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Social Media / Foursquare / Berlin Travel / Tokyo Travel / → All Tags

Berlin and Tokyo are Next to Get Their Own Foursquare City Badges

And then there were ten. Ten city on location-based social network app Foursquare, that is. It began with Chicago (Windy City Badge), then London, Paris, Istanbul, Atlanta, New Orleans, Singapore and Sao Paulo followed. Today Foursquare has announced the addition of two more—Berlin and Tokyo—to round out the first batch of these city badges, which encourage users of the app to get out and explore both a metropolis' most famous sites and the locally preferred joints.

How to get the badges: First, follow 4sqCities, and just to be safe, it wouldn't hurt to also follow the individual city lists here: Berlin, Tokyo. Then travel to one or all of the cities and clickety-click to check-in to the places on the recommended lists. Five places earns the badge.

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Sports Travel / Marathons / Running / Active Travel / Berlin Travel / Kauai Travel / Nevada Travel / → All Tags

Three Upcoming Marathons with Great Scenery

The real, -Berlin-Marathon

We know this is hard to hear in August when you're still barbecuing, hitting the beach and doing all those other summertime activities, but it's fall marathon training time. We found a couple of upcoming marathons that'll warm up both racers and spectators who love a good running competition in a great travel destination. Be sure to register ASAP and wear sunscreen while you're out training for these Big 3 marathons coming up:

· E.T. Full Moon Midnight Marathon
At this Nevada marathon, you just might run into E.T. About 2.5 hours north of Vegas, the course goes down Highway 375, a.k.a. Extraterrestrial Highway, which organizers say has one of the highest number of reported UFO sightings, and is right outside of Area 51. But if you see an alien, it most likely will be one of the racers, who tend to dress up for the occasion. The August 21 event includes a marathon, half-marathon, a 10K and 51K—in honor of Area 51. Online registration closes on August 19.

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Festival Travel / Berlin Travel / Sex Travel / Music Travel / → All Tags

German 'Love Parade' Will Never Be Held Again after 19 Die

If you haven't already heard about what happened this weekend in Duisberg, Germany during the infamous Love Parade, then be ready for your Monday morning to be spoiled: 19 people were crushed to death and 342 were injured during a stampede through a tunnel—the only entrance to the crowded music festival grounds.

Apparently 1.4 million revelers attended the event, and all had to pass through this bottleneck in order to see the lineup of international DJs, including Mark Knight of the Black Eyed Peas.

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Food Travel / Foreign Grocery Friday / Germany Travel / Berlin Travel / → All Tags

Foreign Grocery Friday: Wienerlinos are Like the Coney Dogs of Germany

When we travel, one of our favorite things to do is to pop into a local grocery store and check out the food products and candies we'd never find anywhere else. So we're trying out this new feature, Foreign Grocery Friday, where each week we'll feature some of our (and your) favorite overseas treats. Got a recommendation? Let us know!

Look! It's a hot dog, no! It's a coney dog, no! It's a Wienerlino! What the heck is a "wienerlino," you ask? Well, the simplest way to describe this German snack is just to say that it's another form of easy-to-eat meat.

Long, thing hot dog-style sausages are a typical lunch in Germany, either hot and served over a plate of beans or with Knödeln (boiled potato balls), or eaten cold and right out of the package, dipped in mustard or ketchup. Wienerlinos are made of pork, with some added lemon and salt for taste.

The taste: There's definitely a slightly more robust taste to a Wienerlino than there is a to a hot dog; we prefer them cold because they just seem snackier that way. As with other sausages, it's always a brilliant idea to add some German mustard into the mix.

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Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart Play Tourists in Berlin

Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart both enjoyed a day off in Berlin on Saturday after a busy week of promoting Twilight: Eclipse throughout Europe.

Taylor chose to spend his afternoon having some fun go-karting, where he left his helmet on long after he was done, trying perhaps to disguise himself from waiting fans? Later, he was spotted sans helmet at the restaurant Zillemarkt which serves traditional Berlin-style dishes like Zwei Bratwürste, two fried sausages with sauerkraut, boiled potatoes and ham sauce. After dinner, Taylor stopped outside the restaurant to pose with waiting fans.

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Food Travel / Foreign Grocery Friday / Berlin Field Trip / Berlin Travel / Germany Travel / → All Tags

Foreign Grocery Friday: Guzzle Some 'Schwip Schwap' in Germany

When we travel, one of our favorite things to do is to pop into a local grocery store and check out the food products and candies we'd never find anywhere else. So we're trying out this new feature, Foreign Grocery Friday, where each week we'll feature some of our (and your) favorite overseas treats. Got a recommendation? Let us know!

