When the group Pavement announced back in 2021 they would be touring again in 2022, it gave my friend (who now lives in Helsinki) and I an excuse to meet up somewhere, to go and see them.

Berlin seemed like a pretty good location for us both to meet, me travelling from Manchester and my friend travelling from Helsinki. Given the distance, we decided to make it into more of an extended trip, arranging to see Pavement in Bremen as well as Berlin, plus a few days to catch up and do a few things, as well as drink a few beers.

Now this wasn’t my first time in Berlin, my partner and I had stayed there in 2008, as part of an Interrail trip, just before we had kids. On that occasion, we did get to experience some cycling there, as we went on a really enjoyable Fat Tire bike tour, during our stay.

As it’d been many years since the last time I was there, I was keen to find out more about what cycling is like in Berlin now. From the research I did, it was very much a mixed picture. So I wasn’t expecting a lot before going.

Arriving in Berlin

After flying into Berlin Brandenburg Airport on the Wednesday evening, I managed to orient myself and figure out which train to get, for the city centre. While the airport train service is excellent and cheap, it can be confusing which train to get. This wasn’t helped by some delays and a lack of signage and train information at the platform level.

I can’t honestly remember for certain which train I got, though I think it was the regional FEX train, which took about 30 minutes to get to Berlin. Though I did remember to validate my ticket, now don’t forget!

We were staying at the easyHotel in Mitte, which is pretty central and relatively easy to get to. Arriving at the absolute maze that is Berlin Hauptbahnhof station, I needed to either get a tram or bus to the hotel.

As the bus was due to come first, I decided to get on that. Having a fantastically well integrated public transport system, there was no need to buy another ticket, as the one I bought at the airport was valid for my onward journey.

I was really impressed with my experience using the bus. In particular, the real time information and the stop alerts on the bus meant I always knew where I was, in relation to where I needed to get off, without resorting to Google Maps. This brought the level of service almost to the same as using the tram.

I soon arrived at the hotel, where I dropped my bags off and headed out for a beer. The location of the hotel in Mitte was superbly placed for going out, particularly if you’re a fan of beer in general or craft beer in particular.

We ended up at Mikkeller Bar Berlin, which became a bit of a local for us, while we were there. With an impressive beer selection, very friendly staff and great atmosphere, we didn’t want to leave!

Cycling around

Not being a great sleeper, particularly after drinking, I was often up early, long before my friend made an appearance. This gave me opportunity to explore Berlin on bike.

Not having a bike of my own, meant I was reliant on bike share bikes during my trip. On this front, there’s a number of different options for tourists wanting to get about. Nextbike is the most popular, in terms of number of bikes. Then there was also TIER and Bolt, who offer both e-bikes and e-scooters and are often seen around.

Having never used a bike share bike with e-assist before, I decided to give Bolt a go. It didn’t disappoint, riding the Bolt e-bike was lots of fun! It’s not the most refined ride, particularly as they have the same unforgiving, low maintenance tyres as Mobikes had. But when that e-assist kicks in, you just can’t help but smile.

Starting at Rosenthaler Platz, I set off along Torstraße, which is a 6 lane dual carriageway, with no cycling provision, so not a good place to start. I took the opportunity to get off Torstraße and turned onto some of the quieter streets, starting with Linienstraße, which was a much better experience.

I continued on a short tour, taking in Alexanderplatz, the River Spree and Museum Island. This gave me a taste of cycling in Berlin, and on the whole, I’d have to say I was pretty impressed. While it’s clearly not up to Dutch standards, it was better than I was expecting and often quite pleasant.

There isn’t huge amounts of protected cycling infrastructure, though there’s lots of evidence of new pop-up cycle lanes being added to extend the network. Where there isn’t cycling infrastructure, many of the bigger roads are very wide, with relatively low levels of traffic, so it didn’t feel too uncomfortable riding on them. Much better than the equivalent street in London, for instance.

Many of the quieter streets are great for cycling on, with very low levels of traffic and there’s a fair few cycle streets, where cycles are prioritised over motor traffic, which is nice.

