That's a shame. Oh well, haste ye back !

Caroline. 2006 is over but it's now 2007 and i'm off to Berlin in a few days for three days. Wasn't planning on going there in winter but it's been a balmy winter with temps in 50s all winter it seems.

Anyway i'm looking forward to visiting Sachenhausen (not the right word for a concentration camp), Stasi Museum, Wannssee Conference Villa and walk thru Babelberg park...and some other things new and old.

Hi PalQ. Have a great time ! I'll look forward to your further insights are we are going again in March.

caoline - thanks. the real reason i'm going is to see the new Central Station - i'm a rail nut and have to see this glass palace and see whether the critics are right or those who rave about it - at least in my terms.

Mm, I'm sure we'll go & see that too, and it will be particularly interesting to see what we think compared to the comments on this thread, which of course I'll be printing off to pore over en route to Berlin !

I think we walked past it on our way to the Hamburger Bahnhof which we thought was great & will be revisiting.

And we just yesterday booked our tour of the Sammlung Hoffmann, which was the highlight of our last trip. Well, maybe apart from the (sp?) schweinhaxe

Where do you live, Bob ? It's snowing here !

It's beginning to look as though I might also be visiting Berlin in late March - with my younger daughter for her spring break. She's studying German and actually took a course last semester on Berlin.

This thread is a gold mine, and will come in very handy as we plan our trip. I also enjoyed the Berlin trip reports of Caroline, Michelle and Steph. (Caroline, you have already given me some advice on my other planned March trip to Cardiff and London!)

We will have around 8 days on the ground, and we are considering a second destination in addition to Berlin - maybe a few days in Hamburg. An alternative could be Dresden, I suppose.

given a choice between Hamburg [large city with port, nothing special] and Dresden [not far from Berlin, beautiful city with ancient buildings by the score], I know which I'd choose!

Ah- four days in Berlin. Heaven to me. Went to look mainly at the new central train station but also did some things i've never done:
Sachenhausen Memorial Camp
Babelsburg Park walk
Schonberg City Hall (venue of JFK speech)
New Holocaust Memorial
Went again on a day trip to Lutherstadt-Wittenberg, now only about 45 mins from Berlin by train from the new station

And of course walked and walked around.

THE NEW HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL
The new Holocaust Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate, and abutting right up to the new fortress-like American Embassy being built, left me with mixed reviews.
Though it gets kudos for simplicity - a series of undulating stone slabs spread over a few acres. You can walk thru the maze and the ground also undulates so it's kind of like a roller-coaster.
But that's it - just did not move me all that much, except for the idea behind it of course.
I did not get a chance to go down to the subterranean Visitors Centre and see what displays were there as it had always just closed by the time i got there twice.
The site is always open up above - no fence and wondering around the tall slabs at night is rather surreal.
Anyone else have any impressions of the new memorial, whose planning sparked controversy amidst Berlin officials as to whether this was the proper place or thing to do here.

Hi, Palenque - we are going back tomorrow ! So I'll let you know what I thought, next week

Caroline- i'd like your impression of the new Central Station - i was awed by it but it left me with a sterile feeling - too much like a shopping mall and not enough like a train station.

None of the wurst kiosks, etc. that pepper most large German stations, just sleek cafes, etc.

Loved the building, left cold by its interior. Yet a hubbub of activity with trains on two levels constantly coming and going.

Hi Palenque. We experienced the new station twice, first arriving by S bahn into the top level platforms and then arriving at the outside by bus, grabbing a quick snack inside then walking to the Hamburger Bahnhof.

Arriving by train I was quite impressed by the high, light and modern glass train shed which seemed to be in the shape of a cross. The rest of the station seemed fairly so-so (why does everything have to become basically a shopping mall these days ??) but quite liked the grey tree-like pillars and the circular glass lifts rising and falling through the different levels. I'm glad they didn't follow the common route of thinking they had to paint elements like the pillars in bright nursery colours. From inside I wasn't aware of any imbalance.

