Why No Wifi Berlin?

Berlin is a major European City – a cosmopolitan, metropolitan city -- but when it comes to WIFI it's a dinosaur. It’s a big city holding 3.5 million inhabitants and more than 10 million tourists a year. Why the lesson you may be wondering? Well because in a big modern city, you just assume there will be wifi readily available. Not the case. Once again, you got me Berlin.

My husband Dave works from home, were are on this year-long journey due to the fact that he can remain at his job. In order to do his work, he needs good, reliable wifi. Our adorable apartment is fully equipped so that is great. In general, we like to get out of the apartment and work from coffee shops and bars during the day. Get a sense of local life, have coffee and snacks, chat with people. Berlin has proven that to be very difficult. There are places to go, we have found several, but they are few and far between.

We’ve been traveling now for 3 months in Europe – first we were in Amsterdam then we traveled to Budapest, now we are in Berlin. We have also made a few side trips to Brussels, London, Hamburg, and Venice. In each of these cities, almost every bar/restaurant/coffee shop you enter has free wifi, so I was not expecting it to be such a struggle in Berlin. I suppose if you are on vacation this isn’t as big an issue, but when you are traveling for longer periods of time wifi is kind of essential.