Berlin
Moabit: a taste of 'real' Berlin
Granted, the Berlin district of Moabit isn't necessarily easy to appreciate.
Short on conventional tourist attractions, it's also low on conventional beauty.
Once a manufacturing nucleus, much of the area combines forlorn industrial spaces and smoke-belching chimneys with dreary, austere-looking streets. (Berlin's post-war 'modernisation' policy of stripping away stucco facades was practised here in particular earnest, and the endless rows of featureless apartment blocks quickly start to seem monotonous and drab).
That said, Moabit is also exactly the kind of place a certain type of traveller is likely to love.
Its industrial past means that relics of Berlin's manufacturing history abound, some of them spectacular.
It's bordered by the Spree river and fringed by two forlorn but atmospheric canals.
And for all its slightly down-at-heel appearance, Moabit boasts some surprisingly attractive enclaves as well as a staunchly local atmosphere: tourists are few and far between, despite the district's proximity to all the usual sights.
Cheap, cheerful and increasingly cosmopolitan, Berlin's 'forgotten' neighbourhood oozes, in other words, a particular kind of authenticity that better known areas of Berlin sometimes struggle to retain.
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