Walking tours are a must-do in any metropolitan city, especially those with so much history. It is a great way to see the city and learn things that textbooks and the internet just cannot capture. It helps even more when the walks are free, sort of. You don’t need to pre-pay for your tour and at the end of it, you simply pay the tour guide a tip that feels fair to the quality of your tour. This is a great option if you are on a budget but still want to explore the city with an expert.
Within minutes of being in Berlin, it is obvious that this city is its own microculture within Germany. A city with a complex history especially in the 20th century, counterculture has always been a form of expression and defiance. We signed up for the Alternative Berlin Walking Tour as a way to get a taste of this history.
Our tour guide, JR, was an expat living in Berlin for the last several years. He led us through some of the lesser-known areas of central Berlin where we looked high and low for street art. With pieces provocative and rebellious, these artists are challenging the status quo through their art. Many are making commentary on the political or societal landscape at the local and global scale.
Interestingly, some of the street art in itself is more about the act of defiance rather than the quality of the piece. Many used resources they had available to them in innovative ways like scrap metals, lumber, and simple spray paint. Gentrification was also a key topic as we walked through areas with less commercialization but more personality. Plus, us tourists probably weren’t helping the cause. How can we as visitors be conscious of this while we travel?
Ultimately, the tour left us asking questions about what it means to belong and what it means to make a statement against the status quo.
