B E R L I N
BERLIN TRAVEL OVERVIEW
The unlikely capital of Germany, Berlin is a heady mix of history, culture, and turmoil. Once the third largest city in the world in the 1920s, Berlin is steeped in a rich past marked by the scars of war and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
An eclectic and a peculiar mix of wild nightlife and exasperatingly tedious & dysfunctional bureaucracy and public policy, this is a capital in constant transformation, still working out what its final form might be.
Here's what we think should form the core of your experience:
20th Century German History
Some of the most important events of the 20th Century occurred here, or on the outskirts of Berlin, in Potsdam, shaping the world we live in today.
The visitor to Berlin is well-served spending at least a bit of time visiting some of the key historical sites related to the Second World War, the Berlin Wall, and the Cold War, and reflecting on how precious our fragile freedoms from tyranny, and authoritarian madness actually are.
Even before the havoc of the 20th Century though, it’s worth considering Berlin’s role from both a European sense, and also from the perspective of it being the centre of the Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment) and by extension one of, if not the most important Jewish cities in Europe.
All while objectively being a cultural backwater in the middle of nowhere, quite disconnected from many of the most important central European narrative threads.
Berlin's Fine Art Collections & High Culture
Woefully ignored when compared to other big European cities, Berlin’s museums boast exceptional collections of works by the German Romantics, Impressionists, 1920s Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) artists, and the second largest collection of Sandro Botticelli paintings in the world, next to Florence’s Uffizi.
There are also nine orchestras, three operas, and incredible archeological collections to discover, even with the current closure of the Pergamon museum.
The spectacularly re-built Neues Museum is the work of architect David Chipperfield, whose design hand has shaped much of the Museum Island compex, and surprising other bits of the city—a Valentino boutique in the affluent West Berlin district of Charlottenburg, for example.
Here the curious visitor can visit most famously the bust of Queen Nefertiti, the sublimely beautiful symbol of the bizarre religious shifts of Ancient Egypt's 18th Dynasty, along with facimilies of the Treasure of Priam, the originals largely having been escorted off to Russia after the second world war.
Hip Berlin Neighbourhoods, Cuisine, Nightlife
This is a city with incredibly strong neighbourhood identities. Each has a different flavour, and your experience can be completely different depending on what you enjoy. There are also many wonderful local markets and flea markets to explore.
Berlin nightlife is legendary. While it’s certainly not as wild and unhinged as it was in the 1990s and early 2000s, in some ways that’s perhaps a good thing, with the addition of upscale cocktail bars to the milieu of bars, all-night nightclubs, and full-on techno palaces.
Berlin's food scene has developed in leaps and bounds in the past few years, and now boasts a wide variety of international offerings, from Neapolitan pizzas, to fantastic northern Chinese noodles from Xi’an, to ubiquitous Turkish cooking.
There are now also more than a few very impressive produce-centric restaurants that have opened, featuring a contemporary look at more local German cooking, many of which are well worth exploring.
It is important to note that you do really need to know what to look for to have a spectacular dining experience at any part of the price or style spectrum, as the average still leaves something to be desired.
Any of our guides will be able to point you in the right direction though and make sure you have a sublime dining experience.