Berlin

The people queueing for the Eurostar at London St Pancras station, rushing in from the rain in hoodies, look noticeably less enthusiastic than the usual holiday crowds. But then, we aren’t heading to the usual hot, heady holiday destinations of Spain or the south of France, but boarding a train to north-east Europe. For me, it will be a journey of more than 1,000 miles – via Amsterdam, Berlin and Warsaw to Vilnius – visiting some of the coolest capitals in the north. At least in terms of temperature.

As England sweltered this summer, and Spain reached a hellish 46C, it made sense to head away from the heat on what is now fashionably being called a “coolcation”. I left in August, with a suitcase full of jumpers.

There is something irresistibly romantic about long train trips, watching the geography unfold outside the window. I leave London for Amsterdam on the Eurostar, eating a pain au chocolat as we speed through rural French flatlands and glide past red-roofed Belgian farmhouses, and then the distinctive, tall art nouveau buildings of the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, I switch trains to the Deutsche Bahn, grabbing a packet of Stroopwafel and jumping on board alongside cool Dutch kids with asymmetric hair. I know we have entered Germany when I spot a VW factory, and the graffiti becomes better – and more profuse.

As for my coolcation, it feels burning hot when I arrive in Berlin, emerging from the glass and steel Hauptbahnhof into a summer evening where hipsters on deckchairs are drinking cocktails at Capital Beach on the Spree River.

The next morning, I stroll through the lush Tiergarten past men in black leathers chugging in the Biergarten; through the shadowy blocks of the Holocaust memorial; under the intimidating Brandenburg Gate. I’m heading to Alexanderplatz – where teenagers congregate under the TV tower – and I’m ruminating on how eastern European cities have a harsher aesthetic than those in the soft south. The remnants of the Soviet era echo in the hardness of the culture, in the brutalist architecture I’m passing, and then suddenly as pounding techno surrounds me. Marching down Unter Den Linden, I find myself caught in a procession of floats surrounded by people wearing all black, looking like they’re heading to Berghain nightclub.

My next train, from Berlin to Warsaw, is the IC Intercity link. It’s a Polish train, on which the carriages are split into comfortable six-person compartments. In one of these I sit opposite a boy with a mohawk eating paprika crisps, and I watch the city turn to pine forests of pale thin trees.

Train journeys mimic cruises – you hop on and off in different cities (ideal for my ADHD) and, in between, lounge around eating too much. It’s a five-hour journey from Berlin to Warsaw, and when gazing at farmland becomes monotonous, the restaurant carriage offers distraction. I order Kotlet schabowy (€10.50), and a delicious plate of breaded pork chop, cucumber salad and floury boiled potatoes appears, which I eat surrounded by men with blond buzzcuts drinking Żywiec beers.

It’s startling to emerge from the bunker of Warsaw Central station to a horizon of glass skyscrapers reflecting the deep red sky.

The next day, I discover Warsaw – a captivating juxtaposition of history and modernity. In the Old Town, I eat pierogi beside Marie Curie’s house, then explore cobbled streets with bright rows of coloured medieval buildings, which were bombed during the second world war but have been so faithfully reconstructed they have earned Unesco status. Their Disneyland-esque quality is only lessened by the artillery pockmarks.

Elsewhere, austere Soviet buildings have morphed into hipster cafes with oak counters and earthenware cups. BarStudio, below the Stalin-era Palace of Culture and Science – now reclaimed as a tourist attraction with an observation deck – runs silent-disco nights and serves matcha crepes from a menu decorated ironically with communist-era cartoons.

Taking a train is far easier than flying – there’s no negotiating airport security or check-in – and soon I become dangerously casual, running and hopping onboard with a picnic of local foods.

We roll out of Warsaw and I sit munching Kopernik iced gingerbread biscuits as we pass endless farmland, the occasional dilapidated dacha, factories and small towns of Identikit modern houses in grids. Today’s journey to Vilnius will take nine hours, so it’s a relief when at Mockava, on the Lithuanian border, we are ejected on to a remote platform in a sunny forest. I stand sweltering in 26C heat, wondering why I packed so many jumpers.

The black, double-height Lithuanian train is open-plan, modern, slick and packed full of heaving bike racks, but the dining options are disappointingly limited. I eat a sad toasted-cheese sandwich as we glide through more farmland and forests.

