Berlin Part 8: Review – Hilton Berlin

Berlin Part 1: Getting There
Berlin Part 2: Berlin Is… Complicated
Berlin Part 3: Where To See The Berlin Wall
Berlin Part 4: Never Forget
Berlin Part 5: The Jewish Quarter
Berlin Part 6: Museum Island
Berlin Part 7: View From Above

I picked the Hilton Berlin for two reasons: 1) Location and 2) my Hilton diamond status.

The Positives:

• Location: Centrally located in Mitte, we were walking distance to most major sites. Berlin is huge, but our location just south of Unter den Linden meant we could easily get to Potsdammer Platz, Brandenburg Gate, Museum Island, the Jewish Quarter, the Jewish Museum, Checkpoint Charlie, etc. all under 30 minutes. There is also a subway stop right at the corner.
• Pretty Hotel: It’s a pretty hotel with nicely appointed rooms and modern interiors.

  
  
  

• The lounge/breakfast: As a Diamond member, we had access to the Lounge which provided breakfast, snacks, drinks, and evening appetizers. We also were able to get breakfast in the main dining room (more tourists, but much bigger spread). Most importantly, I had ongoing access to free diet cokes throughout our stay.

  

• Price: Berlin in general is fairly cheap. I booked five nights for 139,000 points in the off-season. That comes out to approximately 28,000 points a night for hotel in the middle of a major European city!
• Wifi: Wifi worked well in the room (especially compared to our next hotel).

The Negatives:

• Upgrade: As a diamond member, I have received some substantial upgrades in the past (I’m still dreaming about the suite in Barcelona). I pointed out that there were plenty of suites available in the hotel, but they argued that someone could still book those rooms over the course of our five night stay. They “upgraded” us to a room with a view of the Dom across the street. The room itself was fine, but the upgrade was disappointing.

As you can see, I was pretty happy with our stay at Hilton Berlin.

 

Berlin Part 7: View From Above

Berlin Part 1: Getting There
Berlin Part 2: Berlin Is… Complicated
Berlin Part 3: Where To See The Berlin Wall
Berlin Part 4: Never Forget
Berlin Part 5: The Jewish Quarter
Berlin Part 6: Museum Island

After Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag is one of the most famous buildings in Berlin. It is also a symbol of Berlin as a city: The modern mixing with the old, one foot in the future and one foot into its tumultuous past.

The Reichstag was badly burned in 1933, and left to die on the ash heap of history during Communist control of East Berlin. With the reunification of Berlin, architect Norman Foster designed a gleaming domed rooftop for the home of the German government.

Tours of the dome are free, but require booking in advance online. We planned for an early morning visit, and were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of blue sky that morning.

Berlin Part 3: Where To See The Berlin Wall

Berlin Part 1: Getting There
Berlin Part 2: Berlin is…Complicated

Confession: I am obsessed with the Berlin Wall and Communist era history. I was intent on seeing as much of the Berlin Wall as possible – and M dutifully followed me around.

Berlin has many reminders of the Berlin Wall’s 28 year history. Throughout the city, there are plaques marking where the wall used to stand, as well as bits and pieces of the actual wall. There are a couple of key spots to really appreciate the wall and what it meant for Berlin.

(1) Potsdamer Platz: Today, Potsdamer Platz is a bustling area with modern skyscrapers, cinemas, museums, hotels, and restaurants. In 1989, when the wall came tumbling down though, Potsdamer Platz was a wasteland. For 28 years, it operated as a death strip where Soviet guards would shoot down desperate East Berliners trying to make the escape to freedom. Today, you can touch pieces of the wall, and read about its history while you gaze up at the closest thing Berlin has to a skyline.

M relaxing at a Starbucks in Potsdamer Platz

Slabs of the Berlin Wall covered in gum

A piece of the Berlin Wall covered in graffiti

A reflection of the old subway sign at Potsdamer Platz – a stop that was completely vacant during the split

A map of the wall and the remaining pieces

(2) Checkpoint Charlie: Checkpoint Charlie was the entry and exit point between East and West Berlin, used primarily by foreigners. Today, there is a mediocre museum and some replicas that are great for tourist pictures. While the museum is not particularly done well, it tells an important story abut the toll the wall took, the people who risked their lives to flee and help others flee, and the unrelenting hope for freedom. While Checkpoint Charlie was not the largest checkpoint, it became a symbol of the Cold War, serving as the site of a major showdown between America and the Soviet Union in October 1961.

An outdoor exhibit gives you a sense of what this spot used to look like

There are plenty of original wall pieces to marvel at

Pictures of the crossing

A replica of the original checkpoint for tourists to take pictures

The original sign that used to stand at Checkpoint Charlie can now be seen inside the museum

Thousands of Berliners watched as the original checkpoint booth is airlifted out of the spot where it sat for nearly 30 years

On September 9, 1948, 300,000 Berliners gathered to protest the division of the city

After WWII, the Soviets set up “special camps,” often repurposing the Nazi’s concentration camps, to house thousands of people who were indiscriminately arrested. Between 1945 and 1950, 43,000 detainees — out of approximately 123,000 — died in the camps. The German Red Cross organized a list of those people and you can now search through the binders at the museum

From June 24 1948 until May 12 1949, the Soviet Union blocked the Western allies access to West Berlin. In response, the allies organized the Berlin Airlift to bring food, medicine, and other supplies to the people of West Berlin. It was a massive undertaking that required building a brand new airport in only 90 days

A Cold War-era map of Berlin

The ground floor of the museum

This car shows how people used to carve out stowage space to hide East Berliners in the trunks of their cars as they crossed the East-West border

The many passport pages of John P. Ireland – an American studying in West Berlin who had the genius idea of modifying a Cadillac to hide East Berliners in the trunk. Ireland ferried 10 people to freedom, usually via Czechoslovakia and Hungary where the border checks were less aggressive than East Berlin

An example of what it was like to hide in a car in an effort escape to West Berlin

A replica of a hot air balloon constructed by electrician Peter Strelzyk. On September 1, 1979, two families launched themselves into the night sky, landing in West Berlin at 2:40 a.m. They hugged the police officers when they were told “You’re in the West.”

