Cat Sitting in Berlin: Powerful Impact & a Shift in Lifestyle

Cat sitting in Berlin turned out to be far more than a simple December pet‑sit — it became a journey through a city of contrasts, where festive lights and heavy history sit side by side. In this story, our housesitter shares how one quiet cat, a cold winter’s day, and the streets of Berlin helped her understand why this lifestyle feels exactly right.

Silent Night, Cold Ground: Cat Sitting in Berlin & How I Found This Lifestyle Was For Me

I was really excited for my cat sitting in Berlin. I’d actually never been to that city (I know, right?!) but had always wanted to see it, and had even considered it once years and years ago as a possible place to live in my wanderings. It wasn’t for the history – it was for the vibrancy, the lights, the up-and-coming’ness of it.

Cat Sitting in Berlin – My First Impression of the City

My cat sit in Berlin was five weeks long I knew I had plenty of time to tour. A couple weeks after arriving and having settled in, I thought it time to get out there, to go exploring. Though I’m not a “Christmas market”-girl nor even spiritually inclined, I wanted to see it, taste some of the foods (because who can resist market food stalls!) and maybe stop in to the tourist centre and plan either a hop-on-hop-off ride or to see more and learn a bit of the city’s history. Naturally I had heard of the Christmas Markets in Berlin, there are over 80 of them in this city alone! So as I was cat sitting in Berlin, I simply had to go; when in Rome…

Exploring Berlin’s Christmas Markets While Housesitting

Christmas is that time of year that doesn’t pretend to be subtle about what it wants from us. Love each other; believe in something; give instead of take; be good….just try, for one month, to be good. That’s it. That’s the whole ask. Every string of lights, every twinkling fairy light, every silly inflatable Santa and elves and and and…..over and over, on an endless repeat. Be good.

There I was, hands wrapped around a hot cup of chocolate (I’ve never been a fan of Glühwein (mulled wine) even though I love wine, I didn’t like it even in Hungary where it’s called Forralt bor and is just as popular) and staring at the slabs of salmon being cooked and smoked by the huge fire they standing around, listening to some off-key busker murder a carol I actually love — and yet it was perfect.

It was so, stupidly, warmly perfect. People tossing coins into donation buckets; kids losing their minds over chocolate, sugar-coated churros (well, who wouldn’t!)…you can’t help but smile and realize this is love in its purest, most unguarded form, I think. Just people trying, on purpose, to be soft with each other for a few weeks a year.

And I walked straight out of that and onto streets that used to mean the exact opposite. Not metaphorically — literally. Streets that were built by people purposefully to do the one thing that Christmas begs us not to do.

Walking the Historic Streets of Berlin

Visiting the Berlin Wall and Cold War Landmarks

Then, pretty much right around the corner, there’s a line of cobblestones that cut into the pavement. No lights on it, no music or bells and whistles; just a scar, still there, marking exactly where the Berlin Wall stood between 1961-1989 built by the government of the GDR on the Eastern side of the city to prevent it’s population from moving to the Western side of this same city.

These are the same people who’d just handed me free samples of various street foods. During the Cold War, they had decided some of their own neighbours weren’t allowed to exist on the same side of a line as them. People died on that line. Trying to get to freedom on the other side of their own city.

I stood there in my coat, a coat that wasn’t really made for the December cold of North Eastern Germany, and I felt something shiver through me. Because it’s not abstract when you’re standing right on it. It’s not a paragraph in a textbook. It’s cobblestones under your feet, on the actual ground, a few hundred meters from where I’d just been laughing and drooling over the slabs of salmon.

Scars of World War II

But nothing gutted me like standing where the old SS headquarters used to be. The Topographie des Terrors is an indoor outdoor museum built on the site of the SS Security Main Office during the Nazi Regime between 1933-1945. Even the name sounds like it’s trying to warn you.

Topography of Terror — A Powerful Emotional Contrast

I didn’t even know it was here, and only just happened by it while walking around discovering the portions of the old wall still standing exactly where they’d been. I’d seen pieces in other countries, but never ones that still stood in their original spot. As I slowly walked along the story board reading practically a day by day rundown of this history, how it started, how it took hold, how it became what it did I go colder and colder.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about evil, the real historical kind: it doesn’t look like a monster. It can look like an office building; filing cabinets, paperwork, decisions made by men who went home for dinner after deciding, in triplicate, how many more people should die that week. That’s almost worse than if it had looked evil, some monstrous place. It looked administrative. Banal.

