The Only Good Reason to Leave the House When It Snows

Snow in Berlin is either one gray centimeter of disappointment on a Tuesday morning, gone by noon, or it’s a real event—parks white, the city briefly tolerant of being cold and impractical. On those actual snow days, the hill at Teufelsberg becomes something else. You drag a sled up through the trees and come down fast enough that everything disappears for a few seconds and it’s just speed and cold and the specific joy of going downhill for no useful reason whatsoever.

Viktoriapark has it too. So does the Görlitzer, though the Görli operates on its own wavelength regardless of weather. These aren’t ski runs—they’re city hills, steep enough to matter, short enough that you’re already walking back up almost immediately. That rhythm, the climb and the short descent, repeated until your coat is soaked and your legs hurt, is exactly the right amount of fun. Not a production. Not a day trip. Just the thing itself.

I have never needed a map to find a hill. The Teufelsberg has been there long enough, and so has the Viktoriapark, and on a proper snow day you’ll find it by following the sound of people laughing in the cold.