I realize that any travel writer with even a shred of integrity
wouldn’t title an article “Don’t Go to Berlin.” It
seems as if doing this might be a sweeping, unfair summary of one of the largest
and important cities in Europe and indeed the world. A city with huge and
important historical significance. A city of countless ethnicities and cultures
coming together. A city with a shameless level of admiration for David Hasselhoff.
Well, if you are thinking these things, to that I say have you ever been
to Berlin? If not, then with all due respect, you don’t know diddly.
Berlin is a city full of drunk, ornery, rude, tourist-haters.
It is a city that boasts countless, expensive tourists sights ostensibly catering
to people from all over the world, yet not having gone through the trouble
of printing any information or literature in any other language except German.
It is a city where the ongoing, open competition of Let’s-Give-the-Tourists-Wrong-Directions-on-Purpose
has been honed to a fine art. It is a city that has been abandoned by all
dedicated and talented map makers. It is a city where authorities target tourists
for minor, laughable offences like J-walking. In short, it is a city that
will take your money and dignity and give you nothing in return.
I arrived in Berlin with an open mind to the possibility of
having a good time. I had never been to Germany, so I was ready to do some
major adventure seeking and polishing of my long forgotten German language
skills. My first introduction to the gaping void that is the Berliner’s
dedication to customer service was within seconds after arriving in the city
when I tried valiantly, but unsuccessfully to find my hostel. The only information
that the “Information Desk” at the bus station was willing to
impart was “Ask at the hotel across the street.” I requested a
map so I could try to figure out my next move on my own, but to my amazement
they didn’t have a map of the city. This had never happened to me before.
In every other city I had visited on my journey, city maps were forced on
me a minimum of three or four times a day. Whenever anyone wanted to give
me directions, the first thing they did was whip out a complimentary city
map, draw a clear line to where I needed to go and send me on my way. A bus
station information desk not having maps was like a Republican not having
an affinity for reckless slander of a sitting Democrat president. I was dumbfounded.
I asked if I might look up the address of the hostel in their phonebook, but
they didn’t have one of those either! I resisted the urge to ask them
exactly what information they did have to offer and instead heaved
my worldly belongings across the street to the hotel. They were one step closer
to being reasonably helpful as they had a phonebook that I could look through,
but much to my dismay, my hostel was not listed. I was starting to get pissed
off. The first of many pissed off episodes for the week. Eventually, after
roaming through half the city on the metro, I was able to find my hostel and
get settled without the benefit of assistance from any locals.
Even after this discouraging series of unpleasantness, I was
eager to get out and see Berlin. After mulling over my options, I decided
to get started by walking in the general direction of the TV Tower, the highest
vantage point in Berlin and easily visible from my hostel. Unfortunately,
the TV Tower was so big, that I seriously misjudged the distance and time
it would take to walk there. What I thought would be a pleasant 15 minute
walk turned into a 45 minute trudge-a-thon down busy, dirty, loud Berlin streets.
After waiting 40 minutes and paying five dollars to get into the elevator
to the top of the tower I was treated to an amazing view of massive Berlin
in every direction. Every part of the observation deck of the TV Tower had
maps, highlighting all of the important buildings and monuments visible in
every direction. After reading dozens of descriptions of the visible sights
from the tower - my first and last encounter with anything at any tourist
sight written in a language other than German - I began to notice an unpleasant,
yet slightly amusing pattern. The last sentence in virtually each description
read, “After being totally destroyed in World War II, such-and-such
was rebuilt in 19-blah, blah.” It was sad to see that every structure
in Berlin over two bricks high was only 50 years old at best, but it started
to get predictably comical when one description after another ended with “Of
course, (fill in the blank) was completely leveled during the war…”
I started walking around saying something to that effect about every sight
that I observed from the Tower. After scrutinizing each sight for a respectful
amount of time, I’d mutter to myself in a low voice, “After being
blown to smithereens, in the war…” Typically, no one was in ear
shot to hear, much less understand, this hilarious monologue, but nevertheless
I succeeded in entertaining myself greatly. This fleeting moment of enjoyment
was cut short, however when I stepped up to the completely deserted bar where
I used one of the stools to support my day-bag while I fished through it for
my camera. The surly bartender, obviously having nothing better to do, was
on top of me in seconds. I don’t know precisely what was said, but my
dim grasp of German allowed me to glean enough to understand that unless I
was planning to buy an over-priced drink, I was not allowed to take up precious
space at the bar on account of the possibility that 22 thirsty people might
suddenly appear out of nowhere and the stool I was using would be needed by
a paying customer. I picked up my bag, took one purposeful step away from
the stool and continued my search while complimenting the bartender on his
tireless dedication to his work.
Knowing now that Berlin had no original historical buildings,
cathedrals or ruins to tour, I crossed that task off my list and started visiting
a never-ending succession of tourist sights that offered nothing in the way
of non-German literature. Even such tourist-ground-zero sights like the Egyptian
Museum and the zoo had nothing written in any other language. For a place
that shares boarders with countries whose native languages include Dutch,
Danish, French, Czech and Polish, not to mention the bus loads of Italians,
Brazilians, Spanish, Japanese and countless other nationalities arriving every
day, one would think that these sausage-brained drunks might have invested
the time it would take to make their tourism offerings a little more accessible
to non-Germans.