And then outside — the parade ground. Flat, open. I stood there and couldn’t stop imagining boots. Whistles. Cadence. Rows of them — young men conscripted and even volunteered. Obeyance or death. Being drilled not just in discipline, but in a belief system. I could see them in my mind, my imagination, watching them being built, march by march, their innocent beliefs being transformed into people who thought cruelty was discipline and hatred was loyalty. On that ground, under a sky that looked exactly like the sky over the Christmas market, an entirely different gospel was being sung…. Obey. Don’t question.

Not far from there, tucked behind the Reichstag in a quiet little grove of trees, is the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of the regime for National Socialism. It’s easy to miss if you’re not looking for it — no crowds, no gift shop, just a circular pool of black water, one single flower laid fresh in the centre of it every day. Half a million Sinti and Roma people were murdered by the same regime, yet this isn’t the memorial in the guidebooks, the one talked about by the tourist centre, as people walk past without noticing, tucked into a park like an afterthought.

Sensing the Feel of the City

In the background I could hear Berliners and tourists, walking, singing, living, and I even think I hear the strains of “O Holy Night” coming from somewhere….where I was standing it felt like I was being shown this is how a man becomes a weapon. It was the first time I had come face to face with facts from my history books and it made an impact.

I couldn’t shake the cold. I spent a quarter of my life in Chicago, and yet I don’t think I’d ever felt quite that cold. My brain was desperately trying to reconcile the truth of all that I’d seen; this hell that was the opposite of “Christmas” was not just one thing, one group of people, it was more. So much more. No history book, no history class, could ever tell you or help you experience the realities that standing there in the middle of where it had happened possibly could.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt love and hate stand that close to each other as that time when I was cat sitting in Berlin. Not as an idea. As actual geography. A few streets. That’s all that separated “peace on earth, goodwill to men” from a place where the goodwill had been drilled right out of people. And Berlin doesn’t hide either one. It doesn’t paper over the ugly parts to protect the postcard. It just lets both live in the same city, in the same December, so you have to hold both, whether you’re ready to or not. Because they don’t want to forget, so that future generations (and even the present) may never repeat.

By the time I left the grounds, it had started to snow — not some movie blizzard, but just winter in Germany, the sort that doesn’t stick so much as remind you it’s there. I walked back through streets that had gone soft and glowing again, past another market, past more of that unbothered, determined joy, into the “suburban” area that at this point only really reminds you if you look down onto the streets and sidewalks for the small golden plaques that are everywhere. Sort of hidden and only reminding you if you’re actively looking for it.

Quiet Moments Back at My Cat Sitting in Berlin

As I returned to my cat sitting in Berlin, which had offered a temporary yet comfortable home in a fascinating city, I sat quietly, watching the snow lightly fall outside, feeling the cat’s purrs under my hand as she snuggled up to me while I stroked her fur. And as I thought about everything I’d seen that day, and the emotions it had stirred in me — especially how we so often never seem to learn from history — I understood why I’d chosen this housesitting lifestyle. Being the temporary guardian of pet after pet, drinking in where they live as much as I could while I was resident.

It all began to make sense to me, and it started when I was cat sitting in Berlin. Housesitting is not some grand gesture.

It’s just: be here. Be gentle with the small, trusting animal in front of you that you’re holding and keeping safe in your arms. Do that on purpose, over and over, for the pet or for whoever needs it, wherever you are. It’s such a small thing next to everything I’d just seen. And I think that’s exactly why it’s the right thing for me.

What Cat Sitting in Berlin Taught Me About Housesitting

Cat sitting in Berlin didn’t just show me a great European city — it showed me a lifestyle that aligns with who I am. The discovery of amazing contrasts, the quiet moments, and the companionship of Sheba reminded me why housesitting continues to shape my journey.

BIO

By Maria Vano

Maria Vano is a self-confessed dreamer who believes that the world is there for all of us to see, to taste all the wines and foods, to interact with as many cultures as you can because it’s the only way to truly experience the world. She now fulfils her love of travel and of animals by house and petsitting her way around the world. Her first book is about her life as a solo traveller ‘When every road whispers my name‘.

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