Things to in Berlin when you're there

this is totally worth walking by or free on thursdays: mies van der rohe, berlin neue nationalgalerie
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/161/393480841_6b404cb91d.jpg

Can't be arsed to type them again, but I gave a few tips on what do in Berlin in this thread:

weekdays in Berlin

The former Stasi prison turned into a museum I mentioned there is totally worth the visit if you're interested in East German history. And so is the gay museum.

On Sunday you could visit the fleamarket on Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain, it's quite nice. (I'm not 100% sure if they still have it this late in the autumn though.) Friedrichshain is a nice place to hang out in general, with lots of small pubs and cafes and bohemian kind of people.

"Berghain", one of the coolest techno clubs in Berlin is also near Friedrichshain, but it's quite expensive I think. When we went there the entrance fee was 10 Euros.

Also, there's tons of squats and activist cafes in Berlin which often have stuff like cinema, gigs, theatre, etc for cheap. You can find more info about that scene in Stress Faktor.

Berghain/Panorama Bar was kind of the whole point of Berlin for me.

Wikipedia tells me Tempelhof airport closes on Friday - I'd go there

Ooh, grab a bit of tarmac for myself! Or even as a gift to my beloved!!

Cheers ppl, keep 'em coming (if you feel like it)...

go to some art gallery and be a fruit cake. 'omg i'm in berlin and doing something artsy'

Just goosestep about the place.

the unbidden image of LJ in berghain has made for a o_0 start to my week. slightly horrifying

I'm jealous - I was there for a couple of days during the World Cup and thought it was a superb place to hang about in, but I've never managed to get back. It was all good, as far as I could tell, and cheap to boot. going to markets and eating cake is a pretty decent plan I think. You'll doubtless end up passing through Hauptbanhof station hundreds of times, but make sure you check it out anyway, it's really cool

really fucking sub-zero freezing if the weather forecast is telling the truth more like

then head east for much bleakness

Ha! Well I might do, unless getting the camera out actually means frostbite. Expenses are a bonus with Berlin from what I understand; it only cost fifty quid return for me, and I'm staying in teh woman's (fairly nice) student digs so I should be able to make some small outlay on clubs/shops/bratwurst, just wish I'd converted more pounds to euros about uh a week ago ;_;

if the cold doesn't bother you much i would suggest the "brewers best" walking tour. it's abut 8-9 hours, iirc, covering alot of the historical spots in the city & given by a cranky retired UK spy!

ooooh!

I KNOW HIM! t3rry br3wer saved my life when i was 15. can't believe a. he's now a tour guide and b. i'm going to berling in two weeks, so can go on his tour and freak him out/thank him in person.

STORY!

and yes. he's awesome.

I was on a school exchange to Hamburg in 1990 and we had a day trip to Berlin. The wall was down but things were still pretty militarised... and to cut a very long story very short I somehow (idiotically) lost the whole school party in the Zoo Station car park and was close to sleeping under a newspaper in the (increasingly terrifying as night fell) station... until T3rry came up and said hello, heard my tale of woe, took me back to his house on the train, called the British Consulate and ended up putting me, my German teacher and the exchange school's English teacher up in his house for the night before packing us off on the train back to Hamburg in the morning. I could at this point add some wild through-the-prism-of-an-adult-mind speculation about the reason he approached me in the station in the first place, but I could never prove it and would be blatantly opening myself up to a potential libel suit...

and sorry, i was 14 not 15.

now i've written that down and re-read it, i'm thinking maybe it'd be too odd to just turn up, nearly 20 years later, and remind him out of the blue...

really? i think it'd be pretty rad!

"Hi t3rry, remember in 1990 when you *insert libel here* a young boy in the Zoo Station but he *insert libel here*? Well, that boy was me!"

"hey terry - remember rescuing me from zoo station?!" this would be followed by some sort of warm yet awkward embrace, i'd image.

or followed up by "i'm legal now!"

i'm looking forward, at least, to telling my gf the whole story while standing in the actual car park in question...

can anyone help me out with a tip for an oyster-like way to get around berlin for a four-day stretch? off there with the missus tomorrow but won't be able to walk for more than 10 minutes at a stretch so need some advice.

All transport is berlin is free until you meet a ticket inspector with a large Alsatian.

Just get the tourist ticket, it's valid for all public transport and it's not very expensive. You can buy it from a ticket-vending machines on the bigger train and metro stations. I wouldn't suggest free-riding in the public transport, there's plenty of plain-clothes ticket inspectors on the patrol.

IIRC correctly it was a bit over 20 Euros for a week, and I think you can buy it for a shorter period of time too.

