BootsnAll Travel Community

RE: http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/05-07/dont-go-to-berlin-berlin-germany.html

Has this guy ever been anywhere he LIKED?

I haven't read the article yet, but how on earth can someone not like Berlin? I mean it has something for everyone, right?

I forwarded that article to a journalist friend who lives in Berlin, and he remarked that it was all true. Read the article.

(my friend regularly complains about how the attitude of East German society still prevails)

I've never been to Berlin. While, I find it difficult to imagine that the entire five days was a total loss, save watching drunks, I have run into similar situations elsewhere in Germany. These have always been ameliorated by subsequent interactions where I was given good directions and in one case, in Dusseldorf, actually walked to my hotel.

I suspect we might find a few Germans that had similar experiences in New York City. Seen any signs there in Deutsch?

I have received wrong directions in Germany and elsewhere (I live in Asia and have traveled most everywhere except Sub-Saharan Africa) but in retropspect, it was usually because I asked the wrong question.

I also know some people who absolutely love Berlin. They have the money, though, to stay in 4 or 5 star hotels. Maybe a hostel stayer gets less attention.

Whatever, the story was well written and fun to read. I will be extra-careful when I visit Berlin, next year. Thanks for the warning.

Slip - True, if I saw this and didn't know that I was the world's most responsible, fair, open minded and shockingly attractive travel writer, I'd also wonder about the writer's point of view.

The Don't Go There series is meant to be good natured fun and wicked slams based on real events in hateful cities (only four cities out of over 100 that I have visited over the past two years made the list so far). I know this. You know this. Everyone else will just have to form their own opinoins. Hopefully while they chuckle away.

Ha! I loved this article. Every once in a while I really want to bitch about a place but that's quite frowned upon in the "travel community." This story sounds like like the whining that I wish I had the nerve to do, once in a while, but on a larger and funnier scale. I loved it!

Surely this demands a response from someone who lives in Berlin!

Berlin is absolutely not a pretty city……in truth, it is quite ugly, for it stills bears the scars of war, and many reminders of Europe’s tumultuous twentieth century history. There are some spectacular buildings, mainly modern ones, but on the whole Berlin is a “place to be” rather than a “place to see”. Berlin has a Bohemian history second to no other major city in Europe. It is city that has always contested its rulers: Prussians, Nazis, and Communists. Revolution and dissent are the city’s lifeblood, and the history of Berlin over the past century captures many of the most important political currents of the age. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht died in the streets of Berlin, and it was on those same streets that East Germany’s quiet revolution of 1989 was forged.

Berlin is a poor city, and quite unlike western European capitals in this respect. Of course it’s not smart. Indeed, technically the city is bankrupt! Fiscal security has never been a feature of Berlin’s civic finances. The city lacks an effective industrial base, and this part of Germany has been slower to embrace the new information industries than other regions. No other European capital is set in so empty a surrounding landscape.

Berlin is the ultimate café society… all the more surprising as Berlin has warmer summers and colder winters than western Europe. The city’s cafés and restaurants reflect the social mix of the city… places that boast provocative cultures, a huge gay community, and a buzz borne of the city’s closeness to raw politics, and its key position as the conduit between western and eastern Europe. Many Berlin cafés open at dawn and stay alive forever, café life merging imperceptibly into Berlin’s famously vibrant club scene. Some cafés have free newspapers and magazines, and there might be no happier Berlin day than to drift from breakfast in the gay cafés of Winterfeldplatz to newly fashionable Hackescher Markt and on to Prenzlauer Burg, with all its radical chic, before returning south to Turkish Kreuzberg for supper, where you can accompany your meal with wines made in the local Kreuzberg vineyard.

Somehow the writer of the piece referred to in the original post seemed to have missed most of what Berlin stands for. And Joe (cf. comment above), the endurance of old ‘eastern’ attitudes to which you allude is precisely one of Berlin’s redeeming features. Our city teems with interest because there are still folk here who will paint in letters ten metres high on a wall in Prenzlauer Berg the words “Fxxx the West”.

