Going for Beers in East Berlin

Since I wasn’t personally close to any of the wedding party, the big day for me in our Berlin trip was the Sunday after; our one day of interrupted sunshine, and we spent it all in beer gardens with attached playgrounds. In the morning, we had breakfast (no beer involved) with some of Lauren’s old school buddies, and in the afternoon we had dinner and beers with some geeky ongoing readers.

East Berlin · Nowadays, you could suppose this means the neighborhoods on the right side of the map, but the ghosts of history linger. For those of my age, it’s weird and wonderful to be able to hop the S-Bahn to Prenzlauer Allee deep in the heart of the former East Berlin, walk a couple of blocks, and sit down for beers with geeks.

But the two sides of the city still look different to my eye, here are a couple of photos, West then East:

Draw your own conclusions. It’s the conventional wisdom that Berlin is cheaper than the other big cities, and the former East has spots that are cheaper still.

Mind you, that eastern neighborhood was not without its Olde European charms; I don’t know what the “!” means:

Geek Beers · First of all, a major shout-out to Tomster for organizing this. The geeks were nice and the location, Alois S, charming if a bit grubby; I totally recommend it if you’re on the East Side, hungry and with kids in tow.

From left to right: Jörg Ossenkopp, Tom Lazar, Carsten Milling, Patrick Wright, and Mathias Daus. I learned lots... on the one hand, nobody reads blogs and nobody uses Ruby. On the other, there’s more work than the local Pythonista can handle, and the economics of going online get better every year. Thanks for coming out, guys.

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