Organising cheap trip to Berlin with kids - late November - tips and tricks?

[daughtersdayout]

My DDs school is shut for 2 days over November, giving us a long weekend, so I am thinking of planning a very cheap, last minute trip, potentially Berlin (or similar) to see WW2 sites.

I'm a single mum and and I have 3 DDs age 16, 14 and 11, my budget will be super-tight - I would like the trip to be around £1.5k all in.

Happy to stay at airbnbs and be self-catering, I think that will help loads. Any other tips to keep costs down? Any must-see places to visit?

I am hoping there are good free entry places to visit but I am happy to spend on good museums/sites whilst we are there.

You can visit the Bundestag (parliament ) for free - an interesting building in its own right and you can do it at your own pace. www.bundestag.de/en/visittheBundestag/dome/registration-245686

Thank you, this sounds great!

the Topography of Terror museum is good - and free. It tells the story of the SS, so can be quite hard. but might be worth a look as your kids are older?
I've not been to Berlin for years, but it's a fascinating city. walking along the parts of the Berlin Wall that have survived- and are now protected would also be good

Love Berlin! But the museums aren’t free 🤷‍♀️

You can get a lot out of just wandering about. The Bundestag is worth going into. The Brandenburg Gate is worth seeing. I love the museums on Museum Island (the Nefertiti bust, lots of ancient Middle Eastern artefacts). Lots of contemporary art if that is your thing. DS loved the Natural History museum (dinosaurs) and the Tierpark (which is enormous). The zoo (which is different to the Tierpark) and the aquarium are also good for children.

Mostly I just like hanging out in Berlin though. Walking and getting a coffee, and browsing the shops. Riding on the trams and seeing the remnants of the wall. We usually get an Airbnb in Kreuzberg but anywhere close to a tube station will be accessible.

We took our kids a few years ago. I think the only thing I prebooked/paid for in terms of sightseeing was the Reichstag. We just walked around a lot & took public transport. We got some sort of very cheap group ticket but public transport may be free now?

book the Reichstag well in advance - we left it until a week before and all the slots were gone for our dates.

Holocaust memorial and visitor centre is free IIRC. East Side Gallery is free and very insta-friendly. Jewish museum main collection is free, with a small charge for adults but not kids for temporary exhibitions. Eating out cheaply is ridiculously easy, but we did rely on the Lidl near the Jewish museum for breakfast and snacks.

I took my 2 dd last year - 3 nights I think it was £1k all in. We did hotel and flights via easyJet. There is a museum that has a replica of East German apartment. That was great. Other than that we did loads of walking. You can also design your own Ritter sport bar at the Ritter shop - that was a hit!

Topography of Terror is very good for older kids. We didn't find it super expensive.

Adding the Wall memorial at Bernauer Strasse - very moving - I think the visitor centre is free as well. And the Grenzerfahrungen museum of the border crossing point at Friedrichstrasse certainly used to be free.

The Blindenwerkstatt Otto Weidt is free: https://www.museum-blindenwerkstatt.de/en/first-of-all/

I recommended the Roads Not Taken exhibition at the Deutsches Historisches Museum to someone else on here with similar-aged children and IIRC it went down well. It costs 7 euro for adults and under-18s are free. https://www.dhm.de/en/visit/admission-and-tickets/

If you're near a station on the Stadtbahn (Friedrichstrasse, Alexanderplatz - not so much Zoo, it's being revamped atm) you can get bakery stuff, incl hot things, cheaper than the mainstream bakeries at Backwerk, and Yorma's does takeaway coffees for less than the usual prices.

Call me old fashioned but I do like a guidebook. We used this one for a recent Berlin trio and it was fab.https://www.dk.com/uk/book/9780241419113-dk-eyewitness-top-10-berlin/

Berlin has lots of hostels which might be priced favourably compared to an Airbnb. Try the Meininger chain for example.
https://www.meininger-hotels.com/en/

This aparthotel is lovely and in a great location. https://www.staycity.com/wilde/berlin/checkpoint-charlie

Berlin is a fascinating place, there is WW2 history but my DC found the idea of the divided city more interesting.

As others have said, the Reichstag is free but you need to book in advance. You can go and see the Brandenberg gate and the Holocaust Memorial which are nearby.

Topography of Terror is free (but a bit dry) as is the Tranenpalast or Palace of Tears, a station that was in both East and West.

You can go and look at the remains of the Berlin Wall at the East Side Gallery

The DDR museum is quite cheap. It has a mock up of a Communist era apartment, a Trabant to sit in and lots of everyday things from that time.

We always rely on Lonely Planet books. The best place to go for Ww2 history was the German History museum. It’s closed for renovation but some exhibits are in the Pei building so see what’s on. The DDR museum is worth seeking out and the Checkpoint Charlie museum is worth a look. None are free though. There is a holocaust museum too. The Reichstag building is fantastic but book to get a slot. There are some fragments of the Berlin Wall standing too.

The Berlin Welcome Card is worth looking at - you can choose how many days you want it to last and it gives unlimited travel from the airport and around Berlin plus discounts on some of the museums etc. Berlin Welcome Card | Get Public Transport & Discounts (berlin-tickets.com)

There's a fair bit you can do that is free. The Reichstag dome is well worth a visit but must be booked in advance. We loved the open air memorial wall museum - it's a about a mile long a with lots to see along the way and gives a really good perspective of the divided city. There are loads of very insta-worthy places in Prenzlauerberg near the end of the walk which might interest your teens, plus a massive and very popular flea market in Mauer Park on a Sunday.

For a quick cheap lunch there are lots of bratwurst stalls around and some cheaper options in /around the stations too.

We stayed with BenSimon apartments and they were prob the best Airbnb we’ve stayed in. The location was in Wedding but was very easy to get around. We also did a free walking tour which you tip at the end and it was fabulous. We got well priced flights with EasyJet so it was a reasonably cheap few days. Love Berlin and so did the teenagers.

A lot of museums are free on the first Sunday of the month. You will need to book tickets and they go on sale on particular days before hand. Look up Museum Sonntag. Actually they go on sale in 3 days time for Sunday 5th nov.

We stayed at a very reasonable hotel called City Pension Berlin. It's in Charlottenburg, very central. Our room was 4 single beds with ensuite bathroom. Breakfast is included and very generous and great variety for fussy kids. Lidl and other German supermarkets are around the corner on wilmersdorf st along with a good McDonald and a burger king.

We loved the computer games museum, the spy museum and the tv tower best of all. Not free but reduced with Berlin welcome card.

I see no one has yet mentioned the weather. We went the first weekend in December and it was minus 7 during the day. Even though we thought we were prepared for cold weather it was too much for spending the day outside. Usually we like to wander about a city, bus/train around places of interest but after a couple of hours we needed a thorough warm up before we could start again.

Highly unlikely to be that cold in November. There is the potential of a cold snap, yes, but they're increasingly rare. The last properly cold winter here was 2017/18. Climate change is kicking in here too. The forecast to the middle of the month is showing daytime temps in high single and low double figures.

If you do an AirBnB, go for one of the somewhat less fashionable areas (although tbh gentrification is spreading right across Berlin atm) - so Wedding, Moabit, Pankow, possibly Schöneberg or Tempelhof (a bit less central but very quick and easy S- or U-Bahn trip to the centre) rather than Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain, where the owners will be slapping on a premium for the district name. Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf and Friedenau are also nice, but quite sedate. Neukölln is practically Kreuzberg these days, and the less trendy bits are too far out.