Quick Tips On What To Do in Berlin

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Parent Category: Travel Info

Category: Travel Feature

Published on Sunday, 14 February 2010 00:36

Written by Laura Blum

My German was schlect, but I could deduce from the "Willkommen in Ost-Berlin" sign that the east side of the breached Berlin Wall was now open for business. Was it ever.

We're talking February 1990, the first time that the Berlin International Film Festival was held in both halves of the city, and the first time in 20 years that East and West Berlin reestablished cultural links. I had taken a day's break from the Zoo Palast cinema for a train ride across the former divide and a strut down übercool Unter den Linden.
 
The boulevard was a little cracked, but the optimism seemed inviolable.
 
If hope was the theme of that bracingly forward-cocked era, now, 20 years hence, the mood has somewhat thickened. The capital of Germany — eurozone's biggest economy — is braced for a drubbing, both by debt crisis and by unremitting snow.     
 
Of course, Berlin has been through considerably worse, and today's comparative blips won't keep her down. She remains a pulsing center of Kulture, Kaffeehäuses and Kitsch, and few places beat her for a smart mind bang.
 
Crammed among her 3.5 million residents and 341 square miles are myriad reasons to come visit (or to venture beyond the Kino, if you're already there for the Berlinale). Here are 10 of them:
 
Unter den Linden
You could do worse than to start, as I did, with Under the Limes. The east-west axis has pretty much all the check-list monuments for a walking history lesson, from the Hohenzollern dynasty, Weimar Republic and Third Reich on through to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). There's Greek antiquity to boot, what with that Acropolis Propylaea knock-off, the Brandenburg Gate.

Brandenburg Gate
Nothing says "national symbol" quite like Brandenburger Tor. During the Cold War it straddled no-man's land between East and West Germany. Also known as "The Gate of Peace," Berlin's triumphal arch was ground zero for celebrating the fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989, two centuries after Frederick William II of Prussia commissioned it as a giant peace sign. That victory goddess riding atop was filched by Napoleon's troops as war booty, but eventually restored after the French took their lumps.

To the north of Brandenburg Gate stands the Reichstag, seat of the German parliament; Tiergarten park sprawls westward; and Friedrichstrasse offers serious shopping in the south. Enthusiasts of ancient civilization should venture east to: 

Museum Island
A billion-euro renovation is underway of Berlin's best spot for museum hopping. Museum Island (Museuminsel) spans five historic buildings in the Mitte district, wedged between the River Spree and Kupfergraben. The centerpiece is the Pergamon Museum, which houses the Ishtar Gate from Babylon and the towering Altar of Zeus. For now it is Germany's most popular museum, but the recently reopened New Museum (Neues Museum), with its bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti, may soon inherit the boast.

Other islanders include the Old National Gallery (Alte Nationalgalerie), where key Impressionist and other 19th-century collections were consolidated after German reunification, and the Old National Gallery (Alte Nationalgalerie). Gobsmacked by its art and archeology, UNESCO added Museum Island to its roster of World Heritage Sites a decade ago.
Bodestraße 1-3
10178 Berlin
www.museen-berlin.de
 
Zoo-Aquarium
Tiergarten, mentioned above, translates as "Animal Garden" in German. Originally a royal hunting ground, it hosts the country's oldest and largest zoo. Giraffes, orang-utans and of course, Knut — the baby polar bear whose trademarking doubled the zoo's value at the Berlin Stock Exchange — count among the14,000 animals and 1,500 species padding around the Zoologischer Garten grounds.
 