Vilnius, although the most eastern city I’m travelling to, feels the most western in style. Its baroque buildings – including cathedrals that survived the Soviets and have earned it Unesco status – blend into art nouveau architecture. Even former communist blocks here are painted in soft pastels, and wide boulevards (a USSR endeavour) open up a lush city. Elsewhere, meandering cobbled streets offer up cafes and pretty boutiques.

The further east you go, the cheaper things get: coffees that cost €5 in Berlin and €3 in Warsaw are €2 here. But the enthusiasm for capitalism is evident in the number of luxury Lithuanian boutiques and western brands such as H&M and Mango, and a growing tech industry: Vinted is based here. Užupis, the bohemian quarter – where art exhibitions and Banksy-style graffiti adorn the streets – has its own logo: a blue hand with a hole in the middle. My guide says it shows that money falls through in an enticement to spend, spend, spend, but Užupis’s own tourism minister, Kestas Lukoskinas, has said: “The main thing is we have nothing to hide in our hands.”

Still, the heart and backbone of Vilnius is creative, a scene both historic and constantly reinvented. On Literatų gatvė (Literature Street) in Vilnius Old Town, individual wall plaques celebrate writers associated with the city, including Adam Mickiewicz, who lived on the street, Joseph Brodsky and Romain Gary.

The Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre, where tickets start at a very reasonable £15, is matched as a cultural attraction by Lukiškės Prison 2.0 – a Soviet jail shut in 2019 and now reinvented as a creative space, with cells turned into studios and stages hosting trendy bands such as Aurora and Fontaines DC. At Mo Museum, a modern Lithuanian art gallery established by scientists and philanthropists Danguolė and Viktoras Butkus – and one of the first large-scale private collections of its kind since independence – the current exhibition, GamePlay, explores the creative impact of video games.

Although I try classic Lithuanian cuisine – cepelinai (stodgy potato dumplings filled with ground meat), and pink soup (borscht with kefir) – I’m excited to find a burgeoning Michelin restaurant scene. At Ertlio Namas, a nine-course tasting menu is an affordable €70, with traditional dishes reinterpreted with modern spin: salted ide fish with jelly, bread soup with beer-braised beef, and buckwheat babka come as delicious exquisite morsels.

Vilnius repeats Soviet motifs now familiar on my journey: brutalist architecture; cool young people in all black and boots; and the compulsory revamped TV tower, where you can climb to the 67th floor and take a horrifyingly scary walk on a handrail-free ledge, attached only by a rope.

The journey home feels faster; the west softer, even though the train is delayed by five hours (so much for German efficiency). I wander Amsterdam hazily, the harsh and uniform brutalism replaced by the uniquely elegant canal houses and oily Van Goghs – yet I’m surprised, among the clatter and chaos, to miss the calm, clean order of the eastern European cities. I arrive back from my hot coolcation, in England – where it is raining.

The trip was provided by Go Vilnius and the Polish National Tourist . In Berlin, Hotel Zoo has doubles from £110 a nigh. . Rail journey: London-Amsterdam-London on Eurostar €339; Amsterdam-Berlin on NS International €108.99; Berlin-Warsaw on Deutsche Bahn €53.99; Warsaw-Vilnius-Warsaw LTG Link Train €50; Warsaw- Amsterdam Deutsche Bahn €165.49

Videos show German police officers beating pro-Palestine protesters in Berlin after authorities banned a planned demonstration. Around 500 people gathered near Berlin’s City Hall chanting slogans and waving flags, before several were attacked and detained.

More than 100,000 people rallied in Berlin, protesting against German support for Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip.

Demonstrators marched from Berlin’s City Hall to the Grosser Stern on Saturday, following a call from a broad coalition of some 50 groups, including pro-Palestinian organisations, Medico International, Amnesty International, and the opposition Left Party, for a large demonstration.

Organisers of the All Eyes on Gaza – Stop the Genocide rally demanded “an end to German complicity” in Israel’s genocidal war in the Palestinian enclave.

They also called for “an end to all military cooperation with Israel. This includes the import, export, and transit of weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment.”

“The actions of the Israeli government have long been described as genocide by experts and international organisations, and the International Court of Justice is investigating them as such. While it is clear that the Israeli military is committing mass atrocities in Gaza, the German government continues to deny the systematic violence,” organisers said in a statement.

