Berlin, Germany

We wanted to find a way to drive on the legendary autobahn, but we couldn’t find a sporty enough rental car So, we created an account on Carpooling.org (a carpooling website across Europe) and hitched a ride from Mainz into Berlin! We went just over a top speed of 200 km/h (aka 120 mph) but like all good legends, this one had a hard time meeting our expectations. Newton’s relativity law kicked in and we didn’t actually feel as though we going so fast when everyone else was going the same speed or faster!

Once we reached Berlin, we met up with our hosts Jannes and Seri who live in the hip district of Prenzlauer Berg. They updated us with the local knowledge including the most important “weg beer” which translates to “roadie.” Although it was extremely fun to be able to walk down the street with a beer in hand, it was unfortunate to see all the broken glass throughout the city and made us uneasy on our sweet Prenzlberger orange rental bikes.

Jannes and Seri gave us some good ideas for exploring abandoned buildings including the old East Berlin airport and the Teufelsburg Tower (an old listening post by the English and USA forces from 1950 to 1992. Since they shut down official activities at Teufelsburg, there has been little done with respect to maintenance but major work done by the locals creating some epic street art. We were invited to join a tour by an American (who actually worked at tower) for a group of people from a war museum, and they shared their history stories with us.

The old abandoned airport grounds is a free for all and was totally amazing to ride bikes through. The locals have turned it into a park, where people go to bike, skate, walk, run, and some folks have even started little gardens in the grass between the runway strips.

It turns out that the Doner sandwiches that we had so much loved in Turkey were actually invented in Berlin! One other local delight we enjoyed was currywurst with mayo french fries (they drown ‘em in that shiz), and another (one of Kevin’s favorite dishes as a kid) is called spätzel, so having a spätzel making party with Jannes one night was a dream come true! Berlin is filled with so many different things to do that we didn’t have a chance at exploring everything we wanted and could only describe it as trying to see all of New York including the top tourist sites, museums, the local secrets of all five boroughs and a big whacky event like a roller blading marathon in only 5 days. We loved all the alternative ways to enjoy Berlin and totally recommend it with a big hug and a kiss. . .