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! 

Bijou all parked up in Berlin. It was a busy campground, but we faced away from all the others, which was very nice.
These two photos demonstrate the difference between the first day we got to our campground when it was really warm and two days later when it cooled off!

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.

City scenes from the bus. Germans are very mask compliant. Lower right is a section of the Berlin Wall. Before it was protected, people who chipped away at it to get a souvenir were called “specht”, which is German for woodpecker!
More scenes from the bus, including the Berliner Fernsehturm or TV Tower which is visible from almost the entire city.
There was lots of really great murals and street art around Berlin.

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. 

Where is everybody? Me, at the Brandenburg Gate.

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.

Street scenes on the east side.

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.

Spätzle Club menu and our orders. We ate every bite.

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. 

The Socialist Kiss. Murals from the Eastside Gallery.
This is the backside of the wall that has been covered with graffiti rather than murals. Large sections of this have been whitewashed as they try to keep it clear.
The Holocaust Memorial is comprised of 2,711 concrete slabs or “stelae”, arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. It is amazing to walk through; as you walk downhill the slabs tower overhead. Uphill, they range from waist-high to eye-level. There is an underground museum, as well. The yellow building is the American Embassy.
The famous Reichstag building, home to the German parliament until an arsonist burned it down in 1933. The Nazi Party solidified their power in the ensuring chaos caused by the fire, claiming evidence that communists were trying to sabotage the German government. Hitler had only been in power for four weeks at the time of the fire, and many believe he ordered it to be burned. Like many buildings in Berlin, this is a fairly recent reconstruction of the original building.
The Berlin Cathedral has an organ with 7,000 pipes. We didn’t see it, but it must be spectacular.
The car above is a Trabant or “Trabi”. It is often seen as symbolic of the former East Germany and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in general. We also visited the iconic Checkpoint Charlie and, in case you need to make a call while there, here’s a handy dandy pay phone. Looks like it was still working.
Historical photos from before and after the wall was dismantled.
The effects on tourism due to COVID is most obvious in these shots. Normally, there would be crowds of tourists milling about but it felt like there had been a mass exodus in parts of the city.

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. 

On the way back from the city, Steven was craving one of those amazing beers we had in Prague. Lo and behold, when we stopped by this local market, we found a bar that was selling that exact type of beer! What are the odds??

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. 

See that line of people? They were waiting to pay to get into the park to go to the beach. This is how you know it’s a warm day in Berlin. It was a good day for us to leave.


UP NEXT: Resting by the Baltic Sea.


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18 Comments

    1. 2chouters

      I just read a story in the Seattle Times that it is going to be roasting there this weekend! UGH, I think I might go to a hotel. 🙂 Stay cool, my friend!

  1. Hi Guys we are enjoying following you around Germany. We had planned on stopping by Berlin on our spring trip, hopefully we will be able to get there next year as your post made us regret missing it! We spent a couple of days on the Baltic Coast last year, and my favorite German city was Lubeck. We also enjoyed Schwerin which is pretty close by. Travel safe.
    Ron and Ton Corbin

    1. 2chouters

      Hi Ron! I recall reading in your blog that you really enjoyed Lubeck. We are saving that for another time, but we did make it to Schwerin. That’s coming up next! Hope you are both doing well and that normal travel will resume sooner rather than later. It’s not looking good, though, is it. 🙁

    1. 2chouters

      I can’t even imagine what that was like! If you’ve made it back to revisit these places I’m sure you can see the changes. Thanks for commenting!

      1. Yankeeflyer

        I did return in the 80’s and 90’s as my first wife was from Helmstedt.The nice thing about Germany and Europe is that they take care of their old buildings and traditions….so not much has changed.

  2. Yankeeflyer

    I did return in the 80’s and 90’s as my first wife was from Helmstedt.The nice thing about Germany and Europe is that they take care of their old buildings and traditions….so not much has changed.

  3. Such poignant history to walk through! Glad to see masks on the tours as my first thought when I saw the unmasked crowds at the beach was that it was not somewhere I’d want to be. The pandemic is at least giving you a lot of opportunities to avoid crowds in most places 🙂 Love all the murals and messaging. I’d have to find some saurbraten to go with that spaetzel. Damn I’d love any German food :-)))))

    1. 2chouters

      Germany is taking this very seriously, not so elsewhere. In the Netherlands, where we are now, no masks. In Prague, no masks. Sometimes Steven and I are the only ones masked up! But we can’t resist the food, obvs. I’ll be posting some recipes when the weather cools off and we slow down, and it will be hearty foods for sure!

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