Our hostel is situated in Berlin-Mitte-Tiergarten-Moabit and is in the Center of the Center of Berlin. But it is not in the trendy & expensive area as Prenzlberg, not in the noisy partyarea as Friwedrichshain, and also not in the so-called Center West or Center-East, where the expensive world-class tourism with designer-trash walks around.
We are in a very avaerage Berliner, mixed residentional neighbourhood, where workers & middle-class is mixed with students and a lot of arabic, turkish, vietnamese & african immigrants, some of them in the 3rd generation.
For Berlin, it is a relativ poor but intellectual area.
Many students from West-Germany or abroad came to thuis area to live here, since apartmnt here were still relatively cheap, at least much cheaper than those trendy or bourgeoise chicy-micky-areas of would-be-upper middle-class.
Here we have the cheapest shops, the best & cheapest fruit-markets, supermarket, second-hand-clothing, korean,vietnamese, turkish & arabic food-shops, Indian, Palestinian, Afrikan, German & Thai restaurants.
Beside of this we are situated in between two of the biggest parks of Berlin, Tiergarten in the South and Rehberge in the North, a lake (Plötzensee), the river (Spree), several channels and the biggerst interior harbour of Europe (Westhafen).
For me, David, this is the best area in Berlin, and I lived here since 1979.
Even I visited 57 countries, I became a patriotic Moabiter!