Vanilla Coke. Cherry Pepsi. Lime Coke. All the good flavors that one can mix with cola have been discovered by the big beverage giants, but what about an orange Coke?

Orange cola, not to be confused with orange pop, is to be found virtually nowhere in the US, but everywhere in Europe. The best brand for Orange Cola is Germany's Schwip Schwap, which we also love for its fun name.

The taste: Imagine taking a sip of Cherry Coke, and tasting the sweet syrup of Cola but underscored by that fruitier effervescence of added flavor. Now replace the cherry with orange, and stop yourself form thinking about those chocolate oranges that drugstores sell around Easter. It's way better than that.

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Breaking News / Airline Strikes / Paris Travel / CDG / TXL / SXF / Berlin Travel / Travel News / → All Tags

Airport Worker Strikes in Paris and Berlin Delay Scores of Flights

If you're planning on flying into or out of Paris-Charles de Gaulle or Paris-Orly airports today, you might want to be extra aware of your flight's status on FlightStats and have your airline's contact number at hand, as French airport workers have gone on strike over retirement age.

Tweeting live from the front lines—from on a delayed plane at CDG—is musician Ted Leo, of the band Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. First, his flight returned to the gate before takeoff with an equipment issue, and just as that was fixed and they were all set to leave for the US, the airport workers' strike began. His latest tweet: "We've been disembarked aaaaaaand it looks like the entire airport's shutting down." Now, CDG is delaying and canceling flights on account of the strike, and other Paris-bound flights from international airports should also be affected.

Now, for Berlin's similar issues...

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Airport News / Airports / Berlin Travel / Germany Travel / TXL / → All Tags

Breaking: Berlin's Tegel Airport Shut Down Because of WWII-Era Bomb

Of all the ways that an airport can get shut down these days - over-affectionate paramours, genuine security threats, and so on - what just happened at Berlin's Tegel has to be among the strangest. Local media is reporting that hundreds of passengers were evacuated and all flights suspended from Germany's main international airport, after a World War II-era bomb was uncovered by construction workers.

The unexploded British bomb is estimated to have weighed a quarter ton, and specialists had to be called in from the Berlin police department to defuse it. In the meantime German authorities shut down the entire airport, going so far as to close local road access. After a couple hours the bomb was successfully defused and the airport reopened. Final tally for the afternoon: 40 to 50 flights disrupted, dozens of planes diverted to nearby Schoenefeld airport, and what we can only imagine was a bevy of frustrated passengers.

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Berlin Says 'Auf Wiedersehen' to Its Airports In Favor of Newer, Cooler One

MMmm...new airport. Do you know that Berlin has three airports? You're most likely to fly into Tegel, or Schoenefeld if you're on a low-cost European airline, and their modernist Tempelhof one is now just an event space. But come October 2011, a fourth airport will be added into the mix: Berlin-Brandenburg International (BER).

BER is currently under construction, but helping it to move along quickly is the fact that it'll use some of Schoenefeld's infrastructure (it's basically a new airport next to Schoenefeld). Additionally, Tegel Airport wants to close by 2012. Although BER will serve as the main airport in Berlin from its opening, it will only end up with two runways at its completion (one of the runways will be an existing one of Schoenefeld's). It'll only have ten boarding gates, but at least one will be equipped to handle the hot new airplane in town: the Airbus A380. BER seeks to battle it out with Munich airport for the title of Germany's second-best airport, after the behemoth that is Frankfurt am Main International.

A video, after the jump

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Fashion Week Travel / Fashion Travel / Fashion Week / Green Travel / Berlin Travel / Germany Travel / Events / → All Tags

Fashion Week in Berlin Brings Out the Best in Green Design

Can you feel that electricity in the air? It's fashion...or rather, it's probably the static electricity of fashionistas donning their trendiest wool ensembles for winter fashion weeks around the world.

Just yesterday began the short-but-sweet Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in Berlin. They won't be driving cars down catwalks, no, as Mercedes is only a sponsor, but Berlin is a welcome start to the fashion week season as the city climbs in cool factor.

After the jump, where the real focus is this year

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Historical Travel / Berlin Travel / Lists / → All Tags

The Top Three Ways To Remember The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

Today in Berlin, a united city celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Twenty years is not such a long time, and thus the partiers are peppered with those who not only remember the division of the Wall, but perhaps also participated in the breaking down of it in 1989.

You can imagine how boisterous Berlin is today, and we would love to be there, but we just got back from Berlin a few months ago. So, like you, we're anxious to join in the joy from home by remembering the Wall in other ways. We'll leave the 33,000-strong flash mob to those in Germany right now, and instead focus on The Top 3 Ways To Remember The Fall Of The Berlin Wall...from afar.

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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]