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I'm off to Berlin with my partner next spring for a few days - can anyone recommend somewhere nice to stay? - after some rest and relaxation as well as being near to restaurants and bars... Recommendations on restaurants also welcome.
Thanks!
Fizzy...

Thank you so much for your reply Carl....

However, I was really looking for a hotel. Having had a baby recently, who'll be staying with the grandparents that weekend, I was really looking forward to staying in a hotel where I can be waited on!!!!

So would appreciate it if there's any more suggestions.

Thanks
Fizzy

Hey Fizzy

- do you still post here? I'm visiting Berlin for four or five days at the end of the month and would be interested to hear what you thought of the city when you went and any recommended things to see and do.

Steve

Thanks for the reply - I go at the end of September and will blog about it when I'm back. Really looking forward to it. We have booked a table at Nocti Vagus one night (http://www.noctivagus.com/home_english.htm), curry wurst in the pitch dark, anyone? =0)

Just back from Berlin for a long weekend having watched Claudia and Alex run the Marathon - well done guys - during which I was the most rubbish vegetarian on the planet, learnt a lot about European history, was ashamed that I didn't know half as much as I thought I did, enjoyed glasses of Gluwein, shots of jeigermiester, testing currywurst, riding open top buses, finding quirky little places to have one (more) beer, getting happily lost on the U-Bahn and eating in the dark (see above)..

Berlin is obviously famous for its historic segregation apart from the rest of Germany and although The Mauer has been pulled down, Berlin still has strong flavours of separate and different characters depending on which part of the city you are in, all jostling along side each other - the different parts of the city could be referenced as something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.. but I'll expand on that another time! Or go yourself and maybe see what I mean.. Quite possibly something for everyone, an old cliche yes, but in Berlin it seems to be due to a sense of acceptance and cohabitation of difference, not simply a tactic to get in the tourist trade.

I specifically enjoyed hiring bicycles and heading a bit further out of the main city to see outer Berlin, with leafy avenues, old churches, art shops, flea markets and unusual diners. The Jewish Memorial is also a very memorable sight, very bleak but also almost a kind of experiential art piece as you walk through silent towers of rising concrete.

Checkpoint Charlie still seems to have an unsettled air about it - maybe its the history, maybe its all the tourists, maybe its the tatty 'last' Kremlin flag hung in the city as a reminder of the past or maybe its how stuck in the 80s the whole place feels - its an unusual atmosphere worth experiencing as it is very different from the rest of the city. A small exhibition about the Wall situated at Potsdamer Platz could be slightly overshadowed by the Sony Centre behind it, with two cinemas, a couple of restaurants and multi-media extravaganzas a go-go inside its spaceship-like architecture. But the pieces of wall shown alongside stories and accounts of Berliners' experiences of the times holds its own ground and seems to sit more than comfortably alongside Berlin's snazzy futuristic entertainment mecca. Again, two very different parts of the city, sitting side by side, not in competition.

Finally, Nocti-Vargus was a very memorable experience. And when you eat in the dark and no one can see you, it is amazing how quick your table manners fly out of the blacked out window. I've never physically licked my plate clean in somewhere quite as expensive as that.. The tomato and basil sorbet with vanilla ice cream was a very delicious mixed bag indeed.

Flew home with Right Old Scare, who publish pictures of their air stewardesses in bikinis draping themselves over the wings of their 737s in the on board magazine, I think the feature is called Cabin Fever or something.. This month features Iris.. In her spare time she rides horses and wants world peace.. You go girl.. You go..