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Tags: Flash Mobs / Crowds / Berlin Travel / Historical Travel / Events / → All Tags

Join 33,000 Others To Recreate The Fall Of The Berlin Wall On Its 20th Anniversary

Here at Jaunted, we love us some flash mobs and all of the fun and city exploration that come with them. But this upcoming Monday, November 9 in Berlin, a flash mob will take on a somber note as up to 33,000 people gather to recreate the Berlin Wall on the 20th anniversary of the night it came down.

The "Mauer Mob"—know that "mauer" means "wall" in German— will happen at approximately 8:15pm on Monday, lasting for about 15 minutes so that visitors, Berliners, and even those who were there for the original tearing down of the wall can commemorate the date and capture photos of the scene. Already almost 6,000 people have registered to participate on the event's official site, and if you're in the vicinity, you should not miss this opportunity.

For tips on what to see and what to skip while you're not becoming part of a human Berlin wall in the city, be sure to check out our Berlin Field Trip series.

Related Stories:
· Temporarily Recreating The Berlin Wall [Kottke]
· Mauer Mob [Official Site]
· Walk The Path Of The Berlin Wall And Crash Into A Starbucks [Jaunted]
· Berlin coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Jaunted]

Tags: Ostalgia / Cold War Travel / History Travel / Communism / → All Tags

Tour the Secret Escape Tunnels Under the Berlin Wall

East Germany must have been a really nasty place to live, because so many people risked their lives to escape to the west. A creepy tour in Berlin provides a stark reminder of the lengths people will go for freedom, with walks through some of the escape tunnels under the Berlin Wall. An interesting AP story points out that about 300 people managed to escape through various tunnels in the years after the wall was built in 1961, with many continuing to work from the west to free family members.

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It's War of the Wursts in Berlin as Grillwalkers Battle Imitators

Back in 1997, an unemployed former hotel manager named Bertram Rohloff had a brilliant idea. Unable to obtain the necessary permits to open an outdoor sandwich stand, he found a way to circumvent the entire bureaucracy and wound up making portable food vending history. He invented a wearable propane sausage grill that requires no special permit, as neither the grill nor the food ever touches the ground. Thus, Grillwalker was born, a sausage oven with legs that can bring hot sausages to the hungry masses at some of Berlin's most heavily-trafficked urban spaces. As The New York Times points out, Rohloff's 15 sausage walkers are now fixtures at such sites as the Alexanderplatz, bustling Friedrichstrasse train station, and even outside popular nightclubs.

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Tags: Most-Shocking-Starbucks-Locations / Starbucks / Fast Food Travel / Coffee Travel / Berlin Travel / → All Tags

Walk The Path Of The Berlin Wall And Crash Into A Starbucks

Fresh from our Most Shocking McDonald's Locations and Must-See Apple Stores Of The World series, we're taking requests for Subways as we begin our Most Shocking Starbucks Locations. Know of a 'Bucks randomly tucked into a curious corner of the world? This is going to be a running series, so email us your suggestions!

So let's say that you're enjoying a lovely evening out for a stroll in Berlin, Germany and you're perhaps following a brick path in the street that marks the former location of the Berlin Wall. You're walking along, eyes down at the ground as you ponder the history around Potsdamer Platz especially, when you run right into the side of a Starbucks.

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Our Guide To Living Like 'Inglorious Basterds' in Berlin

For his new movie Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Taratino wanted to make a a spaghetti western that would use World War II iconography and star the world's biggest movie star. And this is how one of the biggest movie debuts of the summer was born.

The movie has all of Tarantino's usual trademarks: quick dialogue, cringe-inducing violence and creative casting, but it was filmed on location somewhere new for the Tarantino crew: one of Jaunted's favorite cities, Berlin. To slake your thirst to live it up just like Brad Pitt no doubt did while he was filming, here's our guide to partying like a rock star, or at least partying like a director who thinks he's a rock star, in Berlin:

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Tags: Food Travel / Berlin Travel / Museum Travel / Germany Travel / → All Tags

Berlin Shows Their Sausage Love By Opening A Currywurst Museum

It's hot and greasy and goopy and fatty; it's a full, heaping plate of Berlin's favorite fast food Currywurst. Only a few months ago, we found ourselves on an informal tour of the Berlin's best Currywurst stands, from Konnopke's underneath an U-bahn station to the KaDeWe's department store kiosk. Believe us when we say that currywurst—sausage drowned with curry ketchup and curry powder and presented with a side of either french fries or potato salad—is the shizznit.

So apparently we headed to Germany a tad too early, as Berlin has just opened the first museum devoted completely to the history and varieties of currywurst. The Deutsches Currywurst Museum, cozying up next to the tourist trap that is Checkpoint Charlie, explores the eating habits of Berliners (who consume around 70 million currywursts every year!) and doles out samples of the tasty favorite.

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Spankometers and Italian Chandeliers at Berlin's New Sex Academy

Whether you want to soar to ever-greater heights of sexual rapture, or you're just lousy in bed, a new exhibition in Berlin promises to elevate your snarling skills with more than 50 interactive educational displays. The Amora Sex Academy is the brainchild of French horndog Johan Rizki, who opened a similar sex school in London earlier this year. Among its many exhibits, the academy features life-sized plastic models that visitors can grope and paw to learn about the erogenous zones of the male and female bodies. According to an amusing Reuters story, the museum offers tips on striptease, oral sex, orgasm control, and finding the elusive G-Spot. It's always the last place you look!