Navigating Berlin is more difficult than any city I have ever
visited, including St Paul, Minnesota. Unlike cities throughout the rest of
Europe, Berlin does not have a clear, defined city center that one can walk
across in 20 minutes or less. Being a very young city by European standards,
Berlin seems to have suffered from the urban sprawl that is so common in the
United States. It’s rare to find anything within walking distance of
your current position and if it was, there was no way you would know it. Even
if you could get a map of Berlin, it would be as useless as Windows 98. Berlin
is so big that without an alpha listing of the street names, it is totally
impossible to orient yourself. That didn’t matter, because you can’t
get a decent map of Berlin to save your ass. If, after I’m done slagging
this place, you’re feeling lucky and decide to waste your time visiting
this pit, I suggest that you purchase and bring along most, if not all, of
the following items:
· A professional, satellite charted, fully detailed street
map with a complete alpha listing of the streets on the back, acquired before
you arrive, as they are not available in Berlin
· A compass
· Ten miles of string
· A European-network cellular phone
· A GPS wrist watch
· A bi-lingual, ambidextrous guide with at least 20-20 vision, who
has spent a minimum of 10 years traversing the streets of Berlin
· A clairvoyant and
· A sherpa with a full Mount Everest-issue gear and food supply, including
a mountain yak to carry everything
If you do not have these items/people/beast, you will be doomed
to spend most of your time lost and confused, with one of those itty bitty
muscles in your eye twitching uncontrollably as a result of your dangerously
heightened blood pressure.
If you are still naïve enough to ask anyone for directions
in Berlin by your second day, you can count on one of two things to happen.
One, they will happily give you wrong directions on purpose or two, they will
be unwilling to even try to deal with the language barrier for a second and
instead they will just look at you like you are speaking in tongues and refuse
to help you, even if you pronounce the street or destination name perfectly
or write it down for them. One frustrating afternoon, a fellow hostel resident
and I spent a ridiculous amount of time wandering around looking for the Berlin
Zoo. The Berlin Zoo is monstrously huge and we knew we were about two blocks
away from it, so the mere fact that we could not find the goddamn thing in
the first place was embarrassing enough, but then, like idiots, we tried to
ask directions from an ice cream vendor. First we asked in English, which
isn’t as dumb as it sounds when you factor in that English is required
for eight years in all German primary and secondary schools and that “zoo”
is the same word in German as it is in English, with only a slight adjustment
in pronunciation (roughly, “tszoo”). The man feigned total confusion.
Then we asked in German. More confusion. Then we just said the word “zoo,”
repeatedly, and slowly. This couldn’t have been any simpler, but the
man pled total ignorance. The bastard pretending to not know the word “zoo”
was exasperating enough, but we were two blocks away from the joint!
Finally, after a few minutes of that insanity, he brushed us off onto another
guy that was standing off to the side who, of course, proceeded to give us
careful and detailed directions in the wrong direction with a huge grin on
his face.
So, by day two the facts that I had garnered about getting around
Berlin were as follows; maps were useless/unavailable, asking directions was
a hilarious waste of time, signage was almost non-existent and nothing was
easy to find, even if your destination took up one fricking square mile of
real estate. I managed to get to most places using the meager tourist brochures
that were available at the hostel, which usually provided a metro stop to
each destination and then once I got that far, I would just go with my instincts
or follow the crowd.
One of my failed goals in Berlin was to rent a car, get on the
Autobahn and drive like a lunatic. I had daydreamed at length about the moment
of my arrival at the car rental place.
Me: “Hi! I’d like to rent the fastest car you have
for two hours please!”
Car Rental Guy: “OK. May I ask why you need our fastest car for only
two hours?”
Me: “Well, I plan to get on the Autobahn, drive like a maniac for an
hour, then turn around and drive back even faster.”
Car Rental Guy: “Will you be buying insurance then?”
Me: “Was Hitler a repressed homosexual?”
Unfortunately after randomly walking around Berlin for five
days, I did not run across a single car rental office. I’m pretty sure
this was all part of yet another massive anti-tourist conspiracy to keep us
doofus Americans from getting on the road and biting it at 190 MPH and creating
a ton of paperwork for the guys who are in charge of shipping foreigner’s
body-bags home.
One compliment that I can honestly offer about Berlin is that
the people watching is deeply enriched by the massive beer consumption that
goes on there. If you have ever so much as seen a beer before, you know that
Germany is the center of the beer universe. Beer gardens are everywhere, serving
beer in one liter mugs. No wimpy pint glasses here. People can be seen meandering
around in public places as early as 10:00 in the morning shamelessly swigging
from cans of beer without having to go through the laughable practice of disguising
it in brown paper bags like us silly Americans. Having that many drunks wandering
around the city 24 hours a day made the simple experience of sitting on a
bench in a square and watching an impromptu, all-star cast of winos re-enacting
“Swan Lake” more entertaining than a Three Stooges marathon.
I tried to like Berlin. I really did. I hung around for five
days, walking all over the city, eating the food, visiting the sights, getting
babbling drunk at an obscenely early hour… I simply could not find a
formula for general enjoyment or any redeeming qualities. It’s a hell-hole,
plain and simple.
Don’t go to Berlin.