The Berlin Stories: Part 2

From the forest to the floor

Once you’ve decided that the Everest of a hiking trip is no longer going to be your Everest, you often feel liberated and even excited. I woke up on my second day in Berlin with a joie de vivre that was somewhat lacking the day before, when I caught the train out to the 66 Lakes Trail. I confidently ordered a coffee from the hotel staff, compensating for my limited German with an enthusiastic, smiling delivery (which, in retrospect, was probably unnerving.) Having sampled enough of the 66 Lakes Trail for my short visit to the city, I was now free to spend the day hiking through some of the most stately parks in Berlin’s center, while saving up enough energy for an even later and saucier night on the city’s club circuit, having already tested the waters at Tresor.

Using the Instant Urban Trail method to create a hiking route through city green spaces—as we covered in Seattle and Philly—I needed to start with a destination. For Berlin, the crown jewel seemed obvious. Tiergarten was the park I wanted to hike to. Not only because it boasts over 500 acres of towering arbors, enchanting waterways, and classical statues, but also because the centrally-located Tiergarten just so happened to be where the loop-shaped Berlin Marathon course would start and finish the next day. The crowds would be so vast that I would be lucky to set foot on an inch of grass if I attempted to go there during the race. And because the park serves as the leafy bridge between several Berlin neighborhoods, there would be plenty of choices for how to get to Tiergarten via the smaller and lesser known city parks and greenways.