L T I P S V E R T

There was a Russian MIG fighter jet out front. A pink Second world War Panzer tank out back. And lots of beer and schnapps in my belly.

That’s all I remember of my brief visit to East Berlin in 1994.

Back then I stayed in the relatively genteel West Berlin. The East in comparison seemed wilder, sparsely populated and still battle scarred almost 40 years after the war.

This time, 30 years after the fall of the wall, I headed out east in uber-cool Friedrichshain, an area similar to London’s Shoreditch or Manchester’s Northern Quarter.

The former industrial zone was laid to waste in the war and rebuilt Soviet style when it became part of communist East Berlin – complete with giant statue of Lenin.

But after German reunification, Lenin lost his head and Friedrichshain became populated by alternative arty types.

It’s now in the inevitable grip of gentrification yet still retains an industrial, Soviet era feel.

Think well-worn brick and concrete alongside modern apartments. There are scruffy students and slick media types plus hipster bars and warehouse clubs. That sort of thing.

It’s also home to the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall. Daubed in 105 murals of peace and hope from 1990, it’s a poignant monument not only to the wall’s fall, but also to post-soviet joy and optimism.

It’s outdoors and free so be prepared to queue for a selfie.

Next to the wall is the turreted Oberbaum Bridge with sprawling views over the River Spree. It used to link East and West, so is now a symbol of Berlin’s unity.

It’s covered in street art of a more contemporary kind, just like a lot of East Berlin. The best examples are up the road at RAW Berlin, an artistic collective in old train yards.

The abandoned warehouses were taken over in the 1990s and are now home to clusters of colourful clubs, bars, art studios, a skate park, and even a Second World War bunker transformed into a climbing wall.

It’s heaving at weekends and reminded me of the place where I partied back in 1994.

I asked people if they knew it but they had no idea what I was on about. I had my doubts too.

The neighbourhood next to RAW is full of bustling bars, cafes, and restaurants. My fave was Timber Doodle, a cosy and eccentric cocktail lounge with an unfeasibly large drinks menu and toilets confusingly accessed through a bookcase.

Nearby is Boxhagener Platz, a small yet famous park that on Saturdays is home to a century-old farmers’ market and on Sundays to a bohemian flea market.

A more famous Sunday flea market is in Mauer Park, a stretch of the no-man’s-land between East and West known as the death strip. It’s now a pleasant place to peruse antiques, crafts and souvenirs.

A great way to see what life was like in East Germany is to visit its

WANDER the vast Soviet Memorial in Treptower Park honouring

80,000 Red Army soldiers who died in the Battle of Berlin for a reminder of the city’s brutal past.

GO native and sip beer with locals outside a spati – 24/7 corner shops that take advantage of Germany’s very lax public drinking laws.

SEE an arthouse movie in the cool Kino Intimes, a graffiti-covered cinema dating back to the

early 20th century.

Flashbacks

former governmental district and the great DDR Museum.

It has fun interactive displays of all aspects of life, like driving an old Trabant car, trying on 80s clothes in a tower block flat, as well as a notso-fun Stasi interrogation room.

The museum is also behind the cool Nineties Berlin exhibition a few blocks south. It takes you back to the decade after the wall’s fall via an array of multimedia displays, including a techno club that gave me all kinds of flashbacks.

And in its gift shop I saw a photo of that MIG jet. Despite probably not being alive in 1994, the girl working there informed me it was taken at the Art House Tacheles, a semidemolished department store taken over by artists in 1990.

Sadly, it no longer exists. But she was impressed I’d been there back then and asked what it was like.

And that’s a question I still struggle to answer.

FACTFILE: Flights to Berlin from £14.99 one way. See easyjet.com. Nightly rates at nhow Berlin from £100. See nhow-hotels.com. For more information on Berlin see visitberlin.de/en.