This is the painted Wall and the river it runs beside — the most-photographed kilometre in Friedrichshain, walked properly rather than snapped and abandoned. It starts grim and historic and ends loud and post-industrial, which is the honest arc of this corner of Berlin.
From Ostbahnhof, head down to the Spree and the East Side Gallery — 1.3 kilometres of Wall left standing and painted in 1990, the Brezhnev-Honecker kiss and the Trabant punching through the concrete among more than a hundred works. It's the longest surviving stretch anywhere, and it's the back of a former death strip; walk it slowly and let that sit.
At the eastern end the Oberbaumbrücke crosses the river on its double deck of brick, U-Bahn rattling over the top. Walk out to the middle, then double back along the north bank — club terraces, a beach bar, the water carrying the afternoon. Finish through the RAW-Gelände, a railway-repair yard gone feral with clubs and street art, and out at Warschauer Straße with the bridge towers behind you.
