Just got back from Berlin. Didn’t enjoy it as much as we do usually enjoy a city break; mainly because the scorching hot hotel room meant we didn’t sleep at all so were knackered during the day. I did my best to take things in on a history tour and at some of the museums, but having been before about 10 years ago it fell a bit flat.
I enjoyed Kreuzberg and there was some good bars and restaurants there, but I think, for me, Berlin has the same issue as somewhere like Helsinki - both nice, clean cities that seem good to live in, but have been rebuilt so frequently over and over that they’ve lost something intangible that other cities retain. Like how there’s so little left preserved of the awful but very interesting history of WW2 and the Berlin Wall etc; of course you can learn about these things and I understand the collective guilt in wanting to scrub these things out of visibility, but it does take away something. Maybe that’s unfair of me but that’s my feeling of the place. Like the museums about it could be anywhere.
We’ve the Costa Brava booked for a week in July for a friend’s wedding, as I’m looking forward to a lazy week in the sun at an all inclusive. I’d like to get away again this year aside from that, maybe some sun around early winter, but as we want to do a big trip next year, it probably won’t be financially possible.