BerlinWarnings and caution in times of the pandemic and during the summer holidays in Berlin and Brandenburg: Many travel destinations remain unreachable in the Corona crisis. If you want and can afford it, you are looking for a feeling of distance in your own home. A selection:
Bavaria in Berlin: There are many pretty beer gardens, examples include the “Café am Neuen See” in the Tiergarten, “Loretta am Wannsee” and the “Wirtshaus Moorlake” on the Havel – almost in Potsdam.
Russia in Berlin: The “Blockhaus Nikolskoe” between the Klein-Glienicke Park and the Pfaueninsel is now a place for excursions. King Friedrich Wilhelm III had it built 200 years ago for his daughter and her husband, the future Tsar Nikolaus, for a visit to Berlin.
Photo: dpa / Annette Riedl
Vienna in Berlin: The “Prater” in Prenzlauer Berg, but also the parent company of the “Einstein” café on Kurfürstenstrasse, are almost more Viennese than the Austrian capital itself.
New York in Berlin: The celebrity bars “Grill Royal” or “Gendarmerie” in Mitte exude the spacious feeling of being in NYC. Berlin has few skyscrapers, a bit of a downtown feeling arises at the zoo with the Europa Center and the “Waldorf Astoria” hotel. Kreuzberg and Neukölln (“Kreuzkölln”) are as hip and cool as Brooklyn.
Greece in Berlin: “Spree Athens” is a worn name for the German capital, but it still fits the area around Museum Island.
Turkey in Berlin: There is Turkish market flair every Tuesday and Friday at the Maybachufer market near the Kottbusser Tor in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
Tel Aviv in Berlin: It feels Israeli in places like “Neni’s” (at the zoo), Feinberg’s (Fuggerstrasse / Schöneberg) or even in the breakfast bar “Benedict” (Uhlandstrasse / Wilmersdorf).
–Photo: dpa / jens kalaene
France in Berlin: Locations like the “Paris Bar” on Kantstrasse, but also the “Entrecote” in Mitte have flair like in Paris, Ku’damm or Unter den Linden are a bit of Champs-Elysées.
Asia in Berlin: Kantstrasse is a kind of Berlin Chinatown with restaurants like the “Good Friends”. In Lichtenberg the wholesale market Dong Xuan Center takes visitors to the Far East.
Italy in Berlin: In the south-east of Berlin in Köpenick there is a housing estate called New Venice. Even if it only has five channels and 13 bridges, it is a small Venice.
–Photo: dpa / Monika Skolimowska
More in Berlin: Strandbad Wannsee and Strandbad Müggelsee are Berlin’s coasts – “Pack your swimming trunks, take your little sister …”
Hollywood in and near Berlin: At Potsdamer Platz there is the would-be walk-of-fame “Boulevard der Stars”. The noble Italian “Cecconi’s” in Soho House is actually also in West Hollywood. And Babelsberg in Potsdam was really Europe’s Hollywood.
Surroundings: The former Prussian residence city of Potsdam has, among other things, a Dutch quarter and is known as the city of palaces and gardens that evoke Versailles, Vienna, Saint Petersburg or Italy.
–Photo: dpa / Patrick Pleul
In the northeast corner of Brandenburg lies the Uckermark, which with its hilly landscape is sometimes referred to as the Tuscany of the North. Just under an hour’s drive north of Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel also has a dacha in the town of Hohenwalde, municipality of Milmersdorf. And then there’s the Märkische Schweiz with the idyllic town Buckow, a kind of Davos from Brandenburg. Here you can take a drink, for example, and Bertolt Brecht once had a summer house here.
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