July 7th 2019
By Forbes
Berlin is full of ancient history and possibly the darkest modern history, so that the choice you have when embarking on a day in the city is: Which epoch would you most like to visit? There are innumerable choices, and hilarious ones to boot. No pool at the hotel? No matter, hit the saunas at the Badeschiff, literally the "bathing ship." A fan of Bauhaus? Some of the world's finest examples of architecture are all around town.
Here, a short list of ways to wind, and unwind, while getting the most out of your stay in Berlin.
Pergamonmuseum
This is Berlin's classic must-see on the Museum Island. Exhilarating, and on the global bucket list of the world's greatest antiquities, about the only downside of its multiyear renovation is that the Pergamon altar friezes are closed to the public until 2023. But don't let that deter you.
Museum Berggruen
Arguably one of the greatest and most soulful private collections of the classic modern artists—Picasso, Matisse, Klee, and Giacometti, among others—the Museum Berggruen's impressive holdings, worth hundreds of millions, were half-sold and half-donated to the city by the collector and art dealer Heinz Berggruen, who had, with his parents, escaped the Holocaust from Berlin. The city renovated one of the gatehouses to the Charlottenburg Palace for the jewel-box museum, including an apartment for Mr. Berggruen on the top floor. His sons, Olivier and Nicolas, are buying masterpieces for the museum to this day.
The Badeschiff
You can't swim in Berlin's Spree River, but you can swim in a pool floating in it—the Badeschiff, just on the district line between Treptow and Kreuzberg. In the summer, a DJ spins as the crowd cavorts in a swimming pool inserted into an old river barge. In the winter, it's covered and turns into a spa, specifically, a sauna in which full frontal nudity is required. Winter or summer, in the Badeschiff, you want to make sure that your bikini body is ready for that.
Neues Museum
The "New" Museum isn't exactly new, but along with the Pergamon, the Bode and the Altes (Old) museums, it forms the pantheon of the UNESCO heritage site of Museum Island. Spiffed up significantly since the Communists of East Germany left it to rot, it now houses the Greek and Roman collections and the famous Egyptian collection (that had been in West Berlin), the absolute star of which is the bust of the Great Royal Wife Nefertiti. Yes, that Nefertiti, whose bust was found at Amarna in 1912. If you're in Berlin, you have to go meet her. She's been the queen of the town for the last hundred years.
The Berlin Zoo
The most-visited zoo in Europe, and, rightly, one of the most popular zoos in the world, the Berlin Zoo—formally, Der Zoologischer Garten, or the Zoological Garden—is a lovely way to spend an afternoon in the scholarly embrace of keepers and zoologists who take their ethical and academic duties of preserving the species seriously. (A great place to stay just a short walk away is the elegant Hotel Bristol.) The zoo houses some 1,800 species and counting, and over 85-plus idyllic acres right in the middle of West Berlin, which means that you'll be visiting the habitat of some 18,000 animals.
Martin-Gropius Bau
This is the gallery that real Berliners love to visit. Designed in the neo-Renaissance style by Martin Gropius, the uncle of architect Walter Gropius, and built in the 1840s, the Gropius Bau's curators are people with a very entertaining breadth of mind, and that wow-factor brings in the Berliners. (To stay nearby, the hotel Lulu Guldsmeden, on Potsdamer Straße, is a good choice. With a back catalog of ever-changing artists and installations, the Gropius Bau has exhibited the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, Walker Evans and Paul Klee. The Berlin Wall ran literally around the back door of the museum, just including the building in the west, so that the Gropius Bau's curators have booked a group show called "Walking Through Walls" for the Wall-tumbling commemorations in fall 2019.
The Welt Balloon
Berlin is flat, with the exceptions of Prenzlauer Berg and Kreuzberg. And getting to the top of the Fernsehturm, the iconic TV tower, to see the town is underwhelming at best. So why not blow the carbon deposits out of the carburetor with a breezy quarter hour aloft in Air Service Berlin's quirky Welt Balloon? Yes, the ballon is tethered. But you do play out many hundreds of yards of cable and you'll see for miles. Die Welt—or The Worldnewspaper—is a sponsor, but don't let that stop you. Get up there.
