Eastern Promise: A Guide to Hot and Happening Berlin by Anthea Gerrie
Featured Hotel in Berlin
Art'Otel Berlin City Center West
See all hotels in Berlin >
Can there be a city in the world whose centre has shifted as often as Berlin? We’re not just talking pre- and post-Cold War.....at every one of my three visits since the Wall came down, I’ve found the hub of all that was happening marching relentlessly eastwards.
Locals blame it on the rich stock of buildings going for very low rents in the depressed east when this city of two halves was reunited in 1990. Artists, designers and all kinds of other creatives felt encouraged to set up in the grim but affordable corners of what was already perceived as a buzzy and happening metropolis.
Berlin Before its Renaissance
It was once very different. On my first foray into the east through Checkpoint Charlie during the days of the Iron Curtain, I was shocked by the difference between the miserable, grimy buildings of East Berlin compared to the sleek, green and affluent - but decidedly dull - western half.
Decades later I arrived on the doorstep of the new Berlin at Potsdamer Platz, once a centre of black market trade where the British, American and Soviet zones converged. After 28 years of languishing derelict in No Man’s Land, it was one of the first places an ad hoc crossing was made between east and west after the wall was breached in 1989.
The architecture of the rebuilt square was - and remains - dazzling, and the transition from a divided, deprived city back into a grand metropolis was already almost seamless. Even in 2000, a Martian landing would only have had a couple of clues - in the remaining bits of Wall which resembled art installations - to Berlin ever having been split in half.
When I returned a few years later, the place to be was Unter den Linden, the iconic boulevard stretching east from the Brandenburg Gate which is once again as fashionable a thoroughfare as the Ku’damm, its counterpart in the west. By now top international designers were established on the once grey, grim and ghastly Friedrichstrasse, which considering the Stasi had their headquarters there, was fine revenge on a regime which even sought to dictate what was fashionable. A great documentation of this and other domestic aspects of government repression is on show at the DDR Museum.
Changing Times for Hip Young Berliners
The arrival of five-star hotels often signals a newly-happening neighbourhood, and in the wake of a new Ritz-Carlton on Potsdamer Platz and the rebuilt Adlon, Berlin’s Savoy, on Unter den Linden, came Rocco Forte’s Hotel de Rome on Bebelsplatz, site of the Nazi book-burning. This was yet further east, near the cultural hub known as Museum Island.
But today’s fashionistas are hanging out a good couple of miles closer to the sunrise. At the eastern end of the big central district known as Mitte, they have found a perfect perch at the newly-opened Berlin branch of Soho House. This uber-cool private members’ club allows anyone with a mere 100 euros to rent a room on its hotel floors and merge, at least temporarily, with the Beautiful People who eat and lounge in the club, bar and restaurant above(the rooftop pool is a delight in summer).
The fact the hotel looks on first approach to be in an empty building in the middle of nowhere is par for the course in today’s Cool Berlin. A trot out into the neighbourhood with a “lifestyle guide” revealed a whole raft of secret venues with no name over the shop - presumably so only the truly cool can track them down.
There was Drei, for a start, named for its address at 3 Weydingerstrasse, a hangout cafe for intellectuals, and Apartment, a cutting-edge clothes emporium you’d never know was in the basement of a deserted, signless shop unless you saw the telltale spiral staircase leading down. This last is on the corner of Munzstrasse, one of Berlin’s edgy new shopping streets, mercifully full of boutiques which actually have tempting merchandise in the windows.
The Histories Behind Berlin's New Landmarks
Some of the hippest establishments have interesting histories, like the design hotel Lux 11, which is in a gorgeous old building you’d never knew was once used by the KGB, Cookies Cream, a chic vegetarian restaurant in the old French cultural institute hidden behind the Westin Grand Hotel, and Weekend on Alexanderplatz. This hot bar and club is on top of the old Interflug building, where once the only tickets out available for East Berliners - to other Iron Curtain countries - were grudgingly written.
Enticing but more conventional shops line the courtyards of the Hackescher Markt area, where they have infiltrated old apartment blocks and factories. This area is close to the former Neue Synagogue, once Europe’s largest, destroyed on Kristallnacht and partially restored by the Communists. An exhibit on the site recalls Jewish life before the War, and services are held in a modern annexe.
Clarchen’s Ballhaus, an old dance-hall which does have its sign clearly displayed in the gallery district, still has bullet-holes in the top room recalling the Battle of Berlin, when it was occupied by soldiers in hand to hand combat rather than dancers. But today the hall is back in use - Berlin is the world’s leading centre of tango after Bueno Aires - for all kinds of evening events and Sunday tea-dances, while the delightful garden cafe is perfect for an alfresco summer lunch.
The alfresco totally preoccupies Berliners during the summer, when they do their best to convince themselves they are a resort, rather than a landlocked city. Every riverbank is lined with rows of deckchairs, just like Brighton Beach, and the student/immigrant neighbourhood of Kreuzberg is the home of numerous “beach” bars floating on pontoons in the River Spree, alarmingly packed-out places only to be visited by the young and intrepid.
Don't Forget West Berlin!
The city’s favourite haunt at the weekend is the Badeschiff, a floating public swimming pool sunk into a ship hull at the end of several jetties; expect DJ’s and a bar, as well as more orthodox aspects of lido life. This joint jumps until midnight, when the Strandbar next door is the place to repair to.
The Badeschiff is one of several good reasons to visit West Berlin while in the city, despite the draw of the coolth - and the world-class museums - of the east. Others include Daniel Liebeskind’s fascinating and disturbing Jewish Museum, soon to be extended, the delightful neighbourhood of Charlottenberg with smart shops and great little cafes and the museum behind Zoo station devoted to the racy works of fashion photographer Helmut Newton.
There is also the shell of the burnt-out church on the Ku’damm which recalls Berlin’s wartime history; this is one city which wants no-one ever to forget. To that end, a new documentation centre has been built on the Topography of Terror site where Gestapo headquarters once stood. It tells in unflinching detail the grim story every German now knows, and is worth visiting while the current exhibition of poignant photographs taken by Jewish photographers in the Lodz ghetto is on show. Like most of what today’s Berlin has to offer the visitor, this compelling “attraction” is in the city’s equally - and undeniably - compelling eastern half.
Anthea flew with BMI Baby.
Planning a trip to Germany's capital? Don't forget to check out our collection of luxury hotels in Berlin...