The crowd chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “Viva Palestine”, holding up posters reading “Stop the genocide in Gaza”, “Never again for all”, and “Freedom for Palestine”. Many protesters also waved Palestinian flags.

They called for an immediate halt to German arms exports to Israel, for humanitarian aid access to Gaza, and for European Union sanctions against Israel.

A new survey released on Tuesday showed that 62 percent of German voters believe Israeli actions in Gaza constitute genocide, putting mounting pressure on the centre-right government to reassess its stance towards Israel.

The representative poll, conducted by YouGov, indicated that this sentiment crosses political lines, with 60 percent of voters from Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU bloc viewing Israel’s military campaign as genocide against Palestinians. Among voters of the coalition partner Social Democratic Party (SPD), the figure was higher at 71 percent.

While Chancellor Merz and Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul have recently sharpened their criticism of Israel’s military offensive and blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza, they have so far avoided using the term genocide, referring instead to the “disproportionate” use of force by the Israeli military. Nor have they decided to recognise the State of Palestine, as many other nations have in recent days, including France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada.

BERLIN — In a country that saw its democracy die in 1933, the more than 170,000 people crowding into three of Germany’s biggest soccer stadiums for Bruce Springsteen’s rock concerts in recent weeks have been especially receptive to his message and dire warnings about a politically perilous moment in the United States, one that has reminded some of Adolf Hitler’s power grab in the ’30s.

At these gigantic open-air concerts in Berlin, Frankfurt and Gelsenkirchen, which have been among the largest concerts to date in Springsteen’s two-month-long, 16-show Land of Hope & Dreams tour across Europe, the 75-year-old rock star from New Jersey has interspersed short but poignant political speeches into his exhausting, sweat-drenched performances to describe the dangers he sees in the United States under the Trump administration.

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert. “In my home — the America I love, the America I have written about — the America that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration. Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”

Springsteen’s words have had special resonance in Germany, where memories of the Nazi past are never far from the surface and the cataclysmic demise of the Weimar Republic, which led directly to Hitler’s takeover, is studied in great detail in schools and universities. With that Nazi past embedded in their DNA, German fears of President Trump’s tactics probably run higher than anywhere else.

“Germans tend to have angst about a lot of things and they are really afraid of Trump,” said Michael Pilz, a music critic for the Welt newspaper, who agrees that the death of German democracy in 1933 is a contributing factor to the popularity of Springsteen’s anti-Trump concerts this summer. “A lot of Germans think Trump is a fool. It’s not only his politics but the way he is, just so completely over the top. Germans love to see Trump getting hit. And they admire Springsteen for standing up and taking it to him.”

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times,” Springsteen says to cheers at the start of each concert.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

The crowds in Germany have been as large as they are enthusiastic. More than 75,000 filled Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on June 11; 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18; and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27. All told, more than 700,000 tickets have been sold for the 16 shows in Springsteen’s tour (for concerts that last three or more hours), which concludes on July 3 in Milan, Italy.

“The German aversion to Trump has now become more extreme in his second term — Germans just don’t understand how the Americans could elect someone like Trump,” said Jochen Staadt, a political science professor at the Free University in Berlin who is also a drummer in an amateur Berlin rock band. Staadt believes Springsteen’s 1988 concert may well have helped pave the way for the Berlin Wall to fall a little over a year later in 1989. “Germans are drawn to Springsteen as someone who played an important role in our history when Germany was still divided and as someone who may have helped overcome that division with rock music.”

Springsteen has been filling stadiums across Europe in the warm summertime evenings with his high-energy shows that not only entertain the tremendous crowds but also take on Trump’s policies on civil liberties, free speech, immigrants and universities in thoughtfully constructed messages. To ensure nothing is lost in translation, Springsteen’s brief forays into politics of about two to three minutes each are translated for local audiences in German, French, Spanish, Basque and Italian subtitles on the giant video walls onstage.

To ram the message home to more people, Springsteen also released a 30-minute recording from the first stop of the tour in Manchester, England, that contains three songs and three of his speeches onstage.

“I’ve always tried to be a good ambassador for America,” said Springsteen while introducing “My City of Ruins,” a song he wrote after the 9/11 terror attacks that has taken on a new meaning this summer. “I’ve spent my life singing about where we have succeeded and where we’ve come up short in living up to our civic ideals and our dreams. I always just thought that was my job. Things are happening right now in my home that are altering the very nature of our country’s democracy and they’re simply too important to ignore.”

