sides of the wall began to tear it down? There was an American singer on the scene giving a live performance, do you know who it was? David Hasselhoff! They love The Hoff here in Germany, apparently. 

Our bus took us to the must-see landmarks and monuments in Berlin and trendy shopping areas. Our goal was to decide where we wanted to return the next day and explore on our own. After the tour we decided we must find spätzle, a type of pasta made with fresh eggs and found in the cuisines of southern Germany and Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Slovenia, and a few other places. Of all the foods we have eaten in our recent travels, spätzle had somehow eluded us. The last time I had it was on a girls-only camping trip with my posse right after we got Scoopy. We went to a restaurant in Leavenworth, a cute Bavarian-themed town nestled in the mountains a couple of hours from Seattle. I guess it was pretty good because I still remember it fondly and I wanted more. We did a search on Yelp and came across a highly rated place called “Spätzle Club”. 

Among the many, many issues to be tackled when the Berlin Wall fell and east and west were to be united as one, architecture was a biggie. How do you merge east Berlin’s stark concrete jungles with the more modern styles and plentiful green spaces of west Berlin? East Berlin had been pilfered by the Soviets, its industries stripped and sold for parts and much of it was in ruins and would need to be rebuilt. It would take years to remove the literal scars of World War II and subsequent occupation by the Soviets, but east Berlin today is quite pleasant, if still a bit stark in places. Sometimes it felt like we were on a movie set, but I mostly found it appealing. As we rode our bikes in search of lunch, it was fairly easy to know when we crossed into east Berlin.

Given the great reviews we had read about the Spätzle Club we were looking for a decent sized restaurant but instead, found what looked like a hole in the wall. We had actually passed by it several times as we tried to find the place. It’s tiny, but the food portions are huge and really delicious. Steven had schnitzel with onions and I, once again, had goulash. YUM. YUM. YUM.

The following day we set our sights on visiting the Eastside Gallery, a kilometer long section of the Berlin Wall covered with murals from artists from across the globe; the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; the Reichstag, Checkpoint Charlie, and a few other places in between. Berlin is a pleasure to explore by bike and, as has been the case in this pandemic year, not too crowded at all. 

Because we had enjoyed our food tour in Prague, I decided to sign up for another one in Berlin, only this time I would be alone while Steven headed into town for a day of photography. I signed up for a class called “Market tour, hands on cooking class and lunch! MODERN GERMAN FOOD in English!” It was not cheap at nearly $200 just for me, but I thought it would be a fun thing to do in Berlin. The day after I signed up the lady who hosts the class contacted me and said she could not do the class for just one person and therefore it would not take place and I should get my money back. I was bummed about it, but understood. We had booked the class through a company called “Bonappatour”, which is all over Europe and gets good reviews. Nonetheless, I am still trying to get my money back having contacted them many times with no reply whatsoever. We finally turned the whole thing over to our credit card company. Oh, well. At least I had spätzle, so all is not lost. 

As we were getting to know Berlin and learning our way around, the temperatures were rising and we needed to find somewhere cooler. I’ve mentioned before, but for those who don’t know, Bijou does not have air conditioning in her habitation area. We do have a/c when we are driving, in fact, it freezes us to pieces, but once we are stopped we are at the mercy of the elements and our electric fans. We began looking for a few places we could go to where the temps would be more manageable. So with a promise to return one day to Berlin, we reluctantly hit the road seeking respite from the summer heat. 

UP NEXT: Resting by the Baltic Sea.

…