East Berlin by Footbike: Or How We Scooted Our Souls Out on the Cobblestones. A travel essay in ten stops, with mandatory knee pain and an optional existential crisis.
Table of contents
Alexanderplatz
Starting Line Under Ideological Supervision
We begin where everything in the GDR used to begin—under the TV Tower (Fernsehturm), that steel finger with which socialist power pointed at God to show that its reach extended even into the heavens. We stand beneath it, one foot on our Kostka footbikes, feeling like great athletes on two wheels. Except our “power machines” have no pedals—just a steel footboard and absolutely zero suspension. A fact we don’t quite realize yet, but will soon understand very painfully.
Alexanderplatz—or “Alex,” as Berliners call it with that typical local laziness regarding multi-syllable words—is the heart of what used to be East Berlin. Not the old heart with the flamboyant World Clock and the solar system above it, which once looked like a parking lot with a brutalist tower and a cultural house. Today, through the shopping malls and renovated facades, you can feel the omnipresent construction style of Potsdamer Platz.
We flee before we get trampled by tourists with selfie sticks and kebabs in hand. We kick off, and our Kostka footbikes slowly carry us northeast. The first few meters are “free.” Before we head deep into Prenzlberg, we veer into Mitte. This is where the border once ran like a scalpel through the heart of the city. Mitte sits directly on that scar.
Haus Schwarzenberg
The Story of One Street and Three Lives
Rosenthaler Straße 39. We enter through a gate that doesn’t look like a gate—it’s more like a hole in the plaster through which you step into another century. The surrounding buildings are polished, inflated, full of cafes where a latte costs five euros and the barista holds a philosophy degree.
And then there is Haus Schwarzenberg. A facade intentionally left without renovation since 1945, walls covered in layers of graffiti so thick you can read them like a geological profile—here began the revolution of the nineties, here came the second wave, here the third, and here someone stuck a sticker on Tuesday morning.
In 1995, the artist group Dead Chickens moved into this abandoned complex. The whole project operates without government subsidies, which in Berlin means either a miracle or stubbornness—and here, it’s clearly both. In the basement lies the Monsterkabinett—pneumatic metal monsters that sing and dance. In the courtyard, a portrait of Anne Frank greets us, one that no one has ever painted over. It is home to the Anne Frank Zentrum and the museum of Otto Weidt, a workshop owner who employed blind and deaf Jews during the war to save them from deportation.
Three stories in one building—all of them true.
Kunsthaus Tacheles
Two hundred meters further down Oranienburger Straße: Fotografiska. A five-story building from 1909 that was first an AEG shopping arcade, then a base for the Nazi Labor Front and the SS, then a ruin in East Berlin, and finally (after the Wall fell) the legendary squat Kunsthaus Tacheles.
Artists occupied the ruin in 1990, just a month after the Wall fell, creating their own artistic utopia that lasted twenty-two years. Cinemas, studios, theater, graffiti six stories high. In 2012, developers evicted the artists to make room for investors. Today, it houses Fotografiska—the Stockholm-based photography museum. We were lucky. The original graffiti from the squatter days remains on the staircases, now protected by heritage laws. It’s a Berlin paradox in its purest form: revolution under state protection.
We park our Kostka footbike by a pole and stare at the building. Tacheles is a Yiddish word. It means “to speak plainly, without sugarcoating.” I can’t resist; I go inside. Anton Corbijn’s exhibition is opening today. I simply have to see it.
Museum Island
Where Berlin Looks into the Mirror
From Oranienburger Straße, it’s just a few meters to the Spree and Museum Island. Five world-famous museums stand on the tip of the island between two branches of the river like a stone argument that civilization deserves its space.
Riding along the banks of the Spree around Museum Island is one of those Berlin moments where you forget about your knees. The river is dark green, seagulls screech their shanties, and on the other bank towers the Berlin Cathedral with a dome so confident it looks like it wants to pick a fight with the Vatican. Behind it sit the Altes Museum, the Pergamon, the Bode Museum—each building a testament to a different epoch. And on the water, a traffic jam of tour boats.
Under communism, Museum Island was an island only geographically. Ideologically, it was split, underfunded, and partially ruined. After reunification came billions, renovations, and UNESCO status. The Bode Museum at the tip of the island looks like a ship sailing into the past. And when you see a boat full of dancing, beer-sipping Germans, you stop caring about geopolitics.
Prenzlauer Berg
Where Bohemians Grow Old and You Slalom Through Their Strollers
We push off from the Spree and head north into Prenzlberg. The first few meters are fine. Then come the first cobblestones. Prenzlauer Berg is a neighborhood that survived both the bombs and the GDR with its facades almost intact. Why? Because the communist administration didn’t know what to do with it, so they just let it stand.
We ride down Oderberger Straße. Cafes on both sides, each with a different philosophy—one believes in the flat white, another in Beethoven and soy milk. A Berliner from Prenzlberg doesn’t just drink coffee; they practice coffee.
But don’t have any illusions about a hipster revolution. Prenzlauer Berg gentrified so fast that the squatters of the nineties couldn’t even afford to look at the real estate market today. The hipsters of 1995 are now parents with twins in “organic” certified strollers. Kastanienallee, nicknamed “Macchiato Mile,” is now a quiet alley with language schools and vegan groceries. The footbike kicks back against the cobblestones. Occasionally, steel strikes stone, but the Kostka is indestructible.
