Hello all!

I'm doing a class presentation on Berlin - lucky me! I've been there three times myself and have lived there for a brief period. As part of the presentation I need to contact people in groups or on travel forums. With so many people in this group, this seems like a place to start.

I'm curious why everyone loves Berlin. What are some of your favourite sites and activities within Berlin and why? Also, I'm looking for unique ideas about Berlin. Everyone know about the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag, but is there a hidden gem or a site that isn't as popular? Thanks for everyone's help! I look forward to the ideas since I'm bound to go there a fourth time. Please, be as long-winded and descriptive as you want!

Peter Fritzsche and Karen Hewitt's <u>Berlinwalks</u>, 1994 is still valid. It is perhaps best for the less touristy neighborhoods such as the Kreuzberg and the Prenzlauerberg area.

We enjoyed seeing the city by taking this tour: Fat Tire Bike Tours, http://fattirebiketours.com/berlin.

I always just seem to wander around. I had wanted to walk on Unter den Linden, which was in East Germany all those years, and after I visited the Neue Nationalgalerie--or is that the Alte Nationalgalerie--I never can remember--I crossed the street and realized I was on the Bebelplatz, where you can see the memorial to the book burning. It is under a heavy plastic window, a room filled with empty bookcases. Memorable.

Gregorich:
May I suggest a very unusual, one-of-a-kind site. There are Holocaust memorials all over the world, but the one I'm going to recommend is in Berlin, not well known, and not visited by too many tourists as far as I can tell. I can say this much..we were there alone, mid-week and a friend of ours to whom we suggested it was there a year later..same condition.

The <b>"Deportee Monument"</b> on the grounds of one of the many destroyed synagogues is best reached by taxi. I'm not sure of the public transportation avaialabities...on the corner of <u>Levetow and Jagow Strasse</u>..in the <u>Moabit District</u>. No admission fee. Chillingly dramatic. Here are three pics:

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuartto...61407651001794

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuartto...61453718804818

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuartto...61508491279074
Stu Tower

In the same vein...the museum at the Wanssee Mansion Conference Center. Between Berlin and Potsdam...short rail trip. If you are not familiar with the significance of this site, be sure to rent "The Conspiracy" movie with Kenneth Branagh, before hand. It will introduce you to the infamous conference held there on January 20, 1942, when the "final solution" was hammered out by 15 top-echelon Nazis...sealing the fate of millions. (Branagh plays Heydrich as the conference chairman. Eichmann was also present).

A sumptuous cocktail luncheon, and off-handed discussions of the "business at hand" follows. Nothing more than a corporation board meeting, giving quotas and marching orders to eliminate the "insidious Jewish problem" in their sales territories. As the world knows, they carried out their assignments all too well.

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuartto...63148436124930

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuartto...62828084942226

http://picasaweb.google.com/stuartto...62895520876578

It is a museum as well, with official documents concerning the aforementioned meeting, etc etc. And very informative curators and guides.The grounds are quite beautiful, as is the lake (Wannsee)...the imagery is nothing but paradoxical.

Stu Tower

A couple of my favorites

- The Pergamon museum - one of a kind antiquities
- The food court at KaDeWe (Kaufhaus Des Westens).

Link to report of our first two trips, in case it helps - http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...2&tid=34614269

I haven't got round to adding anything on our 3rd trip, this July for the Biennale, but we mainly visited art galleries and artist spaces and again our visit to the Sammlung Hoffmann was the highlight. Berlin really is the place to go for exciting contemporary art. A venue we visited for the first time this year was the Martin-Gropius-Bau for the wonderful Olafur Eliasson exhibition - which strangely (to us) had no queue at all, compared with the Frieda Kahlo exhibition for which the queue stretched through the building, down the steps and halfway along the street. I don't expect those are still on but it is evidently a place to watch for exciting exhibitions.

I gather the East Side Gallery has been restored since we were disappointed by it on our 2nd trip, but we didn't make it back.

Also see if you can find the ever-expanding and extremely useful trip report by PalQ / Palenque, which is where I have got a lot of tips.