To get an idea of what the gentrification of Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte was like in the past decade, one only needs to visit Friedrichshain today. There’s a little something for everyone in this once working-class borough on the north bank of the Spree. There are trendy cafes along Simon-Dach-Strasse and squatted industrial spaces around Ostkreuz, not to mention the bombastic socialist architecture of Karl-Marx-Allee and the giant media complex gobbling up the banks of the river itself (MTV and Universal Music both have a prominent presence here).

Taking its name from the Volkspark Friedrichshain, the large park that forms its northwestern border with Prenzlauer Berg, the place was briefly called Horst-Wessel Stadt during the Third Reich period, after the brown-shirted martyr and street fighter (as well as the composer of the Nazi anthem that bears his name), who was killed by the Communists in 1930.

Friedrichshain was an industrial hub during the war, before much of the area was flattened by Allied bombs and replaced with bleak socialist housing. Nowadays, it’s joined with neighbouring Kreuzberg as a single entity, but the annual food fight that takes place on the Oberbaumbrücke, the bridge that connects the two, serves to underline that the people here have their own separate identity.