Kreuzberg: The Neighbourhood That Refuses to Finish Changing

I live in Kreuzberg. I have lived here since I arrived in Berlin in 2021. I stayed because the neighbourhood is the one part of this city that I find genuinely impossible to stop paying attention to.

What Kreuzberg is

Kreuzberg is split, famously, into SO36 — the eastern part, closer to Neukölln and Friedrichshain, younger, cheaper, louder — and SW61, the western part, which contains the canal, the Turkish market, the more established restaurants, and a slightly older demographic. The distinction matters because the two halves have different characters and different prices.

The Oranienstraße is the main artery of SO36. The Bergmannstraße is the main commercial street of SW61. Both are worth your time. Neither is cheap anymore.

Why it still works

Kreuzberg has been gentrifying since at least 1990 and it has not finished yet. The reason is partly structural — the mix of uses, the canal, the density — and partly social. The Turkish and Turkish-German community that has been here since the 1960s and 1970s is large enough and established enough that the neighbourhood has not been entirely remade in the image of its newcomers. The Türkischer Markt on the Maybachufer — Tuesday and Friday afternoons along the canal — is the most direct expression of this. It is not a tourist market. It is a functioning neighbourhood institution.

What I do here

The canal on a warm evening. The Volkspark Hasenheide on a Sunday afternoon. The gallery openings on Thursday evenings along the Oranienstraße. The falafel places that have no Instagram presence and a queue of locals at lunchtime. The Späti at the end of my street where I know the owner’s name and he knows what I drink. This is what the neighbourhood gives you if you stay in it long enough.