I went to Berlin in large part to explore the tango dance scene there and to find out where you can dance to good traditional tango music. This is part guide, part travelog.
Getting there: I found a flight through Skyscanner as I had a last minute opportunity to go away. I booked accommodation for seven nights through Airbnb which I've used for solo travel successfully several times before in Britain and abroad. That combination gave me the most flexibility on flights and where I wanted to stay and was about £100 cheaper than the cheapest package deal for those dates where there would have been less flexibility on accommodation type and location. I know from previous travel for tango dancing that getting back easily to your accommodation late at night is an important consideration!
You can get a shuttle train into the city from Schönefeld airport train station which is five minutes away outside the airport under a covered walkway. You need to stamp your ticket on small, discreet machines for this purpose on the platform before travel.
Where to stay
I stayed in a lovely warm, quiet apartment in the area called Mitte and found it an ideal base. It was shared with two women I barely saw. As a poor sleeper arriving back late I valued the electric black-out shutters that are common in apartments on the Continent. I was within a few blocks of Nou and Clärchens Ballhaus and within half an hour's walk of Roter Salon and El Ocaso, all milonga venues. The U6 and U8 Ubahn were nearby. Both of these bisect the city north-south, making it easy to get to Tango Loft to the north (two stops on the U6) and to the other trad milongas, south, mostly in Kreuzberg.
I stayed in a lovely warm, quiet apartment in the area called Mitte and found it an ideal base. It was shared with two women I barely saw. As a poor sleeper arriving back late I valued the electric black-out shutters that are common in apartments on the Continent. I was within a few blocks of Nou and Clärchens Ballhaus and within half an hour's walk of Roter Salon and El Ocaso, all milonga venues. The U6 and U8 Ubahn were nearby. Both of these bisect the city north-south, making it easy to get to Tango Loft to the north (two stops on the U6) and to the other trad milongas, south, mostly in Kreuzberg.
Mitte felt safe. So did the little I saw of the area around Mehringdamm (Milonga Popular, Villa Kreuzberg and Walzerlinksgestricht). The area immediately around Kottbusser Tor subway (for Max and Moritz, Tangotanzen macht schön and Art 13) was different in character but I really saw very little of it. It reminded me a bit of a mini Elephant and Castle near where I used to live in Southwark, London. I don't think it would be worth staying in that area for those milongas. This map of Berlin (click to enlarge) is marked (by stars) with the trad milongas I went to or that I missed and would explore next time. It may help you decide where to stay.
Bikes: You might hire a bike if the forecast is good. "Call a bike" was the system in operation on my street. It works using your phone and unlock codes for the bike. The terminal on the street had instructions in English.
Berlin is flat but cold and can be quite windy in February. Some people will cycle on pavements and not a hoodie on a stunt bike as I often see in the UK. In Germany, where I have found the sense of civic coherence to be strong, this surprised me. A very courteous Austrian dancer living in Berlin told me the city had fared badly in a recent survey of bike-friendly cities. I said I had not seen the separate cycle pavements I remembered from my childhood in northern Germany. "That's because we are in the east side of Berlin", he said. Here they didn't plan for bike paths during rebuilding as they did in the west and so they have been incorporating them into the road system only in the last few years. When I arrived I didn’t have a sense of the size of city and the forecast was mixed so I decided to use public transport but a bike is handy to get back from milongas reasonably safely & quickly.
Public transport - Berlin has a fantastic, fast, efficient, regular and ubiquitous public transport system. There are also overland trains (S-Bahn). Midweek and on Sunday I couldn’t get a U-bahn (underground train) after around 0030 so was reliant on nightbuses. But on Friday and Saturday the subway and the metropolitan S-Bahn run through the night. Berlin has trams, too, the M version of which also runs all night including during the week. I liked that the subway is not anything like as vertiginously or suffocatingly deep as in London.
You can get multi-day, multi transport-tickets at the airport and at self service machines on platforms. The multi-day tickets can cover all kinds of transport. I recommend it for hassle free travel. You can also get individual travel tickets for E2.70 for inner Berlin. I could not pay for a single journey using debit card in the ticket machines so you may need change. You can get a combined museum & transport ticket for I think not much more than the multi transport ticket. I know you can get them at the airport. Note, the ticket tells you to validate (stamp with platform machine) before travel.