When arriving by bus, however, it looked quite different, with the purity of the train sheds cluttered by the square shaped elements (offices ?) built around them. I noted then that the cross-shaped train sheds seemed actually to be in the shape of a Christian cross - so would the shorter (top) bit be the part that was truncated ? Sorry, not explaining myselfd very well, but hopefully you'll know what I mean.

It seems not to have a U bahn element, which seems a bit of an omission ? Or is that still being built ?

WRT one of your earlier comments, I have a theory to explain the description of Auguststrasse as Berlin's "most storied street". I think this was probably a mistranslation of "most galleried street", meaning the one with the most art galleries rather than the most stories or layers.

I'll add a note of the things we saw for the first time or which were different to the last time to my own previous trip report.

Caroline - great report. Not sure about the U-Bahn, haven't heard but the S-Bahn on the top level has many U-Bahn interchanges at other stations.

I guess one faux pas with the new station is rather inexplicable to me, a lack of enough easily accessible bathrooms - not talking about handicapped-access but that there seems to be only one, on the middle shopping mall level i believe and this has been heavily criticized by Germans as poor planning.

But though i find the station rather cold as opposed to the typical hectic German Hauptbahnhof (like Leipzig where i also went) with lots of Wurst stands, etc right by the tracks. Rather it seems suburban shopping mall is the feeling.

But it's still a great train shed!

Our map showed a short U-bahn route, U55, that just goes from Unter den Linden to Reichstag to Hauptbahnhof, but we noticed that the stations at the Reichstag were all closed, so we were unable to take that line. I think you'd have to take the U-bahn to Alexanderplatz Bahnhof or the Zoologischer Garten Bahnhof to connect to the S-bahn.

Author: WillTravel
Date: 05/08/2007
Here's an English-language web site about it:
http://tinyurl.com/2plzn3

This is the prison the Stasi used. Has anyone visited the complex, in the Lichtenburg district?

It's possible to take tours in English:
http://tinyurl.com/2pssds

thanks Will for kindly permitting me to copy this here. Always looking for new things to entice me back to Berlin.

The name of the prison in the post just above is Hohenschönhausen prison in east Berlin.

We were deeply moved by the new holocaust memorial. There were 4 in our group--we spent some time wandering around and through the memorial. Each of us came up with a different interpretation of what those cold, stark blocks might represent. All of us (ranging in age from 24 to 61) ended up being very impressed and moved by the experience.

From my January Berlin trip:

SCHONEBERG & JFK PLATZ

I had long had a curiosity to visit the venue of JFK's famous Ich ein Berliner (sp?) speech from about 1962 - "We all are Berliners" speech that supposedly really said we are all Berliners - or the famous Berliner jelly donoughts!

anyway i traipsed around this fairly busy commercial area looking for the Rat House (or City Hall - i love that name for city hall!) and finally found it. But saw nothing about JFK inside - though there is an excellent museum devoted to Willy Brandt.

So looking around outside i finally found a JFK Platz, on west side of building if i remember right and figured he must have spoken there. But no big deal i could see to commemorate it, but since it was at night (about 5pm in Jan) i couldn't really see much.

One thing i did discover here was the Volkspark - a very long narrow park that looked very inviting.

I kept reading about PalQ's Berlin trip report...now that I found it I'm bookmarking for possible Berlin trip next fall.

thanks wekiva!

Current post about Berlin had some info i cannot help coyping - thanks Cowboy1968 hope you don't mind!

Author: Cowboy1968
Date: 11/12/2007, 04:28 pm
Some "guy stuff" that may not bore your boyfriend:

The Airforce Museum
http://www.luftwaffenmuseum.com/inde...e&Itemid=1

The Allied Forces Museum
http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/en/0.php

Guided tours of the "Berlin Underworlds"
http://berlinerunterwelten.de/en/002/002.htm

Self-driven city tour in a convoy of "Trabis", the (in)famous GDR compact car
http://www.trabi-safari.de/?lang=eng