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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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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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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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Air Berlin's Very Own 'Deltalina'

True to our promise, we've gone and jetted off to Berlin for a week with thoughts of currywurst and cycling over cobblestones dancing in our head.

We safely arrived early this morning to Berlin's Tegel airport via Delta's non-stop flight 78 from New York-JFK, an experience we'd rather not repeat due to a decrepit terminal, mass confusion at the gate, and the horribly cramped seats of an older plane. And remember that jazz about Delta being tops in terms of tarmac waits? They aren't kidding; we had read through our guidebook before even hitting the skies.

Beyond the terminal's hot pretzel stand and the vending machine stocked with Ritter Sport chocolate and Haribo Gummi-Bären, we spotted this carry-on luggage measuring rack and its image of a perky Air Berlin representative.

Is this frisky-looking lass the German version of Deltalina? Sadly we didn't book the Air Berlin direct from JFK, but next time we just might have to if she promises to help us latch the overhead bins.

Related Stories:
· Delta Takes the Cake for Ridiculous Tarmac Waits [Jaunted]
· Berlin Travel Coverage [Jaunted]