I’m off to Berlin for a long weekend in May and will have two and a half days to fill. Can y’all immerse my soul in all things Berlin that you would recommend and I mean all things: albums, songs, places, art, books, etc.?
The visit has been a long time coming and I want to get the most out of it.
Thanks in Bowieticipation.
Candlelight and Dubonnet -Big in Berlin
The Wall Museum on Friedrichstrasse is a must for any first time visitor. Fascinating and you can easily spend 2 or 3 hours there. One of the many walking tours from around Brandenburg Tor will show you parts of Berlin you may not otherwise see and are very good value for money. Definitely take the U Bahn – if you can, go out to Spandau. Glienicke Bridge is a good place to visit usually on a boat trip. Oh and make sure you go to one of the many Imbiss cafes littered throughout the city and get yourself a currywurst mit pommes – it is a must.
(1) The Fernsehturm – best views of pretty much any city. Good beer in the cafe, 1,000 feet or so up!
(2) If you like your history 200 years+: visit Potsdam, home to the palaces of Sans Souci and Neuespalatz – get the S-Bahn from Potsdamer Platz – you will need to book Sans Souci in advance (limited admissions per day, we were there in February so were able to walk up).
(3) The Holocaust Memorial
(4) Climb up to the roof of the Reichstag.
(5) http://www.topographie.de/en/ – you should visit this: it’s not nice, but it puts the 20th century history of Berlin into context. It’s greatly changed, from the look of the website, since we were there in 2010.
Enjoy. It’s a really friendly city, lots of good restaurants and bars and a lot of nice people.
Oh, and another one – the best cafe near Potsdamer Platz/Brandenburg Gate:
http://www.fbi-berlin.de/fbi-eatery.html
FBI = Food/Body/Intelligence – as a meat eater, this was fabulous veggie food. Great for breakfasts.
Ta for the tip. The Light is keen to visit Berlin, but although I’m not actually opposed to going I can’t for the life think of anything that I know of which would make it worth the effort, and while I know that it is a hip and young city I did wonder if decent veggie food would be difficult to find. Keep the tips coming everyone; I’m sure that Cecil Ann and I aren’t the only ones taking notes.
It’s a really great city. We were inter-railing for a month in February/March 2010 – went to Berlin for 2 nights and ended up staying for 4. Potsdam was the highlight for us ( see above), but it’s a great place. We stayed here:
http://www.accorhotels.com/gb/hotel-3120-mercure-hotel-residenz-berlin-checkpoint-charlie/index.shtml
Very close to Checkpoint Charlie and convenient for the Brandenburg Gate area – I can also recommend the mediaeval art museum (Gemaaldegalerie) – more info here – http://www.smb.museum/home.html – and also a brewpub (http://www.brauhaus-lemke.com/index.php/home-2) near the TV tower. It’s just a really great city to wander around in, though many of the worst bits of the history of the 20th century are never far away. It’s very veggie friendly, a legacy of the cold war years when a good way of getting away from West German military service was to move to Berlin. The currywurst is good too, if you’re a meat eater!
Oh yeah, never, ever, try and fare-dodge on the U-Bahn. It’s not worth it – not that we tried, but we saw the consequences.
I had a lovely long weekend in Berlin the other year.
I particularly enjoyed The Currywurst Museum (although appreciate that it might be too slight / silly for everyone’s tastes).
Also very moved by the Checkpoint Charlie museum.
The Jewish museum is rather amazing.
I didn’t get to go up the TV tower, but it’s supposed to be terrific.
The flea market at Mauerpark was interesting too… one stall had a particularly staggering range of antique dental implements…!
Aaaaand there’s lots of fabulous, fabulous ice cream parlours across Berlin! You can eat a lot of ice cream in 2.5 days! Have a wonderful time
I’m a semi Berliner and if it’s Bowieness you want, peek down just past Potsdamerplatz and you’ll see Hansa studios on Köthener Straße. You can do a rock tour, although I don’t know if the bloke who was organising it is still doing it, a quick Google will find out.
Whereabouts are you staying? I know the East (Mitte, Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain) pretty well if you are after eating, drinking recommendations, feel free to drop me a PM and I’d be happy to suggest a few spots! One of my current work projects is editing a tourist guide to the city, so I have a few suggestions 😉
If you think it’s your thing, try the Designpanoptikum – an extraordinary collection of industrial objects whose purpose you often have to guess at. We loved it. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Designpanoptikum-surreales-Museum-für-industrielle-Objekte/164829883543984
We had a night at Clärchens Ballhaus, which was a hoot. Might look like a bit of a tourist trap, but it’s so wonderfully atmospheric we didn’t care. http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/claerchens-ballhaus-historic-dance-hall-turns-100-in-berlin-a-921636.html
Been twice recently, fantastically interesting place. I can’t get over the wall (sorry), the Eastside gallery and the museum by Bernaurstrasse (wrong spelling, I’m sure). I stayed in Prenzlauer area and it’s a fun area to stay in (lots of good bars and restaurants). Don’t miss out on the Bauhaus museum, and there’s a Ramones museum which I never visited, but was recommended. Also, if you have the time, do go to Potsdam. There’s the San Souci palace and the Wansee mansion, the exhibition still sends a shiver after all this time. Go for a drink afterwards and marvel at the cleanliness and lack of litter in Potsdam. Oh, and finally, the main Hauptbanhof is a fantastic railway station. It’s like Canary Wharf/Westminster stations combined, if that makes any sense.
I’m taking notes, as we’re due to go to Berlin for a few days in early May. Never been before and I’m excited by the prospect.
If you fancy a couple of weird sights you might go to the Spreepark (aka “Dinosaur graveyard”), an abandoned amusement park.
If you follow the footpath along the river Spree (passing the Archenhold observatory and the “Youth Island”, a small isle with a café and a concert stage) you can also view the Russian Memorial nearby – a big park with WW2 murals and a big (very big) statue of a soldier (all very Rammstein…)
Thank you for your replies, varied and thorough as usual. I will start planning the trip which will form around the central attraction of going to see Laura Marling play on the Saturday. A surprise weekend my gorgeous girlfriend is going to remember.
Another one: the German Movie Museum at Potsdamer Platz currently hosts a big exhibition on the set designs of Ken Adams (who designed for “Dr. No” and “Moonraker”). It runs until May. http://www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/exhibitions/2014/bigger-than-life
The museum has lots of other attractions – scale models of the sets for Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph Of The Will”, Jacques Tati’s “Mon Oncle” , Spielberg’s “Close Encounters” and more, plus some of Marlene Dietrich’s original dresses, and the real female robot out of “Metropolis”.