Berlin Travel Guide

hey guys this episode is brought to you by ancestry DNA and ancestry plays a big part in this episode so stay tuned and if you go to ancestry.com slash attache that's ancestry.com slash ATT ACH II or click on the notes in the description below you can get 10% off your ancestry DNA kit today let's make something clear right away Berlin is a cool city I'm a bur sexy poor but sexy as a former mayor once put it the low cost and high quality of living has seen the young the creative the entrepreneurial and the bohemian flocked to Berlin and over the last few decades they have built a city a culture that is showing the world what it means to be cool in the 21st century in fact I am very sure that I'm not cool enough to be here but I hope I can keep the Sherrod up long enough to show you around this amazing city Berlin we haven't known each other for that long but I have a feeling we're gonna get along just fine Berlin is not a small city and because it was cleaved in two during the Cold War large parts of the transport infrastructure including airports were built on both sides of the then divided city but since reunification berlin has worked really hard to merge those two systems into a cohesive metropolitan transport network and for the most part that process is complete but when you fly into Berlin you still have two choices to make Tegel in the North or Schoenfeld in the south we flew into Schoenfeld which is primarily but not exclusively home to the low-cost carriers so Hugh to arrive at Schoenfeld how do you get into town trains are your best bet the station's just a short walk from the terminal and it's served by both the slower but more frequent s-bahn and the faster regional trains now despite what a lot of guidebooks will tell you definitely take the regional trains yes they leave less frequently but they also make way fewer stops in the s-bahn so they'll actually get you into town much much faster so jump on the re7 or the RB 14 and you'll be at Berlin housebound HOF in under 30 minutes tickets can be purchased from one of the machines in Terminal A the railway station are on the platform itself the machines are in English and will take your debit and credit cards but some only take cash to watch out for that don't forget to stamp your ticket to validate it before boarding what about Tegel the main Intercontinental Airport slightly more of a ball like to get into town despite being closer as your only option is a bus or a taxi the txl Express bus will get you to the help band off in 22 minutes and bus stops are located right outside both Terminal A and B tickets can be purchased to the ticket desks in the main terminal besides airport information or at the ticket machines outside Terminal A you'll need a ticket that covers zones a and B it feels weirdly appropriate as we sit literally on the runway of the now-defunct Tempelhof Airport to talk about the weirdly hazy future of both Tegel and schönefeld airports they were both supposed to start winding down their operations when the New Berlin Brandenburg Airport opened but that was supposed to happen in 2010 here we are in 2017 and due to a series of colossal screw-ups it doesn't look like that's gonna happen for at least another two years and even then those airports may be kept open indefinitely to keep up with the overflow from the delayed opening of Brandenburg so stay tuned because I think that the airport future of Berlin is anything but clear anyway enough Airpor shenanigans you're deep in the bosom and beautiful Berlin how do you get around well as you'd expect from any modern European capital it's pretty easy combination of trains trams Underground buses and taxis okay you need to go Berlin's divided past means that even to this day there are a few key locations that are still not connected to each other by a public transport so a combination of buses trams s-bahn and the u-bahn is necessary to get around Berlin but don't let that intimidate you the fantastic BVG app will help you plan your public transport adventures and of course Google Maps is great for working out how you're gonna get from A to B and it has all the public transport options built into the about directions anyway and the universal ticketing system means that your one ticket will work on almost all major forms of public transport you can get a single zonal ticket which is good for two hours but if you think you're gonna use public transport even more than a couple of times it makes way more sense to get a one day or seven day public transport ticket seven or thirty euros respectively we'll get you unlimited travel on the trains trams subways and buses within zones a and B which covers most of Berlin as far as I'm concerned these are a no-brainer very important public transport tip make sure you validate your ticket before you get on public transport using one of the machines that you can find on the s-bahn and u-bahn platforms or on the bus almost the entire Berlin public transport network is based on an honor system really but there are plain clothes ticket inspectors everywhere and if you get caught without a validated ticket it's a 60 euro fine and more importantly everyone will think you're kind of a dick finally this is an extremely bankable City it's almost completely flat there's bike rental spots all over the city including outside of train