Germany travel guide

Berlin is a pretty cool city as it is, but throw in an abandoned amusement park and pretty soon you're bordering on uber-cool. Spree Park has been operating in one form or another since 1969 but over the last 20 years has developed from a festive place for German families to stroll through on a Sunday afternoon into an off-limits and eerie sub cultural icon.
Nestled amongst the vast Treptower Park, which among other things is famous for having hosted Albert Einstein’s first lecture on the theory of relativity in 1915, Spree Park has slowly become the most talked about element of the complex. Complete with fallen dinosaurs, dilapidated roller coaster tracks and the once iconic "Ferris Wheel of Berlin" there’s plenty to explore if you do make the trip over the security fence. Oh yeah, it’s private property and does have an on-site security guard. It's up to you...

Hip Berlin is all about its trendy and arty neighbourhoods, each with their own distinct vibe. The historical Mitte is as close as you get to a downtown in Berlin. It's here you find touristic landmarks like Brandenburg Tor, Checkpoint Charlie and Reichstag (German Parliament building) along with flashy fashion shops. However, it's the boroughs to the east and south of Mitte that make Berlin sehr cool. The most famous is Kreuzberg, a former West Berlin quarter favored by immigrants, which after the fall of the wall emerged into a trendy and arty neighborhood with lots of über hip cafes, organic food stores and art galleries. The former East Berlin quarters of Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg have more of a bohemian flavour, but all ooze of raw urban coolness and creative vibes. As prices go up in the popular neighbourhoods, the student places (i.e. cheap coffee and beer) and indie art scene are moving further out, so today the up-coming super-trendy borough is Neukölln in the southeast.

Berlin Modernism Housing Estates is a collection of estate houses, which were built in the 1920s in order to deal with the housing shortage after WWI. They were groundbreaking because they combined mass produced houses for people with low income with innovative architecture and urban planning. The same reasons they became an UNESCO World Heritage site. The estates are spread throughout Berlin, so it's unlikely that you will go and see all six groups. The six groups are Großsiedlung Siemensstadt (Siemensstadt Housing Estate), Siedlung Schillerpark, Großsiedlung Britz Hufeisensiedlung (Horseshoe Estate, pin on map), Weiße Stadt (White City), Wohnstadt Carl Legien and Gartenstadt Falkenberg, where Siemenstadt group is the biggest and most diverse.

For many Hamburg only means Reeperbahn, a long street (well, actually a whole area) lined with restaurants, bars, strip joints, sex shops and brothels - all fueled by boozed up stags parties and business men with company accounts (Hamburg has also a big fairground). And although a night out in Reeperbahn is mandatory, Hamburg is a progressive city with many cool neighbourhoods. The harbour has always been the heart of Hamburg and these years Speicherstadt (a UNESCO site) with its fine old warehouses-turned-posh condos is getting a face lift with daring new architecture. Sleazy St. Pauli with Reeperbahn, Europe's biggest red-light district, and famous football-team-accessories (think skull and bones) still has its edge. And the districts of Schanzenviertel and Karolinenviertel have cool quarters with indy fashion, alternative design shops, and weekend flea markets.

Berlin is clustered with important historical buildings, but only three groups have made to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, namely Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin, and the Museum Island. The Museum Island (Museumsinsel) is an small island in Berlin’s River Spree with five world class museums all built between 1824 and 1930: Altes Museum (Old Museum), Neues Museum (New Museum) which holds the iconic bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, Alte Nationalgalerie (Old National Gallery), Bode Museum and Pergamon Museum which holds the famous Pergamon Altar. During WWII the Museum Island got heavily damaged, and the Neues Museum was in ruins. Post 1945 the Museum Island was in East Germany and some reconstruction was done, but the reconstruction of Neues Museum wasn't completed until 2009.

Potsdam has always been an important and rich city and was the home for kings untill the beginning of the 20th century. During the 18th century Frederick the Great made it even more splendid by constructing Sanssouci Park. Besides flowers, terraces, and fountains, the huge park contained several palaces (including Sanssouci and the gigantic Neues Palais), temples and even a golden Chinese tea pavilion. Even more buildings were added under Frederick William IV. Sanssouci Park is, along with a group of parks and palaces in Berlin, enlisted as one UNESCO World Heritage site.

In 1936 the Nazis started to built what was suppose to be a monstrous hotel. A 4.5 km long holiday complex split into eight identical six-storey blocks right on one of the prettiest beaches on the island of Rügen. Due to WWII the Nazis never finished the then almost complete hotel. For many years during the war and afterwards, the buildings were used for all kinds of purpose ranging from military base for the Soviet Union and later DDR, to refugee camps and school. The Soviet troops managed to blow up two blocks, but probably realized that Nazi constructions are hard to get rid off. After the unification of Germany, the complex was mostly abandon and left to decay in the unspoiled nature of Rügen, until 2011 when a youth hostel moved into one of the blocks. Soon other developers followed, turning the old Nazi hotel into fancy apartments with panoramic views over the Baltic Sea. As of today, five of the six remaining blocks have been renovated, so soon nobody will be able to recognize this Nazi ruin.

Germany don't have much coast line, so they cherries what they have. Rügen Island in the Baltic Sea is Germany's biggest island and has always been the top beach destination for who ever governed the area. There are entire vacation towns at the most popular beaches with traditional bathing hotels and rows of hooded beach chairs, which still attracts hordes of mostly local tourists. Other sections of the dramatic coast line consist of steep chalk cliffs on a backdrop of leafy beech forest. Beside forests, like Jasmund N.P., and cute seaside resorts, like Sellin, Binz, and Göhren, there are also more quirky sights like Putgarten, a small village of colourful houses with thatched roofs, and Prora, a 4,5 km long holiday complex built by the Nazi.