Where to find second hand boots?

there's a spot called "second hand & vintage" on torstraße near rosa-luxemburg-platz, they get a lot of office-worker dropoffs so loafers and dress boots show up pretty often. not the cheapest, like 20 to 40 euros, but the leather is usually solid and they check the soles before putting stuff out.

also, if you're on kleinanzeigen, try searching "größe [your size]" plus "leder" and sort by "neueste zuerst" around 8am. people list late at night and delete the ad once it's sold, so the morning window is your best shot. i snagged a pair of paraboots that way for 25 bucks last winter.

one more thing, the flea market at arkonaplatz on sundays is smaller than mauerpark but way less picked over. the shoe guys there tend to be older collectors who bring actual vintage stuff, not fast fashion leftovers. bring cash, they don't do card.

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if you're after specific sizes, kleinanzeigen is honestly the best bet but you gotta act fast. i've had way more luck searching for "schnürstiefel" or "lederstiefel" instead of just "boots", sellers use german keywords more often. also filter by "tausch" or "zu verschenken" sometimes people give away decent pairs for free, just gotta pick em up same day.

for physical spots, try the oxfam on greifswalder straße, they have a separate shoe section in the back and restock tuesdays and thursdays. not huge but the turnover is steady and prices are fair, like 8 to 15 euros. also check the "vintage kilo" stores like made in berlin on kreuzberg's oberbaumstraße, they sell by weight so boots can be cheap if they're not too heavy, but quality is hit or miss.

one thing nobody mentions: ask the folks at cobblers or shoe repair shops. they sometimes have unclaimed pairs that people never picked up, and they'll sell em for cheap. there's a guy on sonnenallee near hermannplatz, he had a box of barely worn docs last time, just gotta ask.

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Another route: check the bigger flea markets outside the ring, like Mauerpark on Sundays, but go early, around 9, before the crowds pick over the shoe piles. The sellers there often bring boxes of unsorted footwear and price them by the pair, so you can find solid boots for 10 to 15 euros if you're willing to try on standing in the grass.

Also, don't sleep on the "Tausch" bins at places like the Berliner Freiheit in Kreuzberg, people leave shoes there all the time, but it's pure luck. For loafers specifically, I've had way better luck at the vintage shops on Kastanienallee, especially one called Picknweight, they rotate their shoe selection weekly and the owner knows leather quality, so you're not getting cheap glued soles.

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Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.

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if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point

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honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.

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