Things to in Berlin when you're there

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.

Oh yeah, and on Fridays (i.e. today) there's the Turkish street market on Maybachufer, next to the river. You can find it where Maybachufer and Kottbusser Damm meet, right next to the bridge that crosses the river. That's definitely worth a visit!

Indeed, we went to the turkish market today on rec of a friend. The neighborhood around it, neukolln, is also not bad -- just starting to become trendz with artists moving in. We also ate in a really nice spot in Mitte -- I don't remember the name, something generic like Cafe Europa, but they have their outdoor seating on a little island in the middle of the street and it has a very nice vibe, and the food and beer were very good.

Oh, the cafe was on Gipsystrasse, iirc. Another spot I really like in Mitte is called something like Clarisches Ballhaus. It´s on Augustrasse. A decaying pre-war dancehall that has been turned into a cafe with a large garden seating area. I think they have dance and music nights although I didn´t attend any.

Many people recommend a daytrip to Potsdam to see the palaces. A few things about that -- 1) go early because it tends to be clogged with tourists. 2) Please please save yourself the trouble and take the regional rail instead of the s-bahn, so much faster and easier. 3) Everyone says Sans Souci is the palace to see, but I found it boring and ugly and the audiotour was useless, so skip it unless you´re really into high-baroque style or interior design in general. It was also overpriced at 12 Euros for something that takes maybe 20 minutes. Meanwhile the gardens are lovely and there´s one fasciniating room in the Neue Schloss, decorated floor to ceiling with seashells and minerals from all over the world. Have not seen anything like it.

The Alte National Galerie is worth a trip. Didn´t have much time there, but highly recommend the Caspar Friedrich paintings, and there´s also a very interesting 19th C german painter whose name I can´t remember, but who was techinically brilliant and did possibly the first painting of workers in an industrial setting.

Flea market in P-burg is fun, and I thought the Turkish food at Hasir was good.

Bauhaus archiv is temporarily closed, but the building can still be seen and is worth a visit.

Meanwhile the Bauhaus material is all at the Martin Gropius Bau, which was also good.

I would definitely in hindsight say just get the tourist pass for the transport (it´s kind of confusing and stressful otherwise, although we got away with quite a few free rides and might ultimately have saved a bit of money over the pass. Also, I guess this is just basic tourist advice anywhere that I failed to follow, but it seems like a good idea to stay somewhere near the area you think you´ll be going out in so you don´t have long train rides at the end of a long day and night.

I'm going the last weekend of the film festival. Has anyone been for that? Any tips on how to get the most out of it? I am not with film people or press and will not have any kind of special access, so I'm just going to public screenings.

Tickets for Killer Inside Me and Howl so far.

loving the ideas in this thread.

goin to berlin for a few days. Was thinking about staying here for a day or two because it looks bonkers. But I don't know how far Wilmersdorf is from the action. I know its more of a residential are, but would this be like staying in the middle of nowhere or are subways and bike rides easy enough to get you to fun/touristy bullshit with swiftness and ease?

I didn't spend time in that neighborhood, but it doesn't look like the middle of nowhere at all. Subways are extraordinarily easy and biking wouldn't be bad at all if you're healthy. You could probably bike to a lot of the museums and tourist in 10-15 minutes from there and maybe 20-30 minutes to the eastern neighborhoods. I could be off - I'm not a serious biker. But bike lanes on main routes offset from the road so it feels very easy and safe to bike there.