Your tour begins at Innsbrucker Platz S- and U-Bahn station. Ride through the tidy side-streets of the upper middle-class district of Friedenau. Chic squares, lavish front gardens and cosy street cafés could really distract you here, but you keep pedalling. You then pass Friedenau town hall, once a favourite night-spot of the American soldiers formerly stationed here. The once vibrant square has now become the peaceful Friedenau shopping centre – you can even today feel the serene calmness of the people living there.
Continuing your journey, you come out of the city into nature: you have to climb the Insulaner, a 78 metre (240 feet) high pile of rubble. There is an observatory and planetarium located at the foot of the hill. Just behind the Insulaner (the names comes from the fact that West Berliners used to consider themselves as living on an island in a “sea of communism”), you come across the Teltowkanal - a canal inaugurated in 1906 by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Follow the banks of the canal. Passing the Benjamin Franklin Uni-Clinic, the old centre of Lichterfelde, the former American McNair military barracks – currently being converted into loft apartments, you then reach Berlin’s city border.
You are now in Teltow. This former county town, first mentioned in 1264, warmly greets its guests in the old town centre, extensively restored in 1994: the historic market square, the old village church modified by the famous Berlin architect, Schinkel, in a neo-gothic style – Teltow’s old town centre provides plenty of opportunities for whiling away your time. It is then only a small matter of getting on the S-Bahn at Teltow Stadt station (only opened a few years ago) and comfortably returning to Berlin.