For many European readers of the original article, our reaction would be one of surprise that the writer had not taken the trouble to learn at least sufficient German to ask the way to the Zoo! Writing about places demands a courtesy and deference to people and cultures that seems somehow to have passed this writer by.

Next time the writer comes to Berlin we hope he’ll contact hidden europe magazine, that we might introduce him to some of the charms of Berlin. Our Berlin highlights would include tea at the Tajik tearooms, that oddball time warp of a place, donated in the eighties by the Soviet government to the people of East Germany. Or taking the ferry across the Wannsee on an ice white winter morning when the lakeshore is all frost and frozen shallows. Or the Treptow Memorial. Or kebabs in Friedrichshain. We think Berlin deserves a second chance!

Nicky Gardner
hidden europe travel magazine - published in Berlin, at the very heart of Europe!
www.hiddeneurope.co.uk

Not to put words in Leif's mouth, but to me this article didn't seem all that serious. You could write an "I hate ---" article about almost anywhere. You could say a lot of the same things he said about New York City, for example.

quote:

Originally posted by Laura M:
I only read half this article before I had to comment. I completely disagree. Maybe this is meant as a joke, but what's your point? You had a bad hostel experience, and a bartender said something to you you didn't understand, so the whole city is bad?
My experience in Berlin was totally different. I didn't stay in hostels, but in people's homes, and they gave me food, coffee and showed me around town. People on the street always help out with directions the best they can. And virtually all tourist sites have signs and directions in English.

Um, I would like to invite you to read the entire article, and the whole of this thread for that matter, and I think your concerns will resolve themselves. I know this is asking a lot as I am very long-winded, but since you care enough to post I hope you will care enough to put a little more time into this.

Nicky - Substitute "cider" for "tea" and you're on!

Tickles - thanks for gettin' my back. See you in NYC?

Here are some unexpected things I liked about Berlin.

1. The Art Deco buildings north east side of the river
2. The old fashioned environs, and young clientele of a downstairs bar I stumbled upon.
3. The Jewish History Museum...absolutely amazing.
4. Cute librarian-looking females (my favorite!)
5. The band Die Sterne...the hostel was playing their music. Awesome!
6. Wandered into another bar and chatted with some "ladies of the night" in an innocent fashion.
7. A great pizza place in the Savignyplatz
8. The multi-colored ivy on an old building in Spandau (I was there in September, and it turned out to be my best picture of the bunch).
9. Mobile Bratwurst vendors. There were guys with little grills attached to their front sides...it always cracked me up.
10. Breakdancers in the plaza near my hostel.

It's possible, and probable, that in a city of this size that Leif missed out on all of these things. I also got lost rather easily in the city, but because I read Leif's article beforehand I bought a book with a good map. And it turns out that most of the people I met were accomidating. Leif is the man, and I've always admired his writing. We'll just have to agree to disagree about Berlin.

Leif, one of these days we'll meet up in Berlin, find a perch a take part in the city passtime of being a drunk, ornery tourist hater. It's really quite fun, and it will greatly improve your take on Berlin to be one of the people hassling the tourists rather than being on the receiving end.

I lived there for a year quite sometime ago, and never made it to any of the tourist traps. I spent most my time wandering the labyrinth of neighborhoods and avoiding any tourists who might out me as a fellow American with their loud, obnoctious, drawn out "tsoooooooo" questions. Really it was far more fun to heckle with the bitter locals.

*and for the record, I adore the city of Berlin, but absolutely everything he says is true. It's a really difficult city to enjoy as a tourist passing through.

I didn't mean this as an attack. I will read the whole article, but that is the impression I got from just the first few paragraphs.

Anyhow, everyone reacts differently to different places. Maybe Berlin isn't your dessert. Others may like it. Whatever.

People need to remember that they are just reading one person's opinion. Nothing more.
If the writer was trying to be humorous, I missed it. If not, then it sounds like some one who is upset because Berlin hasn't converted to English. When I hear that some one is treated rudely by the entire population of a city or country, that tells me about the individual not the city or country. The writer came acroos to me, true or not, as some one who doesn't know how to get by in a foriegn country.
It's just an article.

