Thursdays at Markthalle Neun are the best food event in Berlin — Street Food Thursday draws producers from across Germany. But I also know the market on quiet days, when the real producers set up and it's just locals. We do both.

Neukölln is where Berlin's food future is being written — Vietnamese pho counters, Ethiopian injera restaurants, a Jewish deli that opened last year and already has a 2-hour wait. We eat through all of it in one afternoon.

Berlin has the world's best street art — and I know which pieces matter, who made them, and what they mean. We go from the East Side Gallery to the Kreuzberg murals that are disappearing as the city gentrifies.

Berlin has more beautiful ruins than any city in Europe — Cold War spy stations, derelict GDR factories, forgotten underground stations. We visit three on foot with full historical context.

Kreuzberg isn't one neighbourhood — it's 50 micro-scenes packed into a few square kilometres. We move through five of them in one night: from a Turkish tea house to a jazz bar to a late-night club that plays nothing after 1980. No two nights the same.