Sports in Berlin, from the Alte Försterei to the lakes

Berlin is the rare European capital where football doesn't own the conversation. It shares it, with a marathon that breaks world records, an ex-airport where half the city exercises, lakes that turn into lidos all summer, and more bouldering walls per capita than anywhere sensible.

But start with the football anyway, because Berlin's football story is the city in miniature: east against west, cult against establishment, and the east currently winning.

Union: the cult club in the forest

1. FC Union Berlin play at the Stadion An der Alten Försterei, "the stadium by the old forester's house", out east in Köpenick, and there is nothing else like it in European football. This is the club whose fans once gave blood to raise money and then rebuilt the stadium with their own hands, two thousand volunteers laying concrete after work. They sing before, during and after. Most of the ground is standing terrace. At Christmas, tens of thousands turn up just to sing carols in it.

Union spent decades as East Berlin's scrappy underdog and then crashed the Bundesliga's top table, Europe and all. The catch for a newcomer: everyone wants in, and members come first. Take the S-Bahn to Köpenick when you do get a ticket, walk through the forest with the crowd, and you'll understand why nobody who goes once talks about anything else for a week.

Hertha: faded grandeur in the west

West Berlin's grand old club, Hertha BSC, plays in the Olympiastadion, and the stadium is half the story: the vast stone bowl built for the 1936 Games, its history heavy and deliberately unhidden, renovated into one of the great big-match venues in Europe. Hertha themselves have spent recent seasons in the second division, which the fans bear with a very Berlin mix of gallows humour and stubborn loyalty.

Selfishly, that's good news for you: tickets are easy, cheap, and the Ostkurve still generates proper noise in a 74,000-seat amphitheatre. The stadium also hosts the DFB-Pokal final every May, Germany's cup final and a genuinely great sporting weekend, plus one of the world's oldest athletics meetings. Go for Hertha, go back for the big occasions.

The marathon: the fastest race on earth

One September Sunday a year, Berlin becomes the centre of world sport. The Berlin Marathon course is famously flat and fast, and more world records have fallen here than anywhere else; when someone runs a time that makes the news, odds are they ran it through the Brandenburg Gate.

For residents it's two different pleasures. As a spectator, it's a free day-long street festival with the best runners alive at walking distance. As a runner, it's the home race you can actually train for: the ballot opens in autumn, the whole city trains through the summer, and the finish under the Gate is worth every long run in the rain. Berlin's race calendar fills the rest of the year, from the half marathon in spring to New Year's Eve runs.

Arena nights: Alba and the Eisbären

Berlin's winter sport lives in Friedrichshain, at the big arena by the East Side Gallery. Alba Berlin is the capital's basketball institution, a perennial German power with a loud, young crowd. Eisbären Berlin, the "polar bears", are the most successful club in German ice hockey, an old East Berlin institution whose fans have kept the volume from the Wellblechpalast days.

Both run all winter, tickets are easy to get and reasonably priced, and a Sunday evening hockey game is one of the best cold-month rituals this city offers a newcomer. Pick a jersey colour and you have plans until March.

Tempelhofer Feld: the runway workout

Only Berlin would close an airport and hand the entire thing, runways included, to joggers. Tempelhofer Feld is now one of the largest urban open spaces in the world, and on any evening it's a cross-section of the city training: runners and skaters on the runways, kite-landboarders using the crosswind, cyclists doing laps, basketball courts by the entrances and an urban gardening colony watching it all.

The two runways make a natural interval track with zero traffic and a sky that goes on forever. In a city short on hills, this is the default training ground, and sunset laps at Tempelhof are a Berlin ritual you'll adopt embarrassingly fast.

The lakes: Berlin's summer pools

When the heat arrives, Berlin doesn't head to a coast; it dissolves into its lakes. Schlachtensee, ringed by forest at the end of the S1, is the swimmers' favourite, clean and deep with a running path around it. Wannsee has the grand old lido, a 1920s beach resort a city train ride from the centre. Out east past Köpenick, Müggelsee is the big water, with sailing and windsurfing schools along its shores.

Open-water swimming here isn't a niche sport, it's just summer. Grab a towel, take the S-Bahn, swim across something. Repeat until October, or join the winter swimmers and don't stop at all.

August is peak lake season and also the last full month before the city's running calendar takes over: the marathon runs at the end of September, with the whole summer's training aimed at it. If you have any interest in running it, entry closes long before the day, so this is the month to look at next year's ballot rather than the one about to start.

Bouldering: the indoor religion

Berlin fell for climbing walls the way it falls for most things: completely and slightly obsessively. Bouldering gyms, ropes-free climbing on short walls over crash mats, have spread through Kreuzberg, Wedding and Friedrichshain, many tucked under railway arches, all of them doubling as cafés and social scenes.

It's the city's great winter sport for people who hate gyms: problem-solving you do with your body, zero equipment needed beyond rental shoes, and a scene that's friendly to absolute beginners. Go twice and you'll have opinions about holds. Go for a month and you'll have friends.

Day to day: gyms, Vereine and getting moving

The everyday layer is easy here. Budget gym chains cover the city with no-drama monthly contracts, studios handle everything from yoga to old-school boxing in Wedding, and outdoor table-tennis tables in every park host games all summer; bring a paddle, wait your turn.

But the most German option is the best one: join a Verein, a local sports club. Football, volleyball, handball, rowing, whatever; they're cheap, they're everywhere, and they come with the thing every newcomer actually needs, which is a standing appointment with people who expect you to show up. Berlin can be a hard city to crack socially. The Verein is the crack in the wall.