The former Tempelhof Airport, best known as the landing place for American supply planes during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949, is now a public park. Since the old runways are still intact it’s a great place for cycling, inline skating and jogging. Also there is plenty of space for kite-flying, picnics, gardening and dogs (in separate grassy sections).

Our bikes on one of the old runways

We took the subway U6 to the station called “Platz der Luftbrücke” (Square of the Airlift) and rented two bikes from the Call-a-Bike station there. (We needed two because my son didn’t have his own bike with him that day.)

This was the first time I used the option of checking out two bikes at once on my Call-a-Bike membership. It turned out to be really easy. The mechanical voice says if you want to take a second bike just press two (I think it was) on your mobile phone and then enter the four-digit number of the bike.

So we had a good time riding around on the old runways, with of course no car traffic to look out for.

Offhand I can’t think of any other major airport that has been repurposed in this way, though there is a very small one in Frankfurt on the site of an old airfield that was used by the United States Army as a base for helicopters and light planes from 1952 until the 1990s. (To see that one, go to my post The Hölderin Path and scroll down.)

In the Tempelhof Park, Berlin

My photos in this post are from 2016. I revised the text in 2020.

See more posts on Berlin, Germany.