Berlin with an address: a listening station and a river pool

Berlin is a city where the best things are either free or cost about the same as a beer, yet almost none of them appear on a list of sights. Here are ten that come with an address, a price and a day of the week.

This isn't a list of hidden lanes; it's a list of things you do: where you climb, when you go, which ticket and which entrance. Half of it is free.

One note on timing: a lot of this is seasonal. The Klunkerkranich roof runs from mid-April to the end of September, the pool in the river only in summer, the Mauerpark karaoke only on Sundays in decent weather, and Teufelsberg closes at sunset, so a winter visit there is a short one.

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Teufelsberg — an NSA listening station on a hill of rubble

Teufelsseechaussee 10, Charlottenburg. The hill was piled up after the war from the rubble of the destroyed city, and on top of it sits an American listening station whose domes have stood empty since the early nineties. Today it is a street-art gallery: every wall, corridor and dome is painted, and the big dome has an echo that makes people sing. Entry is €12 for adults, with a lower price for under-18s and a family ticket; under-sevens go free. Open daily from 11 until sunset — until half past nine in summer, much earlier in winter — with last entry an hour before closing. Get there by S-Bahn to Grunewald and about forty minutes uphill through the forest. Bring forest shoes, not city trainers.

Tempelhofer Feld — the airport that stayed empty

The former Tempelhof airport, three hundred hectares in the middle of the city, opened to the public in 2010 and kept that way by a referendum in which Berliners refused to let anyone build on it. The two runways are now a track for skates, bikes and kites, and between them are allotments, barbecue zones and birds nesting in the grass. Entry is free and the gates run from sunrise to sunset, so the hours shift every month. Entrances: Tempelhofer Damm, Columbiadamm and Oderstrasse in Neukölln. The terminal building itself — one of the largest structures on earth by floor area — can only be seen on a paid guided tour; the field cannot.

Mauerpark on Sunday — flea market and karaoke in the amphitheatre

Bernauer Strasse 63–64, on the boundary between Prenzlauer Berg and Wedding, on the old border strip. On Sundays there's a flea market here, ten to six, all year round: records, old clothes, German tools and too many expensive 'vintage' stalls at the entrance — the real thing is at the back. Around three in the afternoon, from spring to autumn and in decent weather, karaoke starts in the stone amphitheatre, run by one man with a bicycle and a speaker in front of packed stone terraces. It's free and there's nothing to book; in rain and in winter it doesn't happen.

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Klunkerkranich, and rooftops instead of the TV Tower

Karl-Marx-Strasse 66, Neukölln — a garden on the fifth floor of the car park above the Neukölln Arcaden shopping centre. You take the lift by the library and post office entrance to the top of the car park, then walk up to the roof; anyone hunting for the mall's main entrance will never find it. The main season runs mid-April to the end of September: Mon–Wed 17–24, Thu 16–02, Fri and Sat 16–03, Sun 16–24; under-18s only with a parent after four. Concerts and club nights are ticketed separately. The view covers all of southern Berlin with the TV Tower on the horizon — the same thing you'd pay €20 for up the tower, here with a drink.

Berghain — how it actually works

Am Wriezener Bahnhof, next to S-Ostbahnhof. A former power station with several separate rooms — the main hall, Panorama Bar above it, Säule, Halle and the Kantine — and a door about which not one rule has ever been published. So, without promises: nobody can guarantee you get in, and any guide claiming otherwise is selling smoke. What practice tells you: go on Sunday morning or afternoon, not around midnight on Saturday when the queue is longest and strictest; go alone or in twos, not as a party of six; don't photograph, shout or drink in the queue; at the door your phone camera gets covered with a sticker, and that isn't negotiable; you only pay once you're past the door. If you're turned away, the Kantine beside the same building and clubs like Sisyphos and Tresor have similar music and easier doors.

Where to stayStay in Friedrichshain and you're ten minutes from here:Where to stay in Berlin →

Holzmarkt and the RAW site — two yards with no admission

Holzmarktstrasse 25: a village on the bank of the Spree with workshops, a bakery, a restaurant and a bar on the square. Walking in is free; only individual concerts are ticketed. Two stops away is the RAW site, Revaler Strasse 99 in Friedrichshain: a former railway works with a skate hall, a concrete bunker people climb, graffiti walls and a Sunday flea market. By day it shows how Berlin uses what its industry left behind; by night it's club territory.

Badeschiff — a swimming pool floating in the Spree

Eichenstrasse 4, beside the Arena in Treptow. An old cargo barge was turned into a pool and moored in the river, so you swim in the Spree without swimming in it — pool water, river view, and behind you the bridge and the Friedrichshain skyline. It runs in summer only, mostly from ten in the morning to ten at night, and entry isn't a day ticket but a two-hour time slot at €8; slots go on sale online a few days ahead and sell out in hot weather. It's a five-minute walk from Treptower Park S-Bahn.

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Spätis, Wegbier and the Ampelmann — the Berlin that isn't on any list

A Spätkauf, or Späti: a small shop open late into the night, many of them on Sundays too, when the supermarkets are shut. There's a fridge, a table outside and, as a rule, one table of people who have been sitting there for hours. Drinking in public is legal in Berlin, so a 'Wegbier' — a beer for the road — gets opened on the spot and carried on, and it's a cheaper start to the evening than a bar in the centre. While you sit outside, look at the crossing opposite: the little green man in a hat is the Ampelmann, devised by traffic psychologist Karl Peglau in 1961 and installed on the lights from the late sixties. After reunification he was meant to be replaced by the western figure and survived thanks to a campaign in the nineties; today he stands at crossings across the whole eastern half of the city and in the odd western district. He isn't the only trace: trams still run almost only in the east, because West Berlin shut its lines by 1967, and Karl-Marx-Allee is a socialist boulevard from the fifties with facades of ceramic tiles. The Ampelmann shops are souvenir shops like any other — the original is free on every corner.

The Bode in the morning, and a picture gallery with no queue

On Museum Island the crowd gathers in the Neues Museum, which leaves the Bode calm in the morning, on the same island ticket. The real hack is off the island: the Gemäldegalerie at the Kulturforum, with Vermeer, Rembrandt, Bruegel and Caravaggio, runs on a separate €22 ticket that also covers the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Museum of Decorative Arts and the Musical Instrument Museum on the same day. Under-18s pay for neither.

How not to pay the €60 fine

The Berlin U-Bahn has no barriers or gates — you walk in and you look after your own ticket. The rule is simple: a paper ticket goes into the machine on the platform before you board the train, and into the machine on a bus or tram as soon as you get on. A day pass is stamped once, the first time; a ticket bought in the app isn't stamped because it activates on purchase, but it must be activated before you board, not after. Inspectors work in plain clothes, board in groups and block the doors at a station. Buying is not validating, and the inspector won't see a difference; the fine is paid online or at a BVG customer centre.

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