A Last Day in the 'Hood

 June 15, 2025 — Sunday

Another scorcher of a day. There were offers of outings, but I wanted a low-key day for my last day before heading home, so we stayed in the neighbourhood. We walked to the Volkspark Wilmersdorf, a serpentine stretch of green that once saved me from jet lag on arrival in Berlin some years ago. There’s a new playground there, a huge, spectacular one. In a city full of huge, spectacular playgrounds, this one outdid them all. My favourite part was the labyrinth. Who doesn’t like a labyrinth? It was small, but definitely get-lost-able. The theme of the playground was Harry Potter, and all the characters were there, carved in wood, but the city didn’t call it Harry Potter, because they would have had to pay royalties. How omitting the name is enough to avoid lawsuits is beyond me. 

Random sunbathing on patchy grass (see previous post about this aesthetic)

Family playing pétanque, or boules, or bocce, whatever it's called here. Behind that greenery is the beer garden described below

Not a Harry Potter playground

A feature that wasn’t new in this part of the park was a row of pingpong tables. At the beach yesterday, Amelia and Ezra (and for a bit, me) volleyed a pingpong ball back and forth with the paddles they’d brought for the purpose. Today, it was actual pingpong. Well, no score-keeping, that would ruin it. Ezra taught Amelia about backhand today, and she caught on right away. Somewhere in the forgotten crannies of my past, I must have played some pingpong, because my body remembers how to do it. Weird, that. I’m not good, no, far from it, but I’m not a complete newbie, either. I have a feel for the paddle, the ball, and the table. Hmm.

Ezra and Amelia

We stopped in a beer garden on the way home. This was an actual garden, of sorts, tucked behind a hedge that separated it from a major paved walkway. From that walkway, you’d never guess this was there. Sitting in there, looking at the beat-up tables, the old wooden-slat chairs, the higgledy-piggledy-ness of it, I was reminded of Mexico, or India. Katharina said that places like this could only be in Berlin; anywhere else in Germany would be all cleaned up and spiffy. Rough-cut, Berlin.

One small corner of LAAX, a shabby-chic beer garden

 

This is the place, if you ever want to find it

I love this family!