Holiday reviews for Berlin

It was good

Berlin at Easter... how romantic! Well, actually Berlin was a pretty cool place to spend Easter. Without doubt, Berlin one of the most interesting large cities in Europe that I've been too, primarily for its recent history...

The signs of the old East-West split are still in evidence, and mostly it seems to have been remembered in a fairly sensitive way. Of course, there's the inevitable milking of Checkpoint Charlie etc., but on the whole the treatment of both the Communist and Nazi eras is sober enough.

You can still see some bits of the old East Germany, especially at the end of the main street called Unter den Linden. Here, you have some fairly spectacular old Prussian buildings (museums, cathedrals, universties, theatres etc. etc. all on the same street);, then there is a completely incongruous 'Palace of the Republic', which at my kindest I would call "bold modernism". Were I being less generous, I'd call it pig-ugly! It looks like an Arndale centre without the charm.

Outside of the city centre, the signs of the old Eastern bloc are a little more evident, but in a kind of charming way (not sure if Berliners would necessarily agree with this statement!);. In any event, they have spent an absolute fortune reintegrating the two sides of the city and modernising whole areas of the old East and former no-man's land.

One other thing which shocked me was the number of bulletholes in most old buildings. I suppose it shouldn't have surprised me, but it's one of those things that doesn't really hit home till you actually go to one of these kinds of places: Berlin was practically flattened during the war. In fact, it's amazing how much of the old architecture is left standing. I'm led to believe that some of the 'old' buildings have in effect been completely rebuilt since either 1945, or in a lot of cases, since the Wall came down. A good time to be a stone mason in Germany, methinks.

I wish I'd been there a few years ago, to see the 'before' picture, and I reckon if you have been before but not for a few years, then it'd definitely be a fascinating place to revisit. So much looks to have changed.

On a practical level, it's dead easy to get to on the plane, with two airports which are easier to get to than, say, Heathrow or Gatwick are from London. About two weeks after we went, EasyJet started up a service from Liverpool, which wouldv'e made it cheaper as well, I'm sure.

Needless to say, they have an integrated transport system which is cheapish and reliable when compared to anything in the UK.

We negotiated our own deal with the hotel which was not only pretty good value, but they also threw in a couple of extras like a free cheesy open top bus tour round the city, which was pretty interesting if you're into that kind of thing. I would never have known so much about Frederick the Great had it not been for the bus soundtrack!