This former working class district on the former east Berlin has been fully gentrified in the southern reaches nearer Mitte, the old historic city centre. Chi-chi cafes, restaurants and boutiques abound here. In northern Prenzlauer Berg, by Griefswalder Strasse S-bahn, it’s more mixed, more down at heel. Old locals remain, as do their children. What’s more, they want to stay. They don’t want to get pushed out like their southern neighbours. Evicted by rising rents and an area they feel they have little in common with.

Newcomers are welcome, kind of, as long as they don’t push up the rents. Neuergardestrasse has a working class air about it, too. There’s a new frohstuck cafe attracting newcomers for brunch – the meal of choice for newcomers, apparently, and a new bar 50 yards away, the owner of which seems to have trained her dog to walk 50 yards in either direction ofher kneiper for a poop. Nice! Otto or Fritz the dog ables down to the knieper and drops one on the nice patch of garden opposite.

People at the Pinter are proud, and have made a garden out of the earth surrounding their nearest tree. Whether or not they want Alsiatian Friz poop all over is anybody’s else business. They don’t seem to mind. The barmaid laughs. “Scheisser!”

Wilhelm has just returned from skydiving in the countryside – “How was it? F***ing amazing,” he exclaims in brilliant English. Wilhelm is a scenery and lighting engineer, with a holiday the next day he is keen to talk about the area and sup Berliner (”it is not the best beer,” he says, “it is, how you say, disruptive.”) I thik he means it makes you want to do what Fritz is doing, albeit not on the front garden.

“I am new here,” adds Wilhelm, “about eight years but people like Maria have lived here all their life, they can better tell you what life was like here before the wall fell down. how it has changed.”

I ask Maria? “I don’t know, I was five.”

Mikael is more forthcoming. He speaks great English and is interpreting for the others who don’t. However, he rarely sticks to their questions and wants to do as many impersonations of Scottish people as possible – he worked as a call centre operative a few years back near Glasgow. His Scottish accent is, how shall we say, annoyingly bad. Plus he is trying to look like Bono. Not a good look.

Mikeal lost his job and returned to Berlin when the call centre moved to Bratislava. Perhaps they just didn’t like his accent. He says the wall coming down was not good for everyone. People lost their jobs, people got poorer. Then people got pushed out of their area by newcomers and rising rents – west German professionals mainly, and soem foreigners, and their kids.

Kids. There are millions of them in Prenslauer Berg!

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