What I learned about Berlin after a day of Meetups

It’s 8:30 a.m. and I’m riding the U-Bahn. It’s crowded – at least, as crowded as it gets in Berlin. Everyone is able to hang on to a few inches of personal space as well as their dignity. Still, their rush hour demeanours are familiar: harassed, grim, preoccupied with smart phones and tablets.

I feel smug in my yoga pants, because my day promises to be anything but monotonous. I’ve signed up to an entire day of Meetups – events organised via the social networking website that brings people with similar interests together.

Since the site’s 2002 launch in New York, Meetups can be found all over the globe – but for some reason, Berlin is one of its fastest growing cities. Since its first Meetup was mooted in 2008, it has become the fourth largest city in Europe. What does that say about the city? I’m here to find out.

I get off the U8 line at Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzberg, the former West Berlin district that bordered the Wall. Two landmarks jut out among the concrete 1970s blocks: a steeple and a minaret. East meets West – this is the area where Turkish immigrants and hipsters live side by side. And my first Meetup of the day is typical for Kreuzberg: Morning Yoga and Coffee. It’s charged by donation – because, of course, yogis don’t officially demand money. The suggested amount is €7-12.

Teacher Gintare Simutyte is serene in a way only yogis can be. She asks us to set an intention for the day before leading us from pose to pose at a swift pace. My intention, I resolve, is to be open and curious. After the yoga comes the coffee part, when the students head to a nearby cafe. I’d love to join them, but I have to get to my next Meetup. Still, I feel like we’ve already bonded – silently, in breath and movement.

As I hurry back to the U-Bahn, I get a flurry of messages from my next stop, the Berlin Jelly Coworking Club, informing me of a last minute change of location. The cafe they planned to meet at is unexpectedly closed. Jelly is an international movement in which freelancers, entrepreneurs and homeworkers meet (for free) to work together and, with 1373 members, the Berlin Meetup group is the largest in the world.

I join them at the Berlin Central Library near Alexanderplatz.

“Last-minute changes come with not having a fixed office space,” says organiser Craig Sailor. The library, however, is a reliable backup plan – the perfect alternative office. It’s open to all and has free WiFi, power, a cheap café and group study rooms where people can chat.

I make small talk with the coworkers while checking my email – we are, after all, here to find common ground. A translator from Yorkshire works on a legal contract next to me. Meanwhile, an American illustrator sketches a set of portraits for a bridal party, a WordPress developer from New Zealand removes emojis from the internet and a German philosopher composes a YouTube lecture explaining Hume's A Treatise Of Human Nature.

The Meetup runs from 10 am to 3 pm with people dropping in and staying for as long they like. Just before I leave at noon, a data engineer employed by a Californian company starts her day. Not only is Berlin as cosmopolitan as they say; everyone seems to work to their own rhythm.

I head south on the U8 again, past Kreuzberg and into Neukölln to Noize Fabrik, a co-working space for people in the audio and creative industries. Like Neukölln itself, Noize Fabrik is rough-hewn and super-cool.

They regularly host events in their space, including the Sound Food Meetup, a weekly communal networking lunch (€7.50).

Dutch chef Roos Versteeg has prepared a dish of root vegetables and greens to bid farewell to winter and celebrate the onset of spring. It’s gluten free and vegetarian – it started out being vegan, too, until she found herself facing a contemporary Berlin dilemma: vegan or regionally sourced? Ultimately, she confesses guiltily, she went regional, roasting the parsnips and leeks in local butter – but only, she assures me, because vegetable oils change chemically at high temperatures.

After my local lunch, it’s back on the U8, heading north to TechCode. The international start-up incubator hosts free Chinese Language Class Meetups at their smart, glass-walled offices in Mitte. There are six students, mostly start-up guys for whom China is, of course, a crucial market.

Instructors Marie and Till teach us about We Chat, China’s biggest messenger platform. By the end of the lesson, I can ask in Chinese if someone was on We Chat, whether I could add them, and tell them to scan my QR code (which every We Chat member has) so that they could add me as a friend.

My next Meetup takes me on the U2 to Potsdamer Platz. It’s rush hour again, and Potsdamer Platz is a soulless place. Built on the former no-man’s land between East and West during the Wall, everything here is modern and jagged. Why would anyone have a Meetup here, I wonder. Only tourists come to Potsdamer Platz.

The answer becomes clear as soon as I walk into Caras Café – this free Practise Your German Meetup is attended by about 30 brand new Berliners. Over a double espresso, I settle into a conversation with a Serbian doctor who hopes to work in Germany. Her complaint echoes that of many here: it’s easy – almost too easy – to live in Berlin without speaking German, because Germans quickly switch to (usually faultless) English.

So in order to practise German, non-native speakers meet up here to fumble through the language in different accents: French, Italian, American. It’s an enthusiastic crowd and everyone helps one another out. They’re checking their phone apps and pocket dictionaries as I bid them tschüss to rush to my final Meetup at the offices of online fashion retailer Zalando.

This, the React Native Meetup is the biggest I’ve been to all day, with almost 300 attendees. Tech Meetups are a popular way for developers and designers to network, and are heavily linked to the city’s burgeoning start-up culture, of which Zalando is one of the major successes. Nearly 30 per cent of all Berlin Meetups are now tech-related.

Officially we’re here to listen some presentations about using React Native, an open-source JavaScript library. Most attendees, however, seem more interested in the boxes of free pizza that are up for grabs. I cram slice after slice into my mouth as my neighbour says that the pizza provided by the Meetups of Berlin-based online bank N26 is better. Some people, it seems, are here with a single agenda – and I might be one of them, as I notice the curiosity and openness I started my day with are gone. As the speaker from Soundcloud begins to talk about using the framework for app prototyping, I lose interest and wander off to the loo.

On my way back, in what seems to be the Zalando canteen and recreation area (Berlin’s hipster offices, it seems, are just like London and New York’s), I bump into the data engineer from the Berlin Jelly Coworking Club. We study the Zalando lunch menu and decide, looking at its cheap range of burritos and burgers, that we both need to get a job there.

“Don’t you need to learn about React Native?” I ask.

“If I ever do, I’ll just Google it,” she shrugs.

We play a game of pool instead of going back to the talk. My day of Meetups has taught me that Berlin is a kaleidoscope of different social scenes; mindful, creative, cosmopolitan, tech-orientated. But ultimately, this is what Meetups are really for: meeting people.