Friedrichshain: the workers' palaces and Boxi
Stalinist boulevard, tiled facades, and the square locals just call Boxi. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Frankfurter Tor
Start under the twin domed towers — Hermann Henselmann's 1950s bookend to the boulevard, half Berlin, half Moscow. Stand in the middle of the junction (carefully) and look west down the avenue. That's the walk.

2. Karl-Marx-Allee
Walk the boulevard. These are the *Arbeiterpaläste* — workers' palaces — built in the early 1950s in the wedding-cake *Zuckerbäckerstil*, faced in pale Meissen tiles. Cross to the central reservation for the full width of it; the scale is the point.

3. Café Sibylle
A café on the boulevard that's also a small museum of it — GDR-era interior, photographs, and (last anyone checked) a chunk of the moustache from the demolished Stalin statue that once stood nearby. Coffee with a history lesson. Confirm it's open before relying on it.

4. Simon-Dach-Straße
Turn south into a different decade. Bars, cheap eats and pavement tables, packed by night and sleepy by morning — which is exactly why you're doing this early.

5. Boxhagener Platz
The square everyone shortens to *Boxi*. A leafy garden ringed by *Kneipen* (pubs) and cafés. A farmers' market fills it on Saturdays and a busy flea market on Sundays; on other days it's just a good square to sit in.

6. Warschauer Straße
South-west to the transit hub over the railway tracks. U-Bahn, S-Bahn and tram all meet here to take you on.

Friedrichshain: the workers' palaces and Boxi