Believe half of what you see and nothing of what you read.

quote:

Originally posted by Laura M:
I just got a PM from this author. Help!

Sigh. For the record, the PM was a peace-making, olive branch message and wholly sincere, but this one seems to prefer to needlessly throw her weight around in a public flame war. I refuse to play. This isn't Thorn Tree.

Its ok Leif (pats you consolingly on back) I got it.

btw- are you currently reenacting your avatar?

Laura- I see your point of view as well. You said that you've had bad experiences traveling, as we all have. I believe Leif was turning those experiences in to an amusing tale for us to chuckle at. Obviously the two of you don't have the same sense of humor, oh well. Maybe Leif's error was that he assumed his audience would see the joke and also realize they shouldn't judge an entire city by one person's encounter with it.

I thought it was funny and obvious that Leif wasn't taking himself too seriously here. I mean, he isn't putting out PSAs on network television telling people not to go to Berlin, it's just an article that most of us at BnA can probably relate to in one city or another. One of my complaints of the show Globe Trekker/Pilot Guides/Lonely Planet (those are all the names of the same show, right?), is every ending declares the destination 'a land of contrasts.' I enjoyed seeing someone willing to just give in to the urge to take some jabs.

<<And furthermore, I'm bothered by the title: Don't Go to Berlin. Why say Don't Go anywhere? Does it occur to you that's home to some people, and they might be offended?>>

May I offer: who gives a rat's ass is someone is offended?

The world is not comprised of people who hold hands and sing the Barney song. Leif has opinions and states them, and while he OFTEN seems to dislike the places he visits, at leif you know where he stands.

I suppose I could write an article on

"Don't go to Krakow" and have just as much fun. Krakow, like Berlin for this writer, represented an accumulation of negatives culminating in a mostly negative experience. I suspect if I go again, I'll like it a lot more.

Some errors he made:

1. He didn't take a cab to the Hostel. Show the man the address in the book, and you get there without wandering through half the city. Having to fight your way through public transport to get to your hostel is bound to put you in a bad mood.

2. He expected people to like being addressed in English. Tourists in Paris seem to get the same reception, but a smile and a little German would have gone a long way.

Note: I speak Spanish, and tried to find the Caracas Zoo. I tried in vain to ask someone where the Zoo was, and no matter what twist on acceptable Spanish I could find, all I recieved was confusion. This person actually wanted to help me. It was a question of pronunciation and vocabulary, I think. I ended up saying, and don't laugh- "Where the animals are"

Then he understood, and I found the place. Never mind that it was only worth finding to say I have gone there. Caracas really needs to up the funding on their zoo.

3. The few positive things he found, he dismissed in a paragraph. This is what is called a negative slant.

It was a well written and organised article with a specific purpose. I suspect he could write a positive article with just as much ease.

That "crazy" face is for nobody in particular, but I can't believe this article is getting people so excited, and or, angry.

As I understand it, Leif is traveling the world, bouncing around from place to place constantly, writing, searching for material, and trying to figure out a way to sell the stuff so he can make a living and keep doing it. (Correct me if I'm wrong Leif....don't mean to speak for you.)

Have you ever tried to get paid writing travel stuff? (I haven't.) I've heard it doesn't pay shit. (Sorry, Leif, stiff upper lip.)

If I'm not mistaken, the "Don't Go to _________" is a little series thing he has going. And it sounds like a possible book idea to me. (Leif---contact the agent you don't have!)

(He's also written favorably about other places....I'm not that familiar with all his stuff....sorry, Leif!)

I didn't personally think this piece was as successful as "Don't Go To Monaco", or whatever it was called, but cripes....

The title wasn't "Here's How to Better Enjoy the ShitHole That is Berlin" was it? The guy is just writing....and writing and writing and writing....

P.S. I've never been to Berlin.

All it was, was a poorly written article.