Places to visit in Berlin

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Hi everyone,

To those who have visited/live in Berlin, where do you recommend visiting? I'm going there for New Years' this year!

[Leftbehind]

[Lief 🗽]

The best meal in the world: http://www.yelp.com/biz/mustafas-gem%C3%BCse-kebap-berlin

[minionofmidas]

Leftbehind's suggestion was not serious, but it might have been. It is a fairly cool part of town.

What do you look for in a city? What do you want to see?

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Hahahahaha, good one (assuming this was a joke post)

The best meal in the world: http://www.yelp.com/biz/mustafas-gem%C3%BCse-kebap-berlin

If I manage to visit this place (I really want to after looking it up and reading the reviews), I will let you know what I think, as I love a good kebab.

Leftbehind's suggestion was not serious, but it might have been. It is a fairly cool part of town.

What do you look for in a city? What do you want to see?

I'm mainly asking for major tourist attractions, I know when I'm there I want to visit various locales David Bowie visited/stayed at while he was living in Berlin, and obviously I want to visit the Berlin Wall.

[minionofmidas]

The Berlin Wall? You're 24 years late, sorry. Yeah, there's some preserved bits in two places I think but really. Not worth it.

Locales David Bowie visited? The (then) seedier-but-happening parts of West Berlin? Outside of East Kreuzberg (nothing was happening in Neukölln at the time) they've been sliding back to their native place as humdrum inner suburbia (uh... what Australians or Brits would consider an inner suburb. Dull urban, basically.) ever since 1989.

[Lief 🗽]

Not worth it? Don't listen to grumpy old Lewis, the East Side Gallery is rad.

[Tender Branson]

I was in Berlin with a (girl) friend of mine in 2005 and it was really great.

I remember that we went for a walk down the Spree and towards the Chancellor-building (Schröder was still Chancellor then in late June and just announced that he would seek a confidence-vote). So we went over to the Hauptbahnhof, which was nearby, but still very much under construction then. Then we went to the Bundestag and chilled out in front of there at the park because it was really hot. Then we went to East Berlin (which has really cheap hostels, but still good quality) and watched the graffities there. Then we talked to a few homeless people, who were at the S-Bahn trainstations with their dogs. Then we went to a huge Cinema at the Alexanderplatz or so and watched the premiere of War of the Worlds. Then we went to some Chinese shop full of porcellain and other stuff. Then we went to the Chinese to eat something. And to the Victory Column, where Obama gave his speech later. Then we went into some park there and to the Soviet tank monument, Checkpoint Charlie etc. etc.

Then we went to Amsterdam and Paris, Marseille, Genova and back home.

Like 90% of my former high-school class at that year went to Turkey though for a "spring-break"-like event (which in Austria is traditionally done after the senior-classes end in June and not during spring).

[memphis]

The trouble with Berlin is that it was so thoroughly destroyed in WWII. Most of it is postwar reconstruction, and not in the cute painstakingly accurate way that so many European cities were rebuilt. Berlin has an extremely fun nightlife though. 
Tourist sites worth seeing:




The formerly Communist side is also good to see a contrast in architecture if that appeals to you. Unsurprisingly, the Soviets believed very strongly in the value of urban planning.

[minionofmidas]

Eastern Bloc 50s / early 60s architecture beats the crap out of Western Bloc 50s to 70s architecture. In just about any regard you could possibly imagination.

Then again, what architecture doesn't?

[Хahar 🤔]

I'm partial to Stalinist architecture, personally.