Berlin

[AvonCallingBarksdale]

DH and I have booked flights to Berlin for 4 days in May. We’d love some tips and recommendations on:

1. where to stay
2. what to do and see
3. where to eat

Thanks MNers

Hi Berlin has a great public transport system so anywhere in the centre will be easily accessible. There are some cool hotels in Mitte and also lots of places to stay around Checkpoint Charlie, Unter den Linden and Potsdammer Platz.

In terms of sights, there is the Museum Island with all of the main museums and it is easy to walk around all the main landmarks from Potsdammer Platz, the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie etc.

In terms of going out Mitte is great for sophisticated bars and restaurants, where as Kreuzburg is a bit younger and edgier,

If you want to go on a free tour of the Reichstag, ending in the dome, you can book it in advance online.

www.bundestag.de/en/visittheBundestag/dome/tours/tours-inhalt/245682

Great, thank you

Yes book in advance at the Reichstag - we stayed at The Circus Hotel in Mitte which was central and a lovely hotel. The metro is across the road which is great.

Enjoy

If you're going over the early May bank holiday, there will be riots on Mayday, it's tradition! Mauerpark (with preserved sections of the Wall) is good to get a sense of how the Wall divided the city. On a Sunday there's a fleamarket there, as well as 'Bearpit Karaoke'.

On a sunny day, flammkuchen and beer outside in Tiergarten is hard to beat. We also liked Van Loon, a seafood restaurant on a sailing barge near Prinzenstraße U-Bahn. Lots of cheap but very good Turkish food on Hermannstraße in Neukölln. Many cafes will do an 'all you can eat' brunch on Sunday mornings (the best one we found let you make your own waffles and load them up with berries and whipped cream). Try Emserstraße in Neukölln and the streets around Boxhagenerplatz in Friedrichshain for cafes and bars. Lots of trendy shopping around Hackescher Markt.

Keep an eye out for the huge number of memorials and monuments as you walk round - some, like those in Koppenplatz and Bebelplatz are hugely moving in their simplicity.

Definitely book for the Reichstag dome.

I didn't like the flea market at Mauerpark.

Lots of places to eat/drink around the Hackescher market area and around Kollowitz Platz in Prenzlauer Berg. We also like the Amrit chain of Indian restaurants, who do a really cheap 'business' lunch on weekdays.

Decide in advance on a couple of museums/sights you definitely want to do. The wall memorial on Bernauer Strasse is excellent and incredibly moving. Topographie of Terrors is superb, and so is the exhibition under the Holocaust memorial. I'd also recommend doing a boat trip - we got ours by the DDR museum (which I don't recommend).

You can get various tickets for Museum Island - we did a one day ticket and managed to see three of the museums, but next time I'd probably get a three day pass, as you can get a bit museumed out trying to ram so much into one day!

Public transport is cheap and really, really good.

Oh, and keep plenty of cash. Lots of cafes and bars in particular don’t take cards, and even the ticket machines on the subway might have a wobble when confronted with a UK debit card. ApplePay and PayPal are getting more widespread due to the hipster market, but often they’ve skipped over Chip & PIN completely. In the trendier parts of town it can be easier to buy a round of drinks with Bitcoin than a Visa...

Soviet memorial in Treptower Park is stunning. The one in the Tiergarten is also worth seeing. The zoo is excellent (the one in the west; haven't been to the one in the east yet).

We stayed at Hotel Arts which was excellent

Berlin is a great city to wander - take comfortable shoes! We had a great evening here trying food and cocktails (think it's Thursday evenings) markthalleneun.de. Definitely recommend the longer boat trip. Also enjoyed the bus tour to get our bearings on first trip. A trip up the tower here rather than TV one www.panoramapunkt.de/de/willkommen.html, hires bikes to cycle around Tiergarten, and, deeply moving, I found exploring the Topography of Terror and Jewish Memorial incredibly important to understand the city.

A trip to KaDeWe food hall was fun (I'd say a better version of many of London's foodhalls) but it we really loved eating here at the stand up tables, fried fish and mash and picking up deli treats www.rogacki.de

Useful ideas here www.slowtravelberlin.com/all-posts/

Hope you have a great time, it's an amazing city.

The number 100 bus goes between the zo and Alexanderplatz, through the Tiergarten. You can get off at Schloss Bellevue for the Victory column, which is much bigger up close than I'd anticipated! :)

Watching

Marking place

some great tips here, thank you!

Absolutely recommend checking out Tempelhof, a former airport and site of the Berlin airlift. The runways are now a park and you can rent bikes there and cycle along the runway, and I'd recommend doing the tour - it's about two hours and you need to book it. It was the highlight for me!

Reichstag is definitely good too - you'll need to book ahead.

The Berlin war memorial is moving and well worth a visit. There's a small exhibition on ghost stations in the metro station next door.

