Berlin, city guide, 3-4 days
Berlin’s essential history — the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag — earns every hour spent on it and shouldn’t be skipped. But treating those sites as the whole visit means missing the city Berliners actually live in: a patchwork of fiercely distinct neighbourhoods that shifted dramatically in the decades since reunification and are still shifting now.
Kreuzberg, once literally up against the Wall on the West Berlin side, is the city’s most consistently interesting district — Turkish markets, some of Europe’s best street art along the East Side Gallery’s less-photographed stretches, and a canal-side energy on summer evenings that outdoes anything closer to the tourist centre. Prenzlauer Berg, in the former East, took a completely different path: gentrified into wide, leafy streets, independent bookshops, and a Sunday flea market at Mauerpark that draws half the city.
The contrast between the two neighbourhoods is itself the most honest lesson in how East and West Berlin diverged and then reconverged — a more textured history lesson, arguably, than the museum version, and one best absorbed by simply walking both districts back to back rather than reading about them.
Berlin rewards slow travel more than almost any other European capital; a rented bike and no fixed itinerary for at least one full day, letting the neighbourhoods dictate the route rather than a sightseeing checklist, is the single best use of time here.