Springsteen’s first speech during the tour’s Manchester show on May 17 prompted a sharp rebuke from Trump on his Truth Social platform. “Springsteen is ‘dumb as a rock’… and this dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare’. Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

Springsteen did not respond directly. Instead, he repeated his messages at every concert across Europe. He delivered more political commentary in introducing his song “House of a Thousand Guitars” by saying: “The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people. You and me. It’s the union of people around a common set of values. That’s all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism. So at the end of the day, all we’ve really got is each other.” In the song, Springsteen sings about “the criminal clown has stolen the throne / He steals what he can never own.”

His concerts also included the live debut of “Rainmaker,” about a con man, from his 2020 “Letter to You” album. At the concerts in Europe, Springsteen dedicates the song to “our dear leader,” with a line that goes: “Rainmaker says white’s black and black’s white / Says night’s day and day’s night.”

More than 75,000 filled Berlin’s Olympic Stadium on June 11, 44,500 were in Frankfurt on June 18, and another 51,000 watched his concert in the faded Ruhr River industrial town of Gelsenkirchen on June 27.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

He also changed one line in the song from “they don’t care or understand what it really takes for the sky to open up the land,” to “they don’t care or understand how easy it is to let freedom slip through your hands.”

Springsteen’s enormous popularity across Europe has long been on a different level than in the United States, and that gap could grow even wider in the future. Springsteen’s close friend and the band’s lead guitarist, Steve Van Zandt, recently observed in an interview with the German edition of Playboy magazine that the E Street Band may have lost half of its audience back home because of the group’s unabashed opposition to Trump. (The band’s concerts in the United States are often held in smaller indoor arenas.)

Bruce Springsteen, left, performs with Steven Van Zandt: at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

But in Europe, Springsteen and his band have been reliably filling cavernous stadiums during the long, daylight-filled summertime evenings for decades with improbably enthusiastic crowds that sing along to the lyrics of his songs and spent most of the concerts on their feet dancing and cheering. There are also large numbers of hearty Springsteen fans from scores of countries who use their entire yearly allotment of vacation to follow him from show to show across the continent. This summer, Springsteen’s message has been amplified even more, sending many in the boomer-dominated crowds into states of near-ecstasy and attracting considerable media attention in countries across Europe.

“The message of his music always touched a deep nerve in Europe and especially Germany, but ever since Trump was elected president, Springsteen’s voice has been incredibly important for us,” said Katrin Schlemmer, a 56-year-old IT analyst from Zwickau who saw five Springsteen concerts in June — from Berlin to Prague to Frankfurt and two in San Sebastián, Spain. All told, Schlemmer has seen 60 Springsteen concerts in 11 countries around the world since her first in East Berlin in 1988 — a record-breaking, history-changing concert with more than 300,000 spectators that some historians believe may have contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall just 16 months later.

“A lot of Germans can’t fathom why the Americans elected someone like Trump,” said Schlemmer, who had the chance to thank Springsteen for the 1988 East Berlin concert at a chance meeting after a 2014 concert in Cape Town, South Africa. “We saw for ourselves how quickly a democracy was destroyed by an authoritarian. The alarm bells are ringing about what a danger Trump is. People love [Springsteen] here because he tells it like it is and because he is standing up to Trump.”

Stephan Cyrus, a 56-year-old manager from Hamburg, said Germans view Springsteen as a trustworthy American voice during a period of uncertainty.

“When Germans hear Springsteen speaking about his worries about the United States, they listen, because so many of us have so much admiration and longing for the United States and are worried about the country’s direction too,” said Cyrus, who saw the June 11 concert in Berlin. “He definitely touched us with his words.”

In one of his concert speeches, Springsteen goes after Trump without mentioning his name.

Spectators watch Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform at the Olympic Stadium, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, June 11, 2025.

(Markus Schreiber / Associated Press)

“There is some very weird, strange and dangerous s— going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.”

Springsteen then adds: “In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they are inflicting on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t back down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now. A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.”

He tells the audiences that those in the administration “have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.”

But Springsteen ends on a hopeful note, promising his audiences: “We’ll survive this moment.”