(May 30, 2026)
Berlin has the capacity to present one with the most unexpected scenes and experiences, whether events or people. Within 1.5 hours of arriving to the city and the apartment of Bastian, another of my friends from uni days in Finland, we pedaled off to the hip Kreuzberg neighborhood for a quick bite and a couple of beers. There, we joined up with his childhood friend, Fabian, whom I had also met several times in years prior, the first being when he hosted me during my inaugural visit to Berlin in 2005.
-Has Basti told you anything about where we are going? Fabian asked me as we cracked the first of the beers at the edge of the bustling Park am Gleisdreieck as Berliners soaked up the spring sunshine, Arabic music pouring out from a lively drum circle in the distance.
No. He hasn’t. Should I be worried? I know things can escalate quickly here.
–Oh man, I wish I were in your shoes right now. It’s going to be wild.
That could mean a lot of things in Berlin.
It’s a city with a history unlike most any other in the world, having been split in half for nearly 45 years and physically divided from 1961 until 1989 by a militarized concrete wall serving death sentences to those seeking escape from the East. The Wall separated families and friends under the brutal competition of alternate ideologies between the communist, totalitarian East and the capitalist, democratic West. The city consequently served as the epicenter for potential nuclear confrontation during the decades long Cold War.
After the unexpected fall of the Wall in 1989, which having watched it on CNN was one of my earliest memories from childhood, the city dealt with an absolute fallout from the disparate system of the East as former DDR residents poured into West Germany. Economically and industrially disadvantaged from the rest of West Germany, large swathes of apartment blocks and industrial sites were abandoned in its wake, and the city began attracting artists, squatters, and alternative types. It soon gained an international reputation as one of the leading underground techno and party hubs of the world, appealing to eclectics from all over.
Klaus Wowereit, a former mayor of Berlin, coined the famous phrase, “Berlin, poor but sexy (arm aber sexy)” in 2003, second perhaps in acclaim only to JFK’s momentous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963.
Ironic to the prior culturally and racially purist aspirations of Hitler and the Nazis, the capital of the former Third Reich has in modern times blossomed into one of the principal melting pots of Europe and thrives in a diversity so mature that literally a person of any creed, ethnicity, dress, gender, sexual orientation, or other previously non-conceptualized form of expression can go about entirely free and unjudged in their day-to-day affairs. Attempting to stand out would be a fruitless pursuit, but embracing the novelty and creative outlet the city cultivates is exceptionally warranted.
Not sure what to expect, we mounted our bicycles again and pedaled another several blocks until we encountered a seemingly endless convoy of bicyclists queuing up to start the monthly Critical Mass Berlin bike ride, a grassroots event of such scale that the estimated 5,000+ bicycling participants dominate the roadways entirely on the course of a multi-hour, 20+ mile tour of the entire city, seamlessly breezing past relics of the old Wall and markers of decades-long division in route.
Equipped with lights, DJ carts, and nearly any device with wheels not powered by fossil fuels, the mass rambles through every main thoroughfare and past most of all the prominent city markers, including lapping the Victory column, a primary central exchange for traffic in the city, for 20 minutes. The epic parade of human-powered peddlers completely shuts down automobile traffic everywhere in route as drivers resort to becoming nothing more than helpless observers.
A video capture of Critical Mass at the Victory Column.
(note: my aspirations for this blog are evolving and video was not an original concept. If video use grows, I promise to improve my capabilities, but I think the point gets across here for now =).
Despite being spread out as a relic of its divided past, Berlin is a perfect bicycling city, as its largely flat and most all streets or sidewalks have dedicated bicycling lanes and drivers give berth and right away appropriately. Bicycling is so convenient and practical that Basti and his family of four gave up the corporate subsidized car package two years ago in exchange for a two-kid carrying e-bike and a push stroller. Having a car was simply too much of a pain. He is not alone. The city is so progressive about promoting bicycling culture there is active debate about banning cars entirely from the inner ring of the city, an area of 88 square kilometers.
In my first of two posts about my nine day stay in Berlin, come along for the ride and enjoy the sights, as having visited the city many times previously, I did not prioritize other typical sightseeing tours at any other point of my time there.
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