These streets do tend to have a lot of parked cars on, as nearly every street in Berlin does, but there wasn’t much evidence of rat-running and traffic speeds were low.

My initial impression was largely positive, I guess compared to UK standards, rather than Dutch. I was also impressed by the number of people cycling, who were largely riding practical city bikes, with no hi-vis or Lycra and generally without helmets, which is often a positive sign.

Walking around

After my morning ride, I met up with my friend at the hotel and we set off for a wander on foot. The plan was to find somewhere for lunch, then head to KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Initial thoughts were to eat at fantastic looking Clärchens Ballroom, which my friend had been to before, but it was closed unfortunately.

Plan B was to continue walking and see what we can find. Mitte is really quite a walkable district, and I can highly recommend just going for a wander. Having a walk also gave me plenty of time to stop and photograph cycle parking and other interesting features of note. Not sure my friend was too impressed with that!

Talking of cycle parking, it was great to see lots of on-street parking, actually on the carriageway and not on footway. You don’t tend to see much of this in the UK. Well, certainly not in Manchester.

We came across an interesting looking Georgian restaurant, Kin Za. Having never had much in the way of Georgian food, we decided to give it go. We weren’t disappointed, as the food was amazing, particularly the Khachapuri.

The interior was also pretty unusual too, with the retro telephone booths and unusual fittings and not to mention the disco toilets. We had a very tasty lunch, ordering and eating far too much.

After stuffing ourselves, we took the opportunity to walk it off, by heading to the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, which we spent an enjoyable afternoon wandering round.

By now, it was late afternoon, so we headed back to our hotel, to get ready for an evening out. We ended up trying out some of the other local bars, before ending up back at Mikkeller. A nice touch, we were able to order some lovely pizza from the fabulous Standard Pizza nextdoor.

To the station

We woke on our third day with slightly sore heads, after a relatively late night at Mikkeller, that carried on after hours with some of the Mikkeller staff in a bar nearby.

There was no time to sleep off our hangovers, as we had train to catch to Bremen. As I mentioned, we were due to see Pavement there as well as in Berlin, with the Bremen gig the day before the Berlin gig.

To get there, we were catching the ICE train, which takes 3 hours, with a change in Hamburg. We booked this in advance, which saved a little money, but it was still quite expensive, possibly because we were travelling Friday and Saturday.

Getting to Berlin Hauptbahnhof was another opportunity to do some more cycling, while my friend took public transport.

I couldn’t find suitable Bolt bike nearby, so I took a Nextbike instead. This was a little bit of a comedown, as there was no e-assist, which would have been welcomed, feeling a little rough and carrying a heavy bag. Also, the bike was a bit older and not particularly well maintained.

While it wasn’t perfect, the bike was plenty good enough to get me and my luggage to the station. I set off from Rosenthaler Platz onto Brunnenstraße, I then turned off onto Invalidenstraße. From there, it was a straight route to the station.

Riding along Invalidenstraße gives you a good impression of cycling in Berlin, in one street. Along its length, you’ll experience both good and bad. Though on the whole, I’d say it’s largely positive.

Initially, as I cycled along, there was a wand protected section, providing a nice wide lane. This appeared to be a converted general traffic, with further lanes in the middle, shared with trams.

Unfortunately, the protection disappears at the junctions, so you’re forced to mixed with motor traffic, in quite narrow lanes. Next was a section of paved cycle path, at the same level as the footway. This was relatively narrow, but perfectly fine.

The protected cycle path soon gave way to an unprotected painted cycle lane. This was of the expected standard of painted lanes, with the usual array of cars and vans blocking the lane. On a busy street, with lots of motor traffic, this wasn’t great.

Approaching the station, there was a return to the cycle path, which alternated between a paved and asphalt surface and again was fine.

Soon, I arrived at the station, where I parked the bike and went off to meet my friend. I can’t remember now if I beat him there on this occasion or not.

We then went into Berlin Hauptbahnhof and tried to find our train in the maze of levels and platforms there. Something that’s headache inducing, even when you don’t have a hangover! Boarding our train, we set off for Bremen.