Berlin is full of historic and artistic content, and it needs more than just a few days. The people, the culture and the food are all a bit too much, but when it comes to the places you need to be, these are the ones:
- Hecksher Markt is a beautiful open place where markets take place on the weekends and there are shops and dining places everywhere. If venturing a bit more outward from just the market place right off the S-bahn, there will be more shops, but duck into the alleyways and feast upon art that ranges from modern to classical. Also in Hecksher Markt is the Berlin Anne Frank Museum.
2. Museum Island houses basically the biggest and more powerful museums in all of Germany. Located on the East Side of Berlin, it is stationed on an island as the Spree River goes around it, cutting through the outside with the Spreekanal. Here is an amazing cathedral alongside the Altes Museum (Old Museum), Neues Museum (New Museum), Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Bode Museum and Pergamon Museum. The complex was added UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites in 1999.
3. Deutsches Historisches Museum (Germany History Museum) is another museum, and it is the best when it comes to Germany history. (It, oddly, is not located on Museum Island.) There are traveling exhibits too, but this museum shows all of the history when it comes to Germany, starting from clan days to the rules of the many royal families into the World Wars and onto the Cold War and Fall of the Berlin Wall. Taking a truthful way to history, art mixes in to create a scene of a country that has learned from its past.
4. Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate) is a place all tourists must and will go. While there it may just be a gate and it is one large tourist attraction, if traveling to Berlin, the gate should be on the list. Breathless and with an unique history, to whatever else does and take a selfie with it.
5. Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is haunting with 2,711 slabs of concrete that distinctly look like coffins. All of this is for Berlin’s Holocaust remembrance. Walking down, the lanes are narrow and the path uneven, and it is easy to get lost. The concrete will soon tower over and every step taken is just another place to get lost. Underneath is an information center, where about three million names of murdered Jews are shown, many with stories. Don’t forget to bring the tissues.
6. Soviet War Museum in the Tiergarten (on the West Side) is a cemetery, where about 2000 Soviet Union soldiers are buried. The Soviet Union lost about 26.2 million people, which includes the 8.7 million soldiers. Just in Berlin, the Soviet Union lost 80,000 soldiers. Built on the West Side of Berlin, Soviet and eventual Russian soldiers stood guard at the memorial site until a few years ago.
7. Buddy Bears, on a happier note, is another thing to keep an eye out for, as they end up being everywhere. As a mascot, they are usually painted and posted within train stations and other places of significance. It is a happiness, and to take a picture with them makes a tourist, but they are cute nonetheless.
8. Reichstag, or easier known as Germany’s parliamentary building, is beautifully done with major history. Built when Germany was finally unified in 1871, the parliamentary building has stood through the wars, somewhat. Before World War II, it was burned down, and thus, Adolf Hitler never gave a speech inside, and it is quite a happiness for the German people, saying this is their building, not his. The old building still stands, but after the burning and then the occupation from the Soviet Union soldiers, who left graffiti on the walls and is now worn as art, is a mixture of old architecture and new. More art pieces lie inside. Best known for it’s clear dome, it is so that there is transparency to German people.
9. Alexanderplatz is much like New York’s Time Square or London’s Piccadilly Circus where there is a lot of shopping and a lot of people. Surrounded by restaurants and street performers, there is not a dull moment. May I suggest a shopping trip at Primark or one of the other incredibly cheap stores?
10. East Side Gallery is cheap and a nice walk-- oh, and it has great art. On the east side of the Berlin Mauer, which has mostly been destroyed, is large and famous pieces of art. While the famous painting of the kiss between Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker still stands, there are numerous of paintings to get lost in and amazing pictures to take as well.
