Three Generations, Three Berlins: From Museums to Currywurst
“Another museum?” I groaned. I was ten, my feet hurt, and the guidebook in my dad’s hand looked like a weapon.
“I can’t walk anymore, it’s just another cathedral. I want McDonald’s,” my seven-year-old brother added for good measure.
My parents were – and still are – culture lovers. Classical music, opera, museums, churches and mosques and synagogues – if there was art or architecture inside, they wanted to see it. We were dragged along from painting to painting, from altar to altar, counting the minutes to the next ice cream.
Years later my dad said to me, “You know, Karen, we took you to places we enjoyed and hoped you’d like them too. In retrospect, we should have thought about what you would like.”
Fast forward a few decades. I land in Berlin in the dead of winter. The streets are covered with snow, but the sky is clear and the cold is almost pleasant. I have no interest in reliving my childhood itineraries. No long museum queues, no cathedral roofs. I want my Berlin.
We start with the city’s ghosts. At the Holocaust Memorial we weave between the cold concrete slabs, our footsteps leaving dark prints in the snow. The place feels like a maze of memories – heavy, silent, impossible to ignore. A few streets away, life rushes on: currywurst eaten standing up at a metal counter, breath turning to steam above a paper plate. Berlin is very good at holding grief in one hand and everyday life in the other.
From there we follow colour. We wander along walls exploded with graffiti – roaring tigers, candy-cane weapons, strange birds mid-scream. Berlin’s street art feels like the city talking back to history, loud and cheeky and completely alive.
And of course, there is food. A tiny deli with a glass case full of cheeses and cured meats; smoked fish hanging like golden lanterns in a dark smoker; a market stall where jars of candy line up like soldiers, adults suddenly serious about choosing the right sweets. In the evening we warm up in a theatre, the stage flooded with light and feathers and music – a reminder that Berlin is not only about what was lost, but also about what keeps being created.
This was my Berlin: markets instead of museums, murals instead of church ceilings, memorials chosen carefully and experienced on my own terms.
Then my son went to Berlin.
He had cool but sunny weather, perfect for long walks. And unlike me, he had no old travel trauma to rebel against. He did the “big things”: the Pergamon and the Neues Museum, the cathedrals, the Reichstag dome, all the landmarks I had stubbornly skipped. Before the trip he called my father for advice, and during the trip he sent updates:
“Grandpa, you were right, that museum was amazing.”
“The view from the Reichstag – best part of the day.”
Watching those messages pop up on my phone felt like a small circle closing. My parents’ Berlin, my Berlin, my son’s Berlin – all overlapping, all different, all somehow right.
As a child I tried to escape the culture my parents loved. As an adult, I went looking for the city’s street corners, food stalls and hidden alleys. My son arrived with an open map and managed to embrace it all: the solemn and the playful, the museums and the murals, the past and the present.
Maybe that’s what travel – and parenting – does over time. Each generation edits the story, adds a few pages of their own, and then hands the book forward.
I still don’t regret skipping a few cathedrals. But next time I’m in Berlin, I might let my son drag me through a museum or two – and then I’ll insist we finish the day with currywurst eaten in the cold, our footprints melting slowly into the snow.
