Air BNB in Berlin

September 2022

Lichtenberg district in Berlin was once part of the former East Germany. Many residents of the erstwhile DDR still live in the many plain apartment buildings that abound in this area. Once in a while, one can still spot an old Soviet era Trabant (lovingly called Trabi) parked in one of the cobblestoned byelanes and alleys. After the reunification of Germany many young people seeking cheaper residences and preferring a Bohemian lifestyle, moved into these areas. Although, like many other parts of Berlin that abound in proletarian tenements, this place is also being rapidly upscaled and ‘gentrified.’ The city has attracted a lot of business, particularly the IT sector and there is great demand for more and modern apartments. As a result, Berlin is at the moment witnessing a construction boom that involves either pulling down old structures or renovating them or adding new top stories to increase their hosing capacity.

Giselastrasse is about 10 minutes’ walk from Marie-Curie Allee, where my daughter lives with her husband and two children. The apartment is located on the fourth floor and like many old buildings from the previous century, it has no elevator. It is small but good enough for a young family. It has two bedrooms, a living room, one kitchen and a bathroom. My daughter and her husband find it convenient because it has good traffic connections on S and U Bahn and has conveniently located grocery stores. Their daughter’s Kindergarten or Kita is also nearby. After the arrival of their newborn son, the space has become rather cramped. So, on our visit this time, we decided to rent an Air BNB. The apartment belonged to a single woman, who like most Germans had taken a summer vacation to some place I assume was warmer than these parts of Europe. From her photographs in the house, we presumed that she was around forty. From her many clothes and shoes, we could make out that she was fond of dressing up but there was no clue to her profession. She could have been an office worker or had some other job but obviously she had enough money to spend on clothes and holidays.

The apartment was no bigger than our daughter’s but since she was living alone, she had spread out her stuff in all the rooms. We never met but she had left behind the Wi-Fi password neatly typed on a piece of paper and two yellow sticky notes asking us to water her balcony plants and to clear her post box once in a while. There was nothing else. No advice of what to use or not to use. There were a few groceries in the fridge and all her cooking utensils, crockery and cutlery and television for us to use. Of course, we were careful with her things and replenished any cooking material that we used but the amount of trust that was shown for total strangers was quite unbelievable. Our daughter thought that that our ‘host’ was more confident to let out her apartment to older people because younger folks are more likely to party or show noisy behavior that could cause annoyance to the neighbors. We spent a week in the apartment on Gisella Strasse. It was private and we could follow our own routine. Most of all we could bring our granddaughter ‘home’ after school and feed her lunch and let her watch her favorite cartoon program Paw Patrol in German.

The time we spent in the apartment in Giselastrasse was one of the most blissful and happy one in our recent memory.

September 2023 – Oderstrasse 7

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