Best areas of Berlin for student parents to live

Hello,

Me and my wife are moving to Berlin in November this year. We are student parents, having a few weeks old baby. Could somebody suggest a good, cheap and a safe place to live for English speaking foreigners in Berlin? We will be there for 3- 4 years, will do my PhD at MDC- Buch.

How is Pankow area, or Wedding?

Please suggest some locations.

Thank you

Dinto

Pankow is great - especially for kids - loads of parks, a little river (Panke - which gives Pankow its name), loads of quiet streets, loads of families, tons of playgrounds, a children's city farm, rents are OK and there are some nice places to rent if you look. Also its only 2 stops by U Bahn from a good international kindergarten. It's 3 U-Bahn stops to the trendy Prenzlauer Berg areas. S-Bahn line gets you into the city very fast (although Berlin S-Bahn has some problems right now). It's a down to earth place.

Shopping is quite good - there's a very large supermarket in the rathaus shopping Centre.

Pankow has a good community feeling.

Bad points - not trendy, too many low flying planes, increasing traffic on the main street,

I would not recommend Wedding at all.

Many students seem to like Friedrichshein or Neukölln because they are cheap.

Thank you

Hey dintojose,
I would say that Pankow is probably cheaper than F'hain, as a consequence of being further away from the centre and not having the same 'trendy' shops/bars/cafes infrastructure. P'berg is very international and child-friendly, playgrounds everywhere, but quite expensive. F'hain is also international, and has a couple of good playgrounds (Traveplatz and Boxhagener Platz) but is more scruffy - probably more students here than in P'berg. Neukolln is supposedly 'up and coming', especially the part by the canal, and still relatively cheap. No substitute for a visit I'm afraid, if you're here for 3-4 years it would be good to have a look around in person first, or you could always rent somewhere temporary for a while and then move when you know the areas better. Good luck, it's a great city, good for toddlers - but bring some warm clothes!

Hello - I can tell you a little about Friedrichshain. We are parents too, and my husband has a post doc position outside of Berlin so a sort of similar situation. I have a 3-year-old and one on the way. I've found a lot of nice playgrounds in the area - and there are quite a few families too. The only problem I had was getting into a Kita (kindergarten) nearby -- they were all full. But if your baby is still very young maybe you don't need to worry about that for awhile. We ended up going to one in the Treptower area bc its bilingual and had space! While we are on the edge of F'shain, we are very close to an S-Bahn, and a U-Bahn station so traveling to other parts of the city is pretty easy. If you are interested in this area and want to know more -- feel free to PM me.
Sara

We live in Französisch Bucholz (northernmost part of Pankow) with our two kids aged 2 and 4 and quite like it there.

FB is very residential and cheap. Lots of young families live there and the streets are very safe for kids to play outside, which I personally like. The centre of Pankow is 15 minutes away on the tram and Prenzlauer Berg is only marginally further away and has probably anything to offer young families might want in the way of trendy.

Through our nursery school (bilingual forest kindergarden Robin Hood - I just posted about their info night next week) we have also seen quite a bit of central Pankow and I can second everything that has been said about it. I really like it.

Thanks everybody for the helping hand. I use http://www.immobilienscout24.de/de/finden/wohnen/index.jsp for searching 'provision free' apartments. Any other website suggestions for finding a nice apartment ? I will be working at MDC buch. So it seems to me that Pankow, Wedding or P'berg would fit better for me.

We are presently in Rostock and our baby is expected to come in early October and we plan to move to Berlin in late October. Any suggestions for a moving company??