Berlin Travel Guide

Berlin OVERVIEW

Now that's a paradox. They made an unerasable, excellent mark among world's most glorious events by bulldozing a symbol whose flamboyant remnants get hordes of Berlin visitors today, and it wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that the now inconspicuously-looking, graffiti-covered receptacle of the Iron Curtain ideals is the capital's prime tourist draw. Except for the reputation as one of the most brash, fun-loving cities on Earth. The wall. Walking the remaining stretch of Berliner Mauer at the East Side Gallery, you're more likely to believe Berlin is a hideous, concrete stage for stiff and stern-faced politicians, frustrated GDR-bred generation longing for the seemingly better times of the good old Trabant, and those quick-witted entrepreneurs who came into a fortune overnight when the Wall fell in 1989. Meanwhile, Berlin is a city that has head over heels adopted a "live and let live" policy as if to compensate for years of constricting political interventionism, and nowhere else in Europe is social life as exuberant as here. Add to it the royal dining options, the enviously green Tiergarten with lakes, canals, palaces, and the zoo, the oriental gardens at Marzahn, or the pleasant chill of the beach at Wannsee, and what remains of all the preconceptions?