Schöneberg is the old West Berlin that survived being the old West Berlin — a village inside the city, with a market square at its centre and a layer of queer history you walk straight through. Do it on a Saturday morning, when the market is full and the streets are still soft.
Begin at Nollendorfplatz. On the station wall is the memorial to the homosexual victims of National Socialism; this is the Regenbogenkiez, the rainbow quarter, and it has been the centre of gay Berlin for a century. Walk Maaßenstraße south — Isherwood's streets, the real Cabaret — and into Winterfeldtplatz, where the Wednesday-and-Saturday market does cheese, flowers and Turkish breakfast under the brick of St. Matthias.
Then the quieter, better stretch: Akazienstraße, the everyday street where the neighbourhood does its actual shopping, the spire of the Apostel-Paulus-Kirche pulling you south the whole way. End there, at Eisenacher Straße on the U7.