Pankow Wasserturm
We turn onto Knaackstraße. Here stands the Wasserturm, Berlin’s oldest water tower. Massive, round, brick-red—with apartments for workers in the lower floors where the machine operators lived with their families. Those apartments still exist and are, naturally, highly coveted.
The tower also had a dark side. In late January 1933, the SS opened one of the first concentration camps in its engine rooms, torturing anti-fascists. No trial. No documentation. Just a cellar, darkness, and the ideology that had just seized power. Today, we enjoy the park around the tower, the benches, children’s chatter, and a massive thirst. Berlin slaps you like this constantly—one second you’re standing on an execution site, the next you’re debating the price of beer at a Späti.
Kulturbrauerei
Where Beer Was Brewed, People Now Dance and Remember the Days When Honecker Still Had His Own Teeth
A five-minute ride from the Wasserturm, and suddenly a complex of red-and-yellow brick buildings appears, looking like a small medieval town squeezed into a Berlin neighborhood. This is the Kulturbrauerei.
In 1945, the Soviets confiscated the brewery, and the communists operated it until 1968. Then came years of silence and decay. In 1990, the creatives moved in. Today, it houses a cinema, a museum of everyday life in the GDR (which we didn’t miss), concert halls, dance studios, and one of Berlin’s best Christmas markets. I play “disabled” for a moment (I’m good at that) so we can store our footbikes inside the museum. There, we discover a Trabi camper and a unique GDR bicycle lock. We finally get that long-awaited beer.
Mauerpark
Where the Wall Stood and Berlin Laughs
In the north of Prenzlberg lies Mauerpark. Mauer—the Wall. This park sits exactly where the Todesstreifen (Death Strip) used to be—a no-man’s-land of barbed wire and searchlights. Today, every Sunday, there’s a flea market and outdoor karaoke.
You read that right. In a concrete amphitheater, right where the Berlin Wall once stood, hundreds of people gather to sing. It is something deeply Berlin: taking a place of trauma and turning it into theater. Not out of malice—but out of a life philosophy. Leben geht weiter. Life goes on. And if it can go on with karaoke, why not?
Friedrichshain
The Spree and Its Banks—Concrete, Stalinism, and the Spirit of Revolution
We veer south toward Friedrichshain. Karl-Marx-Allee is Stalinist architectural monumentality in its purest form. The width of the boulevard and its symmetry are designed to make you feel small. Stalinist architecture didn’t build for people; it built for the Idea.
The Kostka footbike finally compensates me for the hours of suffering—the asphalt of the Allee is smooth as a dream. I enjoy it to the fullest, knowing what comes next: the Spree, the canal banks, and the East Side Gallery.
East Side Gallery
1.3 kilometers of the Berlin Wall. Not as a monument of horror, but as a canvas. The famous mural of Brezhnev kissing Honecker, the Trabant breaking through concrete, doves, waves, and hope—both naive and sincere.
We continue along the banks of the Spree. Here, Berlin breathes slowly. Only water, seagulls, and the occasional barge. The RAW-Gelände on the horizon—an old railway area, now a cultural zone with clubs and street art so dense the walls look like the city’s notebooks.
Treptow
At the Soviet War Memorial in Treptow stands a thirty-two-meter-high bronze soldier, saving a child in his arms and crushing a swastika under his boot. The surrounding flower beds are perfectly raked. Silence is mandatory. In that vast space, we met only one elderly man sitting on a bench. He was likely remembering.
We headed to the waterfront to realize that Berlin is a city of bicycles.
Why Discover Berlin by footbike?
- You can fold it for the train faster than a German can say “Das ist verboten.”
- No battery to worry about. Energy is generated directly from your evening currywurst.
- Cyclists hate you, pedestrians don’t understand you (and are secretly jealous), and tourists think you’re a local.
- Berlin is flat. Finally, a city where you don’t sweat like you’re climbing Kriváň.
- After three beers, you can still push it home. An e-bike would already be acting passive-aggressive.
- Unlike a car, you actually see the city, not just the back of a taxi.
- You can stop instantly for graffiti. No parking search required. Foot down, take the photo.
- In the Tiergarten, you can go from city noise to the forest in five minutes—no psychotherapy needed.
- After two days, you’ll realize the greatest feat wasn’t Berlin’s; it was your knees and calves.
- And most importantly—it’s probably the only transport in Berlin that doesn’t need an app, registration, or a monthly subscription.
Epilogue: Berlin by footbike
Back at Alexanderplatz. The Kostka footbike kicks off for the last time.
What did we see today? A water tower that was a hydraulic miracle and then a concentration camp. A brewery that was a castle, then a state enterprise, then a ruin, and now a cultural institution. A building that was a Nazi base, then a squat, and now a Swedish photography museum.
Berlin is not a city with history. Berlin is history without interruption—without mercy for buildings, without forgetting the stories. The cobblestones we rode over all day are a Berlin metaphor: uncomfortable, hard, unsprung—but real. Every stone has layers: here marches were held, here people fled, here they danced, here they cried. The footbike doesn’t feel them with gratitude. My knees, however, do.
You remember Berlin by footbik not through your eyes, but through your body. Through aching palms, a bruised shoulder that will hurt for a week. Through that moment in front of Haus Schwarzenberg, standing before a facade of uncountable layers of paint and thinking: this city cannot forget, even if it wanted to.
It was a good day on a Kostka footbike. It was a good day in East Berlin.
- Route length: approx. 30 km.
- Cobblestones: too many.
- Beer: adequate amount.
- Spandau: saved for another time—it’s a different city, even with a Berlin zip code. Highly recommended.