The ticket inspectors busted me once...

when i lived in hamburg, i had a friend who decided never to pay for a single train journey for the year we were there. he got busted three times and it still ended up massively cheaper than our student travel card things. (somewhat contrary to the spirit of things, mind, but hey, we were all skint)

so, €20 for a week? well that's dead cheap. i shall investigate at schoenefeld airport when we get there...

http://www.bvg.de/index.php/en/Bvg/Detail/folder/764/rewindaction/Index/id/2903/name/7-Day+Pass

Here's some more info on it. It's a bit more expensive if you buy the full ABC-zone ticket, but basically the AB-zone ticket should be enough for you, because there's hardly any need for a tourist to travel to the C zone.

Please things to in Berlin when I'm there.

Preferably things besides the obvious tourist sites which I can figure out on my own. Would like - good places to eat, bars, shops, art galleries, places to hear bands, oddities, out-of-the-way spots, etc.

Breakfast @ Barcomi's. And make sure you try their cheesecake, too.
Quick & tasty meal @ Mr Vuong.
Best thing you can do: rent a bike. Cycling through the city is terrific and a quick way to go wherever you want.

[q]I really liked Oranienburger Str. for cute cafes and restaurants and lots of art galleries. There was this massive artists' commune place there that was interesting but I can't remember what it was called.

― ENBB, Tuesday, July 17, 2007 1:27 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I found it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunst_Haus_Tacheles

― ENBB, Tuesday, July 17, 2007 1:29 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark[q]

What I said there still holds true. I also second everything that Jergins has recommended on this thread.

If you have the time do yourself a favor and go to Potsdam. It's not too far by train and beautiful. I was so glad that we did.

oops

also saw on the other thread that you found a hotel - looks good!

i think i would go to berghain and get ruined for as many days as possible.

Yeah, it's a chain, but it looks like a decent chain at least. I'm going to have people I know in Berlin at the time so I don't really need the hostel to meet people.

Berghain/Panorama Bar was kind of the whole point of Berlin for me.

― jed_, Monday, 27 October 2008 08:41 (8 months ago) Bookmark

more more more

Sleepless in Berlin, so I thought I´d give some of my own opinions so far

1) The area that I´m staying in, Potsdamer Platz, is extremely convenient to the museums, Tiergarten, as well as to neighborhoods like Mite and Kreuzberg, but it´s also rather sterile and boring. The city is easy enough to get around that I´d recommend somewhere else.

2) Berlin is amazing for biking -- rent a bike or get your hands on one somehow.

3) The Gemaldegalerie is definitely worthwhile.

4) The new government quarter is very beautiful and interesting architecturally -- worth seeing by bike or bus even if you don´t bother with the reichstag dome.

5) KW - Kunstwerke artspace in Mitte is very good - probably takes under an hour. It´s off the street and there´s a great cafe in the courtyard in front of KW. There are also other good galleries in the neighborhood that can be seen on the same trip.

6) I didn´t think all that much of Prenzlauerberg -- perhaps it´s past its prime? I mean it was a very lovely neighborhood to sit in a cafe, but so were Mitte and Kreuzberg, which I think I prefer.

7) If you like capital PA Performing Arts, there´s a music/dance/theater space called Radial System V in Friedrichshain that does a lot of contemporary stuff at a reasonable price. It´s also a really nice converted industrial space right on the river and the cafe outside has a good view across the Spree.

8) Perhaps the most interesting thing so far -- there´s a former secret Stasi prison way out in the East where they give guided tours, sometimes with a former prisoner as your guide. The tour is very good and there's no kitsch element to any of it. Also it´s only accessible by the tram, and the ride gives you a good chance to see socialist architecture and some very different feeling parts of east berlin.

More later.

The Stasi museum, is that not accessible on the U-Bahn? i'm thinking of the former Stasi HQ out beyond Karl Marx Allee.

I've been to the former Stasi prison too, it was indeed an interesting experience, though pretty awful too, learning about the various torture methods they applied there. It's not the same as the the Stasi HQ I think, you can't get there by U-Bahn, you have to ride for a while on a tram and then walk some to get there, but it's definitely worth the trip. I think they have English-language tours on Saturdays.

If you want to hang out with hippies and punks and rastas and bohemians, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg are the places to go to. In Friedrichshain there's also club Berghain, which has been mentioned many times in this thread. It's definitely worth going if you like techno.

when my brother was living in berlin and I stayed with him we took part in a grand p'berg-v-k'berg falafel-off. i cannot remember who won (possibly king of falafel in kreuzberg?) but it was a+ falafel good eating times.

Also, if you're interested in gay history or social history in general, the gay museum (Schwules Museum) is definitely worth a visit. It's quite small, but there's a lot of interesting stuff there. Last time I was there I spent over 3 hours just absorbing all the information.

If you're a veggie or like vegetarian food, I'd recommend the Sunday brunch in Cafe Morgenrot on Boxhagener Strasse. There's lots of hippies/punks there too, though, so if that's not your thing, maybe skip it then.