Thought I would give a summary of a trip to Berlin.
Thursday:
Three of us took an Ryanair flight from London Stansted to Schoenfeld airport. We randomly met a British guy on the flight who happened to be a Segway tour guide for Berlin, who advised that we take the 171 bus (driver sold us a ticket for €3 that lets you use all public transport for the next 2 hours) to Rudow station, and then used the U and S bahn system to get to our destination - Wittenbergplatz. From there we found our hotel - Holiday Inn - which was charging about £25 a night per person for sharing a double room of decent quality with buffet breakfast included. We finished checking in around 11:30pm, by which point we were so hungry but almost everything was closed so opted for vegetarian burgers at McDonalds (€1 a burger!).
The next morning we returned to Wittenbergplatz and bought a 2 day Berlin Welcome card for €16. These cards give you unlimited use of public transport and discounts on various tourist entry fees, and seem to be easy to use - you can get them for different numbers of days for different zones (most tourist stuff is in zones A and B, you won't need zone C except to get back to schonefeld airport). What we did not realise was that the 2 day card did NOT include what we thought it did, which was the free pass to Museum Island. For that, you need to spend about €34 for the 3 day card. You need to validate the card the first time you use it - look for little free standing machines near station entrances where you feed the ticket in to get it stamped in the appropriate square. These cards come with a guide book as well.
We then explored the area, inluding the Kurfurstendamm road, and entered the Story of Berlin museum (getting a 25% discount with our Berlin card). It's a nice overview of Berlin's history but it is a bit overwhelming - there is a little bit TOO much text to read. Unfortunately the tour of the nuclear bunker requires a guide, and the one in English was at 12pm. Since we wanted to get going by 11am, we decided to not hang around for it.
Afterwards we headed for Potsdammer Platz (where my friends paid several € to have their passports stamped with apparently authentic stamps showing they had passed through what used to be west and east berlin) and then to the Holocaust Memorial. We did not enter the museum underground but just saw the outside - the memorial is stark, composed of blocks of stone, almost like a graveyard.
Nearby was the Brandenburg Tor (gate) and the square which is a nice place to take your tourist photos, and where we met our friend who joined us, so now we were 4.
From there, 3 of us attempted to find a mosque for Friday Prayers. Now we DID research where to go before we came to Berlin - unfortunately no one thought to bring that research with them! We did eventually find a new Turkish mosque, right opposite Gorlitzer Bahnhof on the U-bahn, sort of on Wiener Strasse road. They serve food in the basement level (€3.50 for a yummy meatwrap + drink). Sadly we got there a little too late for the Jummu'ah prayers but we did speak to a very friendly man who kept us company while we ate lunch, who apparently learnt to speak English from watching Oprah Winfrey shows.
We had left our non muslim friend to wait at the Topography of Terror, which is not the most imaginatively designed museum - it's basically a very large room with lots of displays, information plaques and photos, but it does tell the very grim story of just how brutal the Nazi regime was and how they methodically and brutally destroyed Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and any other people they decided did not deserve to live along the Master Race.
From there we went past Checkpoint Charlie, the infamous crossing point between the east and west, and skipped the museum (would have been €9 with our Berlin card). We saw AlexanderPlatz (a large public square). Nearby is the impressive TV Tower, the largest structure in Berlin (apparently there is a revolving restaurant at the top).
We then headed for Museum Island, where several large museums are located.
We opted for the biggest and most famous, the Pergamon, named after the main feature taken from the eponymous Greek temple. There are several impressive rebuilt temple structures, and rebuilt walls taken from Babylon. Was v tiring getting through it all. We spent about €12 a ticket since we did NOT have the benefit of the museum card in our Welcome Berlin card.
Exhausted from that, we managed to bump into the man from the Easyjet flight, who suggested a place to eat. We went (I think!) to Frankfurter Tor station and then wandered about along Frankfurter Allee for a while looking for the restaurant he recommended (there are quite a few in the area). Eventually by chance, not his directions, we found it - a decent thai restaurant called Lemongrass which I think is near a side street called Niederbarnimstrasse.
(http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d1343118-r95213435-Lemongrass-Berlin.html).
It was quite reasonable price, tasty food (and suitable for non-meat eaters such as muslims who cant find halal meat, or hindus).
Saturday:
First we went to find the nearby Kaiser Wilhelm cathedral which was destroyed in World War 2 and rebuilt. We couldn't find it - because it is hidden under scaffolding! But what is left is very beautiful, and the replacement is also serene and beautiful inside, if somewhat plain and functional on the outside. The old cathedral contains an iron cross from Coventry, exchanged in partnership to underline how the Germans and British inflicted so much pain and destruction upon one another, and hopefully we will never see that done again.
We went to see the Reichstag, which houses the German parliament the Bundestag, where we queued in the freezing weather for almost half an hour before finding out that unless you book a week in advance to have security checks, you will NOT be allowed in! This is a recent development so wasn't in any online review or guidebook we read :(
Frozen to the bone, we walked to the Brandenburg Tor again, and saw a sign for a vegetarian restaurant which was apparently 600m away. There is a little cluster of restaurants and shops behind the Holocaust Memorial, and behind that is the vegetarian Thai restaurant, Samadhi. Food was very tasty, portions were ok, had a main course and ginger tea (to soothe my throat after standing outside in the freezing cold) for about €15.
After that we wandered around different areas like the Karl Marx forum and the Gendarmenmarkt, and eventually made it to the DDR museum which is near the Berliner Dom cathedral. It's an interactive museum all about East Berlin under soviet rule, and cost about €8 to get in (we didn't realise we could have saved €2 with our Berlin card). There are lots of displays, cabinets, cars to sit in, an interrogation room, touchscreen games etc.
We decided to avoid any more museums after that. For some crazy reason we went all the way to the Olympic stadium, which was creepy as it was pitch black when we go there, and there was a car parked with two guys sitting in it, doing.... nothing, it seemed. We took some pictures and then headed back to town. We went to Savignyplatz station, where there are many restaurants, and opted for Apostles, which serves some rather LARGE pizzas for about €12 each.
Full of food, we went home.
Sunday - a taxi cost us about €35 from central Berlin to Schoenfeld airport around 9am in the morning, took less than 30 minutes. Our flight was delayed, but we arrived in Luton Airport. From there, our prebooked EasyBus ticket (£2 online) got us back to central London, we decided to get off at Baker street to get the tube home.
Overall: Berlin is a nice city, full of friendly and helpful people. I was rather worried as a muslim about where we would eat. We did not spot any halal restaurants other than in the mosque which served a v basic meal, but there were plenty of fish or vegetarian options so it was fine. We managed on a budget of about €15 a meal. In terms of things to do , I would rate it lower than Lisbon or Barcelona or Paris. It didn't help that the weather was absolutely freezing even in early March. The underground U and S Bahn are easy to use, and not too expensive.
