Drink a lot: Katie's Blue Cat, Kreuzkölln

Back in 2010, the boyfriend lived in Friedelstraße for a few months. It was a bleak and snowy winter, when cars were locked into their parking spaces by mounds of frozen snow and staying outside for more than ten minutes was out of the question. We spent a lot of time in the street itself, playing pool at the corner Kneipe and trying out the few obscure restaurants that inhabited the area.

Go to Friedelstraße now and it is absolutely teeming with life. It helps that it's summer, of course, but that is not the only reason. Nowadays the street is one big linked chain of restaurants, cutesy shops and hipster hotspots. Come winter, you can café-hop your way down the street and never even get cold.

Right at the end (from my point of view; it could also considered the beginning) of the street, in the shadow of a permanent Ausstellung of building works, there's Katie's Blue Cat. I imagine this is what comes out when you put a Stockholm fika venue, a London bakery and a 2014 Berlin hipster in a Flavour Shaker™ and shake hard: whitewashed walls, minimalist wooden benches, high-buns-shaved-sides haircuts and scones/brownies/flat whites with foam art on top. It fits the city like the comfortable, oversized jumpers worn by its patrons. This is the new Berlin venue.

Katie's Blue Cat, Friedelstraße 31, 12047 Berlin, website, open Mon-Fri 8.30am-6.30pm, Sat-Sun 10am-7pm

Eat a lot: Golgatha, Viktoriapark, Kreuzberg

Golgatha, Viktoriapark, entrance via Katzbachstraße (near Monumentenstraße), 10965 Berlin, website, open April - end of September (weather permitting till end of October) from 9am till late.

Pauls Liegewiese, Park am Gleisdreieck, Kreuzberg

Das Park am Gleisdreieck was one of the last large open spaces in Berlin's city centre to be filled (the Tempelhofer Feld being, perhaps, the sole exception). Once an area where a load of train lines converged into a triangle of rails, it was bombed heavily during the Second World War only to be forgotten about for decades. Now a modern, clean and spaceous park, it feels the complete opposite to its previous state of mysteriously overgrown wrought iron glory. 

With the arrival of companies, people and money to Berlin in general and Kreuzberg and Schöneberg in particular, it was only a matter of time before the Gleisdreieck area was spruced up. And boy, did they spruce it up. The park looks beautiful, albeit a tad too 'designed', and offers something for everyone. Playgrounds, swings, a skatepark, pretty benches, shade and grass and gravel. Naturally, it also houses several cafés.

At Pauls Liegewiese, you can rent deck chairs but most people seem to stop over for the Wiener sausages with bread (€2,20). They make a decent coffee, have one of those huge chuppachup holders with hundreds of lollies and serve homemade chilli con carne for €2,50. No alcoholic drinks though, a Fritz Limo or ice cream will have to do. A great place to watch the yummy mums go by and pick up some skateboarding slang in the process.

 

Pauls Liegewiese, Park am Gleisdreieck, next to the skaterpool and the basketball field, website, open Mon-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat-Sun 10am-7pm.