stations and weirdly enough little supermarkets and to top it all off there's 860 kilometers of dedicated bike paths 860 kilometers Berlin you are so lucky so grab a bike grab the mat hit the road or the dedicated bike path and explore so you might be wondering what made us choose Berlin for an episode of attache well apart from the obvious there's actually a funny story let me take you back in time to about two weeks ago so we thought we'd do something a little bit different for figuring out where we're gonna go for our next episode we're being sponsored by ancestry DNA this episode and a few weeks ago I got the ancestry DNA kit and took the test and we just got the results and it's super easy to do in fact you can do this too if you just go to ancestry.com slash @sj you can order a kit you'll get 10% off as well if you use that URL they send you a kit you spit which I'm very good at into this little test tube send the kid away and then in six to eight weeks you get these results they take like billions of historical records the millions of family trees and like 4 million DNA samples in compare your spit to all of those people spit or DNA really now I have a pretty good idea where I'm gonna be from it's Scotland my grandfather is very Scottish and I know that my roots go back pretty far in that in that area Wow ok so a lot of them are from southeast England which which makes sense my maternal family and ancestors are from South East England it also says that 56 percent of my distant ancestors are from Germany which I had absolutely no idea this is how this is fascinating and actually know what now that I think about it I mean I haven't really talked about this but my middle brother I have two brothers he's been battling cancer for a long time he's had a stem-cell transplant and they go around these databases looking for stem-cell matches and the to perfect literally perfect matches that he had I did it I was nowhere near a perfect match the two perfect ones yeah we're both joining so we're going to we're going to Germany so that is why we're in Germany and if you want to take the same test that I did and discover your ancestry just go to ancestry.com slash attache that's ancestry.com slash ATT ACH II well click on the link in the show notes below and when get your results come back and comment and use the hashtag my ancestry and let us know what you discovered Berlin loves street food I love street food ergo I love Berlin all over Berlin you can find superb extremely affordable food for just a few euros nestled under the tracks of the s-bahn hold up in temporary cabins across the city are the purveyors of some of the finest Street eats in the world examples you say how about this curry Wurst you cannot come to Berlin and not have cars worst I love the story of how this came to exist the legend goes that in 1949 carrots ahoy are one of the more entrepreneurial post-war residents of Berlin got hold of some ketchup or Worcestershire sauce is that part of the legends of the blurry and some curry powder from British soldiers and I just think that's adorable that British soldiers would have curry powder on their person at all times anyway she mix that into a sauce poured it over fried pork sausage and the rest is history 70 million of these are consumed every year in Berlin alone so roll up your sleeves to get us some fries and a beer on the side and experience a Berlin institution because of its long history as a cosmopolitan capital first to Prussia and then of Germany Berlin has attracted immigrants from all over the world for more than three centuries and when a city adopts and embraces the traditions the ingredients and the techniques of a Democrat population and vice versa magical and delicious things happen like this the doner kebab yeah I'm sure you have kebabs in your hood too but the Berlin doner kebab is a completely different beast from the high street kebab that we all know and love it's actually a relatively modern creation and it's a riff on the the usual Turkish grilled kebab but the form almost like a sandwich the loads of vegetables and the the variety of sauces were all introduced in Berlin by Turkish migrant workers in the 1970s and it ranks among the best value most satisfying Street foods that you can find anywhere in the world for three year rows you get enough meat vegetables and flatbread to feed a small village but I think I'm just gonna eat this one by myself so we asked our good friends over on the Berlin subreddit of reddit.com to point us in the direction of that one thing that we should experience while we're in Berlin and as always residues were incredibly generous with their time and suggestions but the number one recommendation other than quote huge lines of speed was this Berliner Weisse oh it's a sour wheat beer with deep roots in this beer loving city and it often comes with flavored syrups usually raspberry or Woodruff yeah it is sour but it is really refreshing so when it's hot and they put ice in it sometimes I definitely recommend this really it's actually really good and it is very unique to Berlin as well so when I was doing the research for this episode this came up a lot club club Monta it was described to me as the iron brew of Berlin which if you know what I earn brew is makes it completely compelling and fascinating so I've never tried it before apparently is huge