I got around very well using Google maps public transport system for Berlin. Some Berliners use a public transport app but I didn't need it.
On my first night after the milonga at about 0045 I realised I'd missed the U-bahn but simply could not find a bus stop by Milonga Popular. Bus stops do not always have shelters. Eventually I found it Sometimes they just look like this (H for Haltestelle - bus stop):
Cashpoints - In the confusion of leaving Villa Kreuzberg on Thursday I forgot to go to a cashpoint before reaching Wedding, one of the transport stops for Tango Loft. There is a Commerzbank and a Sparkasse near Wedding. I had had no problem using the exteral ATMs in Mitte but the machines at the first bank now didn't like my card & I couldn't get inside the door to the machines in the other bank. I understand now that some ATMs inside bank foyers in Germany are closed from 10pm till morning. In my case though I had just seen a man leave so it was very possibly user error! I had just enough cash to get in but make sure you have enough with you when you leave the centre.
General
Berliners dont jaywalk with anything like London insouciance. Right of way rules here. Each has his proper turn and his alloted slot. For a people I don't remember being great queuers I find this puzzling. But if you watch film footage of early Berlin in the Story of Berlin museum, law-abiding pedestrians aren't at all in evidence!
I liked that it is built into the traffic system that vehicles turning the corner coincide with the signal for pedestrians to cross the road. It establishes the right balance between vehicles and pedestrians which I think is falling away in Britain.
On the other hand, you will find few zebra crossings in Berlin and from the time when I learned to drive in Germany I remember almost no roundabouts. Perhaps these traffic features, reliant on human judgment, are unsuited to the cultural temperament here which seems to prefer the more unambiguous electro-mechanical systems.
I liked that it is built into the traffic system that vehicles turning the corner coincide with the signal for pedestrians to cross the road. It establishes the right balance between vehicles and pedestrians which I think is falling away in Britain.
On the other hand, you will find few zebra crossings in Berlin and from the time when I learned to drive in Germany I remember almost no roundabouts. Perhaps these traffic features, reliant on human judgment, are unsuited to the cultural temperament here which seems to prefer the more unambiguous electro-mechanical systems.
Do not stand on the yellow line by the doors on a crowded bus, even though the doors don't open inwards. The bus won't go, the driver will say something stern over the loudspeaker & everyone will stare! On the other hand when I thought I'd missed the subway train there was a platform announcement which I belatedly realised said something like "Does the lady on the platform want to get on?" In which case everyone will laugh... :)
Expect bars (but not restaurants or milongas) to be smoky.
Ladies - it is stating the obvious but bears reiterating - pack very comfortable daytime shoes if you want to stay the course.
On the way to Tango Loft I walked down Lindowerstr from Wedding public transport station. It is dark with guys hanging about and I did not choose to do so again. Instead I got off at Reinickendorfe Strasse instead and walked down the street of the same name, bigger, busier & more brightly lit, until Gerichtstrasse (for Tango Loft). Going home you can get a night bus into Mitte and beyond by Reinickendorfer Strasse subway. I was accompanied twice to public transport in the early hours, once very late/early from Tango Loft, for which I was grateful.
Milonga Popular & Tango Loft are both down dark alleys. If I hadn't met people coming the other way to ask I would've hesitated to go down them alone especially as I wasn't sure I was in the right place. If going alone and for the first time see the photos on my individual milonga reviews (forthcoming) to help you identify them.
Milonga Popular & Tango Loft are both down dark alleys. If I hadn't met people coming the other way to ask I would've hesitated to go down them alone especially as I wasn't sure I was in the right place. If going alone and for the first time see the photos on my individual milonga reviews (forthcoming) to help you identify them.
I saw quite a lot of random drinking in the street right across the city - mostly young people with beer bottles but nothing that was particularly out of hand and nothing compared to what you will see any weekend night in many British city centres.
Many thanks to Sven Froese for clarifications about transport and banks.
Many thanks to Sven Froese for clarifications about transport and banks.
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