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Tags: Berlin Travel / Berlin Wall / Art Travel / → All Tags

This Year, The Berlin Wall Goes Temporarily Nude

It may seem like a radical move, but large sections of the Berlin Wall were erased this year to ready it for the East Side Gallery makeover and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a reunited Berlin.

The newly-erased wall has now been patched up and painted with a protective undercoat, and presumably there'll be protective overcoats on the finished artworks later. It's all the better to prevent the ravages of time and also save the artwork from the less artistic vandals and graffiti artists.

This week, perhaps the most famous mural has been started over: the Brezhnev-Honecker kiss, with artist Dmitry Vrubel admitting he is "a little bit afraid" that the finished work won't be the same as his original. He also said he'll need at least a month to get it done, so postpone your Berlin wall visits for a bit. It's probably best to wait until the grand reopening in November to be sure you'll see the wall remnants at their finest anyways.

Related Stories:
· Touch-Up Begins on Berlin Wall's Passionate Kiss [The Age]
· How Berlin Will Celebrate the Fall of the Wall's 20th Anniversary [Jaunted]
· Berlin Travel Guide [Jaunted]

[Photo: pixseb]

Tags: Berlin Field Trip / Berlin / Communist Travel / Tourist Traps / → All Tags

Berlin's Wurst Tourist Traps: Alexanderplatz

Jaunted's assistant editor Cynthia is currently kicking it in Berlin and all this week she'll be telling us what to do and not do in town. Any suggestions or questions? Let us know.

When we were living in Rome, we used to frequent a miniscule, cave-like jazz club named "Alexanderplatz." Knowing that it was named thus because of the historical cabaret district around the Alexanderplatz in Berlin, we suffered from a romanticized idea of the square.

It's been seventy or so years since the cabarets left, fifty-plus years since the Soviet architectural aesthetic converted it into a massive concrete platz anchored by the Fernsehturm (TV tower) and office blocks, and fifteen years since the giant Kaufhof department store emerged as king of the place. And yet, the tourists flood in for more than just access to the transportation hub; the draw being that finally, one is standing in Alexanderplatz.

Aside from the graffiti-covered Friendship fountain, whose proper name is the Brunnen der Völkerfreundschaft, the biggest attraction is perhaps the straight-up view of the Fernsehturm and the ubiquitousness of cheap wurst vendors in the square—both are pictured above.

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Berlin's Wurst Tourist Traps: The Reichstag

Jaunted's assistant editor Cynthia is currently kicking it in Berlin and all this week she'll be telling us what to do and not do in town. Any suggestions or questions? Let us know.

What is with the touristic impulse to ascend every tall, open-to-the-public building in a city? Like New York City's Empire State or London's St. Paul's Cathedral, Berlin boasts of some similarly sky-high sights. The city may be pretty flat, but draws like the Fernsehturm (TV tower), Berliner Dom, and of course the Reichstag keeps the busloads lining up for a glimpse of each landmark from the viewing platform of another.

While the Fernsehturm is the tallest option, the line is longer and the history weightier at the Reichstag, the home of German parliament which burned in 1933 and remained in ruins for decades. When architect Lord Norman Foster's new glass dome crowned the recontruction in 1999, the gawking masses descended on it due to its free and open admission policy.

This is both a blessing and a burden for visitors to the building, as nothing is better than free views of the city and an up-close experience of an architectural triumph, but free means queues long enough to bring about sunstroke.

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Tags: Berlin Field Trip / Berlin / Communist Travel / Tourist Traps / → All Tags

Berlin's Wurst Tourist Traps: Brandenburg Gate and The Wall

Jaunted's assistant editor Cynthia is currently kicking it in Berlin and all this week she'll be telling us what to do and not do in town. Any suggestions or questions? Let us know.

Dash across the street, in between the double decker tour buses and the school groups more interested in their souvenir purchases than what they are about to see, and you arrive at the Berlin Wall. Rather, you're standing in front of four sections of it, placed just so in Potsdamer Platz where the tourists can best photograph it surrounded by the glass buildings of a modern European capital.

The Berlin Wall, which once divided this city between the allied section and the Soviet quarter for thirty years, remains a huge tourist draw. In fact, it seems as though everyone and their moms can boast of owning a piece of the thing.

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Tags: Berlin Field Trip / Berlin Travel / Communist Travel / Tourist Traps / → All Tags

Berlin's Wurst Tourist Traps: Checkpoint Charlie

Jaunted's assistant editor Cynthia is currently kicking it in Berlin and all this week she'll be telling us what to do and not do in town. Any suggestions or questions? Let us know.

Taking a picture in front of a section of der Mauer (the wall) is a touristic rite of passage for visitors to Berlin, usually accompanied by a stop to the former location of the US Army's Checkpoint Charlie. We however chose to bike instead of walk around Berlin during the city's perfect early summer weather, and therefore literally breezed by most of the jammed tourist traps that dominate the areas where the Berlin Wall once stood.

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