Advice on Transportation - Berlin
 

I am researching travel cards for Berlin. My plan is to visit in June and spend 4 days there including a day trip to Dresden if possible. I am considering a Berlin Pass (3 days) or a Berlin Welcome Card (3 days) for zones A, B, and C with 50% discount on sights. The Berlin Pass offers many more benefits for the 99 euros but I am not sure I would get my monies worth. The Welcome Card seems much more useful. Advice?

If you really DO go to some of the attractions discounted then perhaps. When we are in Berlin we usually use the U-Bahn machines to buy single or sometimes full-day transport tickets and that is very easy to do.

Thank you Dukey1. I appreciate the advice. I just don't think I want to be that strict about my schedule. If you have any other tips on visiting Berlin I would love to hear them. I plan to start:
Day 1 Fly to Warsaw
Day 2 Arrive
Day 3 Spend time in Old City
Day 4 Train to Krakow
Day 5 and 6 - Krakow
Day 7 Fly to Berlin
Day 8 and 9 in Berlin
Day 10 Day trip to Dresden
Day 11 Berlin - Potsdam
Day 12 fly home

Stasut,
I'm still finishing up a London trip report on my blog but I'll be moving on to Berlin and should have a report before your trip in June, hopefully even before the end of the year!

We opted for the 3 day Museum Pass which was an incredibly good deal if your planning to see a number of museums on your trip.WE bought a transport pass separately . Normally I don't bother with museum passes in Europe (they are often very expensive) but this one is really well worth it. We were equally confused about whether to go for the Museum Pass or the Welcome card which offers transport and museum discounts. In the end we opted to buy our transportation sportily and it worked for us. We were in Berlin for eight days and were able to spend three days on Museums and then focus on history/neighborhoods/ walking tours for the rest of the time.

It also depends on how much you will use the transportation, as Dukey mentioned it's easy to use. We roamed all over the city using the trains, trams and U-bahn, S-Bahn, buses and trams, it was very convenient to have a pass and it worked for us as we bought one for seven days. As usual we found the city Mapper App helpful but also downloaded the official Berlin Transport App which worked well.


The Berlin Pass doesn't seem worth it to me unless you're definitely going to do a ton of museums PLUS things like the Hop on Hop off bus AND the Fat Bike tour. I think these sort of all inclusive passes get you to pay money for things you're not going to do or they dictate what you'll do once you get them. If I opted for the pass I'd be running ragged doing things just to get value from it and that doesn't sound like much of a vacation, but I can see that for some people it could work IF it covers the things you were already planning to do.

I'd recommend the Slow Travel Berlin blog for lots of recommendations on exhibitions and restaurants. they run some excellent small group walking tours which we can recommend and they're very helpful via email. WE took a couple of walks with them but particularly enjoyed the Street Art walking tour
http://www.slowtravelberlin.com

I also enjoyed a Christopher Isherwood walk we went on which talked about Berlin in the 1920's.
http://www.cabaret-berlin.com/?p=482

Hope this helps, there are so many incredible museums in Berlin it's hard to know where to begin with the recommendations!

thanks for the report!