It seems like just yesterday, I was announcing our upcoming trip to Berlin with my post From Bacon to Bratwurst (and a vegan cafe). Now, 3 months after we arrived in Berlin, we are getting ready to go back home. Having lived in Germany previously, I thought I was well prepared for our visit and figured Berlin would be similar to what I already knew, just bigger. I was wrong. Berlin is not Germany. Berlin is Berlin. Different in so many ways. I’m ready to go home, but I’ll miss it too.

What I’ll miss about Berlin

• Fresh buns in morning: If there is one thing, other than beer, that the Germans know how to do well, it is bread. They are not masters of white bread, like the French, but their darker breads with all kinds of seeds on them and their pretzel breads (for lack of a better term for Laugenweck) are amazing. Not only are they amazing, but they are available so close by that it is easy to grab fresh buns for breakfast each morning. At home, we’ll be back to popping frozen bagels into the toaster.

• So many restaurants nearby: Within a block of our house, I can count at least 20 restaurants. Some fast food. Some sit down. Some German. Most not German. There are so many that we didn’t even get to give them all a try. Never mind doing a culinary tour of Berlin. We didn’t even complete a culinary tour of our block.

• Convenience: Forgetting something at the store is rarely a problem. Having a late night craving is not really an issue. There are fully stocked grocery stores within a few blocks of our place that are open from early morning to about 10pm Monday to Saturday. There are convenience stores that sell basic groceries and beer and wine that are open 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  Other than the convenience stores, most things are closed on Sundays, except at the train stations where everything is open even on Sundays (including several major grocery stores, pharmacies, etc.). Even on Sundays when most things are closed, the things that are open are closer to us than the closest grocery store is to our house in Canada.

• Public transportation: Public transportation wasn’t just an option for us in Berlin. It was our only way of getting around. We didn’t have bicycles here (although if we had been staying any longer, I think it would have been worthwhile) and we didn’t have a car (except for rentals when we went out of Berlin for weekends or longer). So each day, as we considered our plans, we took out the U-Bahn (subway), S-Bahn (light rail), Strassenbahn (Tram/Streetcar), and bus schedules to figure out how to get where we were going. Julian knew them like the back of his hand fairly quickly and would often debate with me which would be the fastest (or most interesting) route home.

• Playgrounds: They have amazing playgrounds in Berlin. Fun ones. Challenging ones. Interesting ones. Not plastic, padded, super-safe boring ones. We designated several days as playground tour days. We would take public transportation to a playground and then walk from playground to playground all the way back home or to another subway station. There are enough playgrounds around that you can cover a couple of large adventure style playgrounds and several smaller playgrounds easily in a day with a picnic lunch along the way when doing a tour like that. Our favourite playground by far was the one at the Berlin Zoo.

What I won’t miss about Berlin

• Dog shit: The second we open the door to our apartment building, we have to be on high alert. There is dog shit everywhere. As I wrote previously, the dogs here are pretty free range and a lot of them just do their business whenever and wherever they want and there is no one there to poop and scoop. Even if there is someone with them, they do not poop and scoop. In our four months here, I only saw one owner pick up after her dog. The rest…left on the sidewalk until the next rain washes it away.

• Graffiti: There is a lot of great graffiti in Berlin. Extremely artistic and extremely creative. There are also lots of idiots with spray paint that seem to spray random garbage onto whatever surface they can find. Everything has graffiti on it and it starts to grate on the eyes after a while. I was amazed when we visited the neighbouring city of Potsdam how stark the contrast was between Berlin and Potsdam. Everything was clean in Potsdam. In Berlin, everything is tagged.

• No friends for my kids: We didn’t have much success in finding playmates for our kids in Berlin. All of the children our kids ages are in day care (“Kita”) until around 4pm every day, which is about the time that we are usually getting ready to go home. We did find kids to play with here and there, but no sustained friendships to speak of. That was quite difficult for me, because it mean that I was their sole source of entertainment all week long. I can’t wait for them to have other kids to play with again.