A rhino's charge away is the aquarium. Its three-story menagerie contains endangered fish, amphibians, insects and reptiles lit artistically enough to win a cinematography prize at the Berlinale. (Most agree the crocodile hall is the showstopper.) Elsewhere lurk green iguanas, poison frogs and those smarter-than-the-average-invertebrates, octopuses.
Hardenberg Platz 8, Tiergarten
Budapester Straße 32
10787 Berlin
+49 030 25401-0
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Cultural Forum
A slightly longer rhino's charge away is the Cultural Forum (Kulturforum), a complex of museums, galleries and libraries. Heard of the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, perhaps? Or the New National Gallery, Mies van der Rohe's "temple of light and glass" housing the likes of Munch, Kirchner and Kokoschka? Surely Postdamer Platz, that gallery's famous street, rings a bell. The Cultural Forum was part of an ambitious development plan to stretch a "Mental Ribbon of Culture" across Berlin to the Museum Island. Sadly for the city and for architect Hans Bernard Scharoun, the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 laid to waste that modernist vision.
New National Gallery
Potsdamer Strasse 50
10785 Berlin
+49 30 266 2651
 
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
Ask a Berliner where the "lipstick and powder box" is, and they'll point you toward Breit-Scheidplatz on Kurfürstendamm. (That's Ku'damm for short, one of Berlin's most famous avenues.) You're looking for a church. So here's the story behind the cheeky moniker: The original 19th-century church on the site, a vast red-sandstone affair, caught hell during World War II, and its replacement preserved the remaining walls and neo-Romanesque spire as a reminder of war's lesser virtues. Architect Egon Eierman's avant-garde design includes an octagonal hall illuminated by colored glass bricks. Check out what remains of the west tower, mosaic and reliefs that survived the bombing, and the plaque marking the 20th anniversary of a plot to assassinate Hitler.
Breitscheidplatz
Kurfurstendamm
10789 Berlin
+49 (0) 30 218 5023
 
Alexanderplatz
Originally called Ochsenmarkt, or "ox market," Alexanderplatz was rechristened when Russian Tzar Alexander I visited in 1805. But you can call it "Alex." If you've read Alfred Döblin's modernist novel, Berlin Alexanderplatz, or seen Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 15+ hour screen adaptation, you may expect the square to be a hotbed of ex-cons. Arguably, though, its greatest offender is a TV tower. Known as the Fernsehturm or Tele-spargel (toothpick), this high point of socialist architecture became an icon of East Berlin. Also wearing the style are the World Time Clock (Weltzeituhr), by Erich John, and the Fountain of International Friendship (Brunnen der Internationalen Freundschaft), by Walter Womacka and other artists. All three of these Alexanderplatz landmarks were built in 1969. What were their architects smoking?
 
Berliner Ensemble
For some of the most cinematic work you'll see during the Berlinale, head over to the live stage of the Berliner Ensemble. Lars von Trier, Jean-Luc Godard and Hal Hartley are but three directors whose films are influenced by the German playwright, poet and theater director. One of the town's most venerated theaters, Berliner Ensemble carries on the tradition of Brecht and his wife and collaborator, Helene Weigel. Following their deaths, it expanded its repertoire to the plays of other dramatists, though you may get lucky and catch a performance of Mother Courage and Her Children or The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.
 Bertolt-Brecht-Platz 1
10117 Berlin
+49 (0)30 284-08-155
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http://www.berliner-ensemble.com/   
 
Reichstag
Unless you fell asleep in History 101, you know that the home of the German parliament (Bundestag), all but fried in 1933. The textbook on who started the fire remains to be written, though the Communists got fingered, and Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party would soon Sig Heil its way to power. The neo-renaissance building was further blighted when the Soviets entered Berlin at the end of the war. Even when you look at the Reichstag now, it can be tough to forget that shot of a Red Army Soldier hoisting the Soviet flag. The most recent renovation, by Sir Norman Foster, added a glass dome over the plenary hall. That was completed in 1999, the year the Reichstag once again became the seat of parliament, signaling the shift of the German capital from Bonn to Berlin. Part of the Reichstag is open to the public, and you can even walk up to the top of the dome.
Platz der Republik 1
11011 Berlin-Tiergarten
+49 227 32 152
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www.bundestag.de
 
Café Einstein Stammhaus
You can't leave Berlin without arguing philosophy at a café. Even if you don't do caffeine, come for some Apfelstrudel and 19th-century charm. There's plenty to consume among the red leather banquettes, parquet floors and hanging newspapers of this ultimate Berlin hangout that's actually Viennese. 
Kurfürstenstraße 58
10785 Berlin
+49 30 263919-0
www.cafeeinstein.com