My roommate told me Berlin was expensive as he went for 4 days I believe and spent something like 600 euros! I went there for 4 full days (1230pm Thursday to 6pm Sunday) and somehow only spent around 250 Euros. For this included
- Return Bus Ride
- Hostel for 3 Night
- Kebab Action X 6
- Pizza Hut Action X 3 (so so so so good)
- Curry Wurst
- Brotwurst X 2
- BBQ Bacon Burger Meal at some delicious Diner
- Alternative Pub Crawl which included entrance at 3 bars 2 bars / clubs and one final club, 4 free shots, and all for 10 euros
- Pub Crawl which had the same amount of bars and clubs but this time every time you bought a drink (beer, wine, vodka shot, anything!) you got a free shot of jager.... also the first 45 mins at the first bar there was unlimited beer.
- 2 Guided 4 hour tours
- 4 day Bus pass
The first day me Chris and Cindy arrived. We took transit to the Hostel and unpacked our stuff. The hostel was very nice, though there wasn’t to much social action going on while we were there. After we dropped off our stuff we walked around the zoo, and then saw some of the major attractions, the gate, the wall, and Checkpoint Charlie, and this brutal 10k walk (thanks alot CINDY!) we bought a 72 hour transit pass) and transited back to the dorms. That night we had a chill night and just hit up an Irish bar and walked around downtown for a bit.
The next day we meet up with Jay and company and hit up an Alternative Walking Tour. Some cool things we did on this tour, saw some of the best street art in the world (saw a apartment building in east Berlin which each balcony was decorated differently my favourite was the one with Zoidberg from Futurama, It was also cool that some guy came out wearing a backlova acting like a monkey for 10 seconds then saying “fuck off tourists!”.
Other cool things we saw in Berlin were alot of squatting locations (especially in the old bombed out central train station. If you don’t know what squatting is, is it is a program that Berlin has where anyone could take one of these old abondaned destroyed building and could have it is they made use of it positively for society. Ie:
- Do your art in this building and let people look at it
- Transform it into a bar and serve people alcohol here.
Bombed train station transformed from nothing to something (ex of squatting)
Other cool things we saw here included Yaam a beach in the middle of Berlin which use to be a Concentration camp i believe. The Turks people living in old tanks left behind by the Soviets after the Berlin wall came down, and the huge Tree house in the middle of central Berlin which is randomly protected by the Church.
-Tree house in the middle of the city (in the middle of a road)
That night we decided to continue all Alternativeness and hit up an Alternative Pub Crawl. This Pub crawl was awesome we went to bars like an Upside down bar, a Ping Pong Bar, and the Club in the old bombed out train building (also in this area there is 3 or 4 bars, a couple restaurants, a rock climbing wall, and the largest indoor skate park in Europe.) What was also cool with this pub crawl is the tour guide would tell us when to stop for road beer and such, overall it was a great night.
The Next day we went the largest zoo in Europe. This zoo is really cool as it is literally in the CENTRE of Berlin a city of 4 million people. Also what i liked about this zoo was that they had no gates, and instead they had ditches (so the animals couldn’t come over) Thus you could see the animals really close. That night we decided we must eat the world famous Mustahas Kebab before we headed to the next pub Crawl. Though when we went there we were greeted by a 1 hour line at this little kebab stand in the middle of the street, after waited 45 minutes we had to abandon our Mustahas Kebab hope for the evening as we had to make the next pub Crawl. We started the Pub crawl at Zampatas which is a super cool squatting area. After the pub crawl ended we tried to try our luck again at Mustahas but when we got there at 3am it had just closed.
We started our final day by headed to Mustafas bright and early. We had our first Kebab and it was soo delicious that me and Chris got another one for the road. (The secret for these Kebabs is they put roasted vegetables, Peppers, and potatoes in the Kebabs we got) That day we did another walking tour, the tour guide was really good and we got a real feeling of how life has been over Berlins history.
My favourite parts of this tour, were feeling the actual bullet holes from WWII in one of the last remaining buildings from WWII in Berlin. I also liked hearing the stories oh what people did to travel from east to west Berlin, for instance two guys dressed up as a cow and crossed from east to west with a farmers cows who he was selling to West Berlin. We decided to end the tour early so we could see the East Side Gallary. The East Side Galary is a section of the Berlin wall (1/2 remaining sections) Here there is a 1.4 km strip of murals from 120 artists from over 20 countries. Here are some of my favourite pieces.
All and all Berlin was an amazing city and i cant believe i might of almost missed the city this time in Europe.
Some thing to know about Berlin
1) The transit system in incredible, there is 6 – 8 metro and skytrain lines and it goes all night
2) Eat the fast food, it is good, it is quality, and it is 50% the price
3) The City is Flat, so I would definitely recommend renting bikes to see the city (10 euros for half a day)
4) Stay in East Berlin if possible all the important places are located in east Berlin
5) Stay ATLEAST 4 full days, its a big city with alot of history. Here you should hit the Zoo, get Bikes for a day and explore, Go to the alternative walking tour, go on the regular walking tour.
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