I love Berlin - you'll have a great time!

Me again :-). For food, Hackethals is tasty for nice hearty German food, it's a little neighbourhood restaurant and has tables outside on the street when warm enough. If you like French food, Le Saint Amour in Neukolln is lovely and very romantic! (Neither are expensive - eating out in Berlin is cheap!). There's also a street food market in Kreuzberg (I think??) on a Thursday (I think??) - might be worth checking out!

Sorry for barging into your post op, is berlin pushchair friendly?

The east side gallery is really interesting to take in on a walk, it's a section of the Berlin wall with murals on. I stayed in the Radisson blu on alexanderplatz, which is in a good location for getting around and is also a really stunning hotel.

If you're getting around on public transport (which is really efficient), confusingly there are different ticket systems across tram, train and bus, so some of them you need to buy a ticket before you board, some you buy when you're on (I think that was tram) and some need to be validated on board as well. I can't remember exactly which is which but it would be worth checking that out before you get there.

Long-term Berliner here. Many of the tips above are just fab, definitely to be followed. I would just add:

Circus is an upmarket hostel rather than a hotel, but great location. It has a sister hostel called Heart of Gold near Oranienburger Straße. The hotel I've always wanted to see is the one that has individually designed rooms, but can't remember the name. It has some really wacky designs - one room is a caravan.

Book your Reichstag visit as soon as poss - the slots go quickly. And remember to take your passports with you cos your ID will be checked.

My experience of Amrit has not been great, but Indian food generally in Germany is dire. Why do it when Indian food in the Uk is much better. The iconic Berlin food is the Currywurst, and the traditional best outdoor place to eat it is Konnopkes Imbiss at schönhauser Allee in Prenzlauer Berg. A Flammkuchen might be nice, but it's traditional for Alsace, not Berlin.

Transport: it's well worth getting a 4-day travel ticket each, because it also gives you reductions on museums, restaurants etc. if you're flying into Schönefeld there's a local transport desk there with people who can advise you, give you a map and sell you the ticket. The local transport network is the BVG and its website (in English too) can work out how to get you from A to B, including walking time.

Re. Buggy-friendly, yes, pretty good on the whole. You can always get on buses with pushchairs (unless there are already two wheelchairs, of course, which would take priority). Most stations have lifts, and they mostly even work. New buildings by law have to have a lift (disability rights) but older apartment blocks won't have one, and getting to the top floor with a toddler in tow is miserable (bitter experience), so do check your hotel has a lift. Of course, AirBandB is now illegal in Berlin, but I'm sure flats are still being let.
I'm terrible at remembering names of nice cafes etc, but off the top of my head:
Tdjakische Teestube - Great experience of Russian tea house, sitting on carpets etc.
Nola's am Weinbergsweg - Swiss Style but in cool location with nice view.
Anita Wronski - in Prenzlauer Berg, nice pub
Gugelhupf - the place where Bill Clinton ate, but good food as well.
Café Cinema - one of my favourite smoky dark cafes in Mitte - I first went there in 1991 and it hasn't changed since, right on Hackescher Markt. Except it's not smoky now because of the smoking ban, but it feels smoky still.

And finally, can I also recommend the Humboldt Box, with the new Schloss being built behind it. The exhibitions there are being coordinated by Neil MacGregor and are rather good (must confess a professional interest here). It's all free and just opposite the Cathedral /Museum Island so not out of the way at all. Fab view from the top floor cafe of Unter den Linden from the front and the palace construction at the back.

Do have fun!

I love Berlin.

Only thing that let it down was the number of people trying to flog you stuff when you're walking down the street.

German coffee is amazing. So much better than Starbucks who are taking hold.

Thankyou arch i didnt know airbnb was illegal. I was looking on there yesterday. Ill stick to a hotel

The one thing I'd recommend above all others is early on in your stay, booking breakfast at the revolving restaurant at the top of the TV Tower. It isn't cheap, but it's an experience, and as an added bonus it gives you a good grasp of the layout of the city!

Another vote for the Circus Hotel. We stayed there last August BH and made use of the rooftop bar twice. It is not the same as the Circus hostel which is a completely separate building across the road. Getting to/from the airport is very easy - take a bus to the metro station and there is a metro stop literally metres away from the Circus Hotel.

Pick your museums - there are so many! We chose to visit the Pergamon and the Hamburger Bahnhof museums whilst there. DH chose a Flak Tower tour which was extremely interesting if nerdy. Definitely the Reichstag and the Holocaust Memorial. Personally, I thought the Panoramapunkt was overrated, as was the overpriced drinks/cake in the cafe up there. We bought the Berlin Card and used the discount for the theatre whilst we were there and saw a rather weirdly, exotic 'The One Grand Show' with costumes designed by Jean Paul Gaultier. (Made the most of a childfree weekend!)