Over Easter in Berlin (2017)

By chance, I found a great offer for Berlin over Easter on Urlaubsguru.de. Since I had never been to Berlin and thought that one should have seen our capital at least once, we booked it right away.

1st Day - Friday, April 14, 2017

So on April 14, 2017, we took the train to Berlin. The ticket was already included in the price of about 200 euros (for both of us!). Furthermore, it also included 3 nights in a hotel in Berlin. Not bad, I would say. The journey was pleasant and when we arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, we first went to the tourist information to get the Berlin Welcome Card, which allowed us to use all public transport. In addition, there were various discounts on admission to museums, exhibitions, etc.

Hotel Viktors Residenz

Around noon, we arrived at our accommodation, the 'Viktors Residenz' hotel. The location was fine, a bus stop was nearby, but we had to walk a bit to the subway station. The hotel itself was pretty good. The rooms were nice and spacious and clean!

Our first action was to take the subway to 'Berliner Unterwelten'. We wanted to take a guided tour there. This was the first time I took the subway. Definitely not my thing! It was quite confusing down there, I couldn't orient myself at all. But luckily I have Luke, who at least has a basic sense of orientation ;) And there are some strange characters down there, but it would soon turn out that this was true for all of Berlin...

Anyway, after about 20 minutes, we arrived at our stop. When we came up to the surface, we had to look for our destination. The ticket counter for the Berliner Unterwelten looked inconspicuous. We had somehow imagined it to be bigger, I don't know why.

Overview of Berlin

To make good use of the time until the tour, we headed towards Alexanderplatz. From there, we wanted to try the bus line 100, which should take us to all the important sights. A kind of sightseeing tour; and it's free! The sightseeing was planned for the next day, but since we had some time, we wanted to see exactly where the route would take us. We first looked at everything from the bus to see where we wanted to get off tomorrow.

Guided tour of the Flakturm

Later, we were there on time and the tour started at 6 p.m. as advertised. Fortunately, there weren't many people in the group, thanks to the limited size. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos during the tour. Before it could start, we had to equip ourselves with helmets. Then the tour began, during which the function of the tower was explained to us and other information was given. The tour lasted about 2 hours and was very interesting overall. At times, it was oppressive down there due to the history.

Looking for food

On the way back to the hotel, we wanted to have dinner. However, since we couldn't find a good restaurant quickly and we didn't feel like searching extensively, we ate a pizza at a fast food place. Fine dining ;) After dinner, we quickly made our way back to the accommodation. We didn't feel very comfortable in the dark in this residential area. We were relieved when we arrived safely and then fell into bed, exhausted. It had been a long day and we would have a lot to do again tomorrow!