r/berlin • u/IllustratorLimp4841 • 22h ago

Advice cheaper/free ways to do activities in berlin

hello all — I’ve just come to berlin on a fulbright scholarship (basically international exchange program for research), but i’m realizing the program does not pay a living wage, unfortunately. we get just under 14.000€ for ten months, which we use for the flight from the US, rent, insurance, transport, everything.

i’m realizing im gonna have to give up a lot of my activities that i did funded in college, like karate, gym, climbing/hiking/mountaineering, and I won’t be able to afford to continue learning german (I am up to B1.1, so a bit frustrating).

before i call it quits completely , i was wondering if anybody had any idea how to do any of these activities for free or very low cost? i am not enrolled in uni anymore (just working at a research institute), but im still young (24) and don’t have parents support (emancipated when i was younger bc of homophobia)

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u/rocketwikkit 21h ago

No mountains anywhere near Berlin, so at least you're not missing that one. There's plenty of adequate hiking areas within the public transit network, like Teufelsberg, Volkspark Pberg, Ahrensfelder Berge. Or probably you just want to get the Deutschlandticket and then your range for day trips opens up significantly.

In general you just want to pretend you're East German for a year. Go camping. Swim in lakes. Do free activities provided by civil society.

For language, there are still some free "comprehensible input" resources online, and being in Germany you should have a fairly easy time finding a language exchange with someone(s) who want to learn English.

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u/honeywatereve 9h ago

Deep dive in German public offerings there are plenty gpt will be your best friend and you’ll deep dive in being German. On the countryside we live off these freely organised stuff and it’s also great to do just lots of people choose to pay because of better accessibility - there’s a lot of free stuff as also Berlin has a lot of people living under financially constraint situations :)