Caitlin Hardee breaks the Berlin bubble using just her two feet…
For many of us who love to travel, the pandemic era has brought a drastic change to our once far-ranging lifestyles. Instead of little trips around Europe and further afield, we Berliners took familiarity with the Hauptstadt to claustrophobic new levels of intimacy.
While I too spent far too much time in my little four-walled cage, I was—paradoxically—also constantly in motion. On my own two feet, from January 2020 through March 2022, I covered approximately 5000 miles; and yet, apart from a very few training trips to the mountains, most of those miles never took me further than a 15-mile radius from my front door. I went far, and nowhere at all.
Why all these circuitous wanderings? Well, I was training for the Pacific Crest Trail and with little in the way of elevation, all I could do was rely on sheer volume of miles to build my body into thru-hiking condition. But the endless evening runs and weekend hikes also served to keep me sane during two years of staggering isolation.
In the process, through trial-and-error and a fondness for PlotARoute.com, I discovered quite a few gems for the footloose Berliner. As the weather warms, you too may be toying with the idea of spending more time traipsing the city. Here are my best practices for beginning urban hikers – and a few favourite routes.
If you’re new to urban hiking, or hiking in general, below are a few tips. If you know what you’re doing and just want the routes, skip ahead..
1. Adapt the 10 essentials
In wilderness hiking, we speak of the 10 essentials: rather than 10 specific items, these are roughly 10 gear systems which you should always carry on your adventures. They are, loosely, navigation, illumination, sun protection, rain protection, first aid, knife, firestarter, shelter / bivouac, extra food and water, and extra clothes. Now, in a city, of course you can manage without most of these things. If you get hungry or thirsty, you can buy food, if you get cold and wet, you can go inside. Nevertheless, especially if you find yourself traipsing to Brandenburg and back, it’s wise to carry many of these things anyway, plus a few things specific to city hiking.
Urban everyday essentials: Purchasing power (cash and cards), apartment key, charged phone (for navigation, and in case you want to enter a place like a café that requires digital vaccine passport or similar), mask. A few ziplocs to waterproof your electronics in case of rain. A 50 cent piece or two, in case you need to nip into a City Toilette or restaurant to use the bathroom.
Navigation: map out your route in advance using a tool like PlotARoute.com, then download the GPS track as a GPX file, upload it to Google – My Maps and email yourself the link and/or load the GPX file into a capable app on your phone. That way, you can check your position as you move. Can you get truly lost in a place like Berlin? I don’t really think so, but I’ve been here for 10 years, and seen people get disoriented in some truly central places, like Treptower Park.
Your mileage may vary. If you’re taking a longer hike to the countryside, it can just save you some uncertainty to bring a navigation device, make sure it’s fully charged (and potentially bring a charged battery bank for backup), know basic skills like how to read a digital map, and how to orient yourself along a GPS track.
While you can probably do without wilderness essentials like a knife, repair kit, firestarter and emergency shelter, it never hurts to have a small bladed tool, lighter and space blanket kicking around somewhere in your bag. And while urban hikes, 99% of the time, are pretty safe, even B-town has a few objective hazards. You could be the one person in the history of time who gets their phone instead of their laptop stolen by a Wildschwein, then you go after it and it mauls your leg, you barely fend it off with a Swiss army knife, then have to sterilize a needle in your Bic lighter flame, stitch yourself up and huddle in a Rettungsdecke for warmth while you wait for some dogwalkers to come to your aid. Who knows.
Far more important for urban hikes, however…