• The noise: We live in a very noisy area. We are on a main street, right next to a main subway line, right next to many, many, many restaurants and bars.  There is noise at all times, but especially at night, when the sirens, screams, blaring music, singing drunks, and so on keep us from being able to sleep properly. On top of that, the past couple of weeks they have been completely ripping out and renovating the apartments below us, so every morning starting at 7:30pm, the jackhammers start and they don’t stop until about 4:30pm. We’ve been sick the past few days, so we’ve been pretty much stuck in the apartment, up at night a lot with sick kids, and it is impossible to nap during the day because of the jack hammer. I can’t wait to get back to the peace and quiet of the lake, where the loudest sounds are the frogs at night or a neighbour mowing the lawn during the day.

• People treating me like a dumb tourist: If I didn’t have my kids with me, I might be able to pass as a German most of the time. But people see me with my kids and hear us speaking English and assume that we must be tourists. People have no qualms about speaking about us, right next to us, just assuming that we don’t speak their language. When I try to order food or ask a question in German, I often have people answer me in English because they heard me speaking English with my children. I know a lot of people who have chosen to raise their children bilingual. I wonder if all people, around the world, who chose to speak the non-native language with their children get the dumb tourist treatment or if that is just reserved for English speakers in Berlin. On the upside, for people who truly do not speak German, I do have to say that Berlin is an extremely easy place to get by.

What I’m looking forward to in Canada

• Quiet: I think I went over this one above. I just want silence at some point within a 24 hour period.

• Air conditioning when appropriate: North Americans completely overdo air conditioning. The second the heat is turned off, the A/C is turned on. Germans, on the other hand, don’t seem to know what air conditioning is. While we froze in May, most of June and July has been sweltering hot and there is next to no air conditioning in Berlin.  Not in our apartment. Not in stores. Not at the hair stylist. Not in restaurants and bars. Not in the subway. Nowhere. You just sweat along with everyone else. Well, okay, not nowhere. But it is hard to find and hanging out at the mall all day with kids is not really a great option.  All that said, I’m looking forward to being able to keep cool in a few more places in Canada.

• Being back in my own home, with my own kitchen, my own bed, more space: We’ve been living in a small furnished apartment, which did help with keeping our life simple, but also came with its frustrations. The bed is not as comfortable as the one I have at home. I never did get the hang of cooking on a gas stove without having to either use way too much butter/oil or have everything stick to the pan, and I always felt like we were tripping over each other and tripping over our stuff (and the owner’s stuff).

• Comfortable office chair: In Canada, at both work and at home, I have comfortable office chairs. I spend a lot of time in those chairs. Here in Berlin, I’ve had to use one of the kitchen chairs for 4 months. My bum is sore. My back is sore. My legs are sore.

• Exercise that raises your heart rate: I have definitely been more active, generally, in Berlin than I am in Canada. I am out walking around most of the day, almost every day, with the kids. Sometimes I’m even carrying one of them. But I haven’t really had the time or opportunity to do any exercise that gets my heart rate up. I’m looking forward to getting back into basketball and back on my treadmill when I get back to Canada.

What I’m not looking forward to in Canada

• Less time with the kids: I’ve spent a lot of time with the kids this summer, which has been great, but also exhausting. I am looking forward to having a bit of a break from that, but I think once we get back into the regular routine of work and school and other activities, I will miss having the opportunity to hang out with them more frequently and to ask “what do you want to do today?” in the morning.

• More expensive: Europe is usually expensive. Berlin, however, is very economical. From food to transportation to the hair stylist to restaurants, everything we buy here seems to be very reasonably priced and much less expensive than in Canada. Once we get back, I expect we’ll see our food bills and transportation bills in particular rising substantially.

• Driving everywhere, long commutes: I am not looking forward to my long drives to work everyday and to the long drives to go just about anywhere. I will miss the convenience of having everything right outside my door in Berlin. Does anyone have a nice townhouse or condo for sale for cheap in the Byward Market?

Good and bad, like or not, we’re heading back home. I expect I’ll have a few more Berlin posts as I put a cap on our time here, but after that it is back to the realities of everyday Canada. Thank you for joining us on our journey. I hope you’ll come along again next time (maybe…).

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