(2) Brandenburg Gate: There aren’t actually pieces of the wall at Brandenburng Gate because the Gate itself served as a dividing line between East and West Berlin. In the early years of the Cold War, Brandenburg Gate was a checkpoint between the two sides. After 1961, the Gate was closed and became a major site of pro-freedom protests on the West Berlin side. It was famously, the site of John F. Kennedy’s visit to Berlin – requiring the Soviet-run GDR to put up curtains on the East Berlin side of the Gate so no one would catch a glimpse of JFK. On November 9, 1989, thousands of Berliners gathered at Brandenburg Gate to celebrate the fall of the wall.

(3) East Side Gallery: East Side Gallery is a 4,317-foot strip of the Berlin Wall located between the Berlin Ostbahnhof and Warschauer Strauss train stops. The gallery contains 105 paintings by artists in 1990 after the fall of the wall. Sadly, today, many of the paintings are covered in graffiti and required heavy restoration. Some were entirely repainted by the original artists.

The artist of this painting actually painted it three times as indicated by the date at the bottom.

This is my favorite piece of art from East Side Gallery.

This painting, entitled “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love,” is probably the most famous of the East Side Gallery paintings. Painted by Dmitri Vrubel, it reenacts a famous moment between Russian General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and GDR head Erich Honecker in 1979.

(4) Topography of Terror: The Topography of Terror stands in the spot of Hitler’s Gestapo, which was razed to the ground after the war. Today, it is a free museum that retells the history of Nazi Germany from its rise to its fall. I’ll talk about the museum later, but outside the museum, you can walk a long a long strip of the Berlin Wall as well as small piece of the basement wall from the Gestapo building.

There are several other places to see remnants of the Berlin Wall including Mauerpark and the Berlin Wall Memorial, which we did not have time to get to. Seeing the Berlin Wall was on my to-do list for a long time, and I highly recommend at least one of these stops if you’re in Berlin.

 

What’s Next: Central Europe

The traveling circus is off to Europe again in two weeks, making this our third trip to Europe this year. Not that I’m complaining.

This trip began like a lot of our trips: me playing around on the computer, randomly looking up flights, and saying “Hey babe, you want to go to Berlin?”

Basically, there was a ton of United award availability to central Europe and we had replenished our points accounts since Amsterdam. So Berlin, Prague, and Vienna – here we come.

How did we do it?

Flights: I splurged on business class tickets to Berlin in the hopes that we will arrive well-rested and can hit the ground running (fingers crossed). We will fly United Polaris (sadly not the fancy new United hard product) to Berlin with a stopover in Dublin. There are no direct flights from D.C. to Berlin, and flying United requires less miles than United partners like, say, Austrian Air. Total IAD – TXL for two people: 115,000 United miles and $16.80.

On the way back, we’ll be flying economy from Vienna to D.C. for 30,000 United miles each. Business class would have been nice, but at 70,000 miles per person it was too much. At least, the flight is non-stop. Total VIE – IAD for two people: 60,000 United miles and $178.32.

Hotel – Berlin: Picking hotel rooms is my favorite part of traveling. I know, some people like the sightseeing, the food…whatever. I love the hotel analysis. It takes all kinds, right? Since I have diamond status at Hilton, my heart always gravitates there, and I had racked up a ton of points thanks to work travel. Berlin was easy. The Hilton Berlin is smack in the middle of the city, with easy access to major sites. I booked five nights, taking advantage of Hilton’s five for the price of four deal. Total Hilton Berlin for five nights: 161,000 Hilton points.

UPDATE: I occasionally check on my already-booked hotels to see if prices have gone down. Lucky me, the Hilton Berlin was going for 139,000 points for the same five nights. I chatted Hilton and they immediately redeposited 22,000 points into my account!

The Hilton Berlin is the red icon, just a few blocks south of Berlin’s main drag, Unter den Linden.

Hotel – Prague: I had a free IHG night I needed to use before it expired in November so it made the Intercontinental Prague an easy pick. It’s not the best value for my free night, but it’s better than not using it all. In the end, because prices were relatively cheap, I paid for two nights with cash, one night with points, and one night with a free night award. Total Intercontinental Prague for four nights: 40,000 IHG points and $302.56.

The Intercontinental Prague in the city’s old town. Super excited about the location and the proximity to the Jewish sites.

Hotel Vienna: This was a tough one. Vienna hotel pries are more western Europe than eastern Europe, and we were fresh out of Hilton points. It came down to Starwood vs. Marriott. Starwood offered a slightly better location, but my gold status with Marriott gives us more bang for our buck. So I transferred a bunch of SPG points to Marriott at a 1:3 ratio and booked the Vienna Marriott, where we got five nights for the price of four. Total Vienna Marriott for five nights: 160,000 Marriott points.

Most of the key attractions in Vienna are located inside or around the ring. The Marriott is directly on the ring road. Looking forward to the lounge here.

Trains: We booked two trains from Berlin to Prague and from Prague to Vienna. Thanks to Seat 61 (the best website for anyone attempting train travel), I was able to find cheap prices on the Czech Republic train site. Total Berlin – Prague for two people: $65.63. Total Prague – Vienna for two people: $53.72.

So that’s how you do two weeks in central Europe on the cheap without slumming it.