Tempelhofer Feld: the airport that became a field
Walk the runways of a closed airport — the open horizon a city almost never gives you. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Tempelhof terminal arc
Start outside the terminal — a single curving kilometre of stone, one of the largest buildings on earth, built by the Nazis to overawe and never quite finished. You can only feel the scale by standing at one end and failing to see the other.

2. The apron and runway 09L/27R
Walk straight out onto the tarmac where planes once stood. Old runway markings still underfoot, the air corridors that fed West Berlin in 1948–49 written into the ground. Pick a runway and follow it; there is no wrong direction.

3. The open horizon
Somewhere in the middle, stop. Cyclists, kite-buggies, joggers, a kilometre of nothing in every direction and a flat city skyline at the edge of it. This is the *oh-my-god* — the open horizon a city almost never lets you have.

4. Skylark protection zone
A fenced central grassland left wild for ground-nesting skylarks. You walk around it, not through it. In late spring you'll hear them overhead — birdsong in the middle of the runways.

5. Schillerkiez community gardens
At the Neukölln edge, raised beds and pallet furniture where neighbours grow vegetables on old airfield ground. Allotment-meets-art-project. Have a look on your way off the field.

6. Boddinstraße
Off the field and into *Neukölln* proper — a few blocks of *Spätis* and *Imbiss* stands to the U8. The contrast after all that open space is the point of ending here.

Tempelhofer Feld: the airport that became a field