Say what you will about Ber­lin, but you can’t deny the fact that there are havens of tran­quil­ity scattered all over the city. Recre­ational parks — from fancy to rather inter­est­ing — can be found in pretty much every dis­trict. Lush greens, spon­tan­eous BBQs and ever so many options to chose from. On Find­ing­Ber­lin we’ve covered many of them before. There’s our sum­mer liv­ing room Görl­itzer Park, not exactly the most charm­ing but it works for people-watching and prox­im­ity. And of course the massive Tem­pel­hofer Feld which in only a few months has become the most pop­u­lar out­door activ­ity place. Fur­ther­more, there’s Gleis­dreieck Park, a thor­oughly planned and executed use of decayed train tracks.

How­ever, for some of the pearls among Berlin’s recre­ational parks you have to travel fur­ther. In case of Erholung­s­park Mar­zahn it’s a trip to the east­ern peri­phery, near the bor­der to Branden­burg, where a park is loc­ated that over­tops the most. After I went back to visit my home dis­trict, take shots of the place where I grew up and doc­u­mented it here on Find­ing­Ber­lin, many friends and acquaint­ances asked me to show them around. Yes­ter­day, we teamed up for a bike tour; des­ig­na­tion: Erholung­s­park Mar­zahn and its fam­ous “Gärten der Welt”, or Gar­dens of the World.

At the entrance a sign informed us: “No dogs, no bikes allowed”. Aston­ished at first, we would soon under­stand what a relief this would prove to be. Since Erholung­s­park Mar­zahn is part of an ambi­tious city-wide cluster of excep­tion­ally well designed and cul­tiv­ated parks, we hap­pily paid the small admis­sion fee (three bucks and you’re in!) and entered into one of the most lovely and well kept parks I knew to date.

The “Erholung­s­park” lives up to its name: it is truly a recre­ational place where one can for­get about the roar­ing city. Well kept mead­ows invite to lie down, all sorts of trees provide shadow and a quiet rust­ling to lull one into sweet slum­ber. How­ever, this wouldn’t be enough to make this park stand out from others.

Marzahn’s Erholung­s­park, which star­tet in 1987 as a hor­ti­cul­tural show, had a com­plete makeover in the new mil­len­nium. The man­agers invited land­scape archi­tects and garden­ing experts from all over the world, start­ing with China. The Beijing Insti­tute for Clas­sic Land­scape Archi­tec­ture sent two land­scape archi­tects and 18 garden­ers, a ship­ment of twenty con­tain­ers with con­struc­tion parts, fur­niture and even Chinese rocks and other things needed to build a Chinese Garden. When it was com­pleted, it con­sisted of a vast area sur­round­ing a fish pond com­plete with pago­das, a tea­house, bridges, ambu­lat­or­ies, water­falls, bam­boo groves and any­thing you can vividly remem­ber from clas­sic Kung Fu movies.

It that wasn’t enough, addi­tions were made one by one: a won­der­ful Japan­ese garden fol­lowed in 2003, in the same year a Balinese garden was opened, soon an Ori­ental and a Korean garden, a maze, a Renais­sance and a Chris­tian garden were added. Until today, these isol­ated theme gar­dens, which were all designed by pro­fes­sion­als (from the cor­res­pond­ing coun­tries), form the “Gärten der Welt”.

For me, it was a trip back home. The oth­ers were simply amazed by the beauty and calmness, felt like they trav­elled to the Far East, even were eager to book flights imme­di­ately or at least buy an annual ticket for the park. For the rest of you, take my advice: Enjoy these pic­tures and dis­cover the park on your own!

The park is opened from 9 AM to 8 PM (in Octo­ber til 6 PM) and can best be reached if you take S-Bahn S7 (dir­ec­tion Ahrens­felde) to Mar­zahn sta­tion, change to Bus 195 and ride to “Gärten der Welt”.