in the startup world it's what keeps the berlin tech scene going but I'm gonna try it I think citrusy yeah iced tea but caffeinated and sparkling so do with that information what you will it's not terrible but it's not my favorite thing in the entire world either [Music] ein Berliner that's actually an urban legend that JFK made an ass of himself by calling himself a jelly doughnut but here's why it's confusing almost everywhere in Germany except Berlin a jelly doughnut is called a Berliner and in Berlin they're called fan koukin which means everywhere else in Germany pancake so if you want a pancake in Berlin you asked for IR koukin got it confusing I know you can see where that urban legend came from now since we don't half-ass things here on attache we wanted to have a Berliner behind cooking whatever you want to call it but we went with the Homer Simpson size fan koukin they say it's 500 grams it weighs is well weighs as much as a baby it feels like and there's probably two and a half liters of jam in there 4,000 calories of their lunar goodness we uh I haven't intended to show you this but we were so close that it seemed criminal not to Burgermeister built in a disused men's toilet underneath the u-bahn tracks supposed to be Germany's best burger if not top three in Europe now I have an unhealthy relationship with burgers I even owned part of a burger joint in London so I'm gonna try this and I will give you my my thoughts bacon meat lettuce which is and tomato which are both a crime in a burger but will overlook that and I [Music] not bad man not bad at all but if meat isn't your thing or you're looking just for something vegetarian Berlin is the place to be in 2015 Saveur magazine which is my culinary bible named pearl in the 2015 vegetarian city of the year so you're never far away from really great vegetarian and vegan food including some of the best falafel I've tasted outside of Lebanon so if you're looking for something vegetarian or vegan Berlin has you more than covered [Music] like most of Europe Germany and therefore Berlin uses the Europe coins come in 1 2 5 10 20 50 cent denominations as well as one in two euros before notes take over it's also worth mentioning that while comparable for restaurants and bars to a lot of other Western European cities to live in Berlin is unbelievably cheap for some reason rent public transport utilities are all way cheaper than most European cities which is one of the reasons along with the amazing nightlife good tech scene that attracts so many young people to this amazing city yet another reason to love Berlin and while we're on that subject let's do the rundown a cup of coffee will cost you around 2 euros find a beautiful Berlin burger will cost you 3 euros and for the most reliable indicator of a nation's cost the good old Big Mac you're gonna pay about 4 euros actually I want to talk about this for a second we get a lot of crap for even mentioning Big Macs on this show but a food snob or going on but the Big Mac index is not my invention it's The Economist magazines they came up with it about 30 years ago to compare purchasing power parity against two currencies and also to show how exchange rate markets can drastically vary the cost of a single item so put down the pitchforks chill out there's legit economic theory at work here plus ain't nothing wrong with no Big Mac like a lot of Europe most shops in Berlin are closed on Sundays but bakeries in some small grocery stores and the busier neighborhoods will be open on Sundays same with restaurants and a lot of the street food vendors the aunt can is starved when it comes to paying for things credit cards are widely accepted here but not everywhere so definitely keep some cash on you and on the subject of paying for things let's talk about tipping for a moment it is a thing here so do it 10% in a restaurant is ample if you've had a good experience five to ten percent in a bar is fine as well now the custom in Germany is to tell the waiter or waitress how much you want to pay including the tip when you receive the bill and if you're paying by card you need to be very clear that the amount that you're putting on the card includes the tip unlike America you cannot put tip on post transaction so be sure you communicate that to the waiter waitress bartender when you're paying on card or settling the bill is Berlin cool yes of this there can be no doubt but it is also a city of huge cultural political and historic significance a status that it wears with dignity and with grace on its tree-lined boulevards underneath its curving u-bahn tracks you'll find a city that will appeal to all of you in some way no matter who you are or what you seek I'm glad I had the opportunity to connect with the city on some level in fact on many levels and I hope you get the chance to as well for I can assure you Berlin will not disappoint

Channel: Attaché

Views: 466,326

Rating: 4.7424936 out of 5

Keywords: berlin, germany, berlin travel, berlin travel guide, guide, city, visit, trip, sightseeing, tourism, architecture, slideshow, destination, culture, burgermeister, berliner, doner kebab, currywurst, tempelhof, germany travel, Destination, travel

Id: 5qv_ce2twQQ

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/germsj]

They really took their time making this video compared to the other, more get in and out videos.