A Wargamer visiting Berlin

[Dolmot]

I wrote some of my thoughts to this topic soon after my 2015 visit.

[Angie]

Berlin is one of my favourite cities. I've been there three times now as it's pretty cheap and close to the Netherlands. Plus it has Battlefield Berlin for all your tabletop needs <3

I can definitely second the suggestions of the Deutsches Historisches Museum (really impressive and very well presented), Museuminsel, Natural History Museum (lots of fun!) and Sanssouci.  When it comes to Sanssouci it's a good idea to check out the tickets online. It's part of a large park (Sanssouci park) with a lot of buildings/palaces that either go by a combination ticket or single tickets for the single buildings. We ended up visiting just Sanssouci itself and walking around the park. It was very nice, but we went there on a whim and didn't quite realize it was a timeslotted guided tour. Still, quite worth it. I can also recommend Schloss Charlottenburg. Unfortunately badly damaged during WWII, but reconstructed and redecorated with contemporary furniture.

If you like antiquity, there's three museums on the museumisle to enjoy. I personally like the Pergamonmuseum the most, especially the section about the Ancient Middle East with the Ishtar gate. Don't miss out on the Islamic Art either on the upper floor which is really really pretty. The Neues Museum hosts the Egyptian collection and the Early History and Pre-History collections. For me, the Egyptian part and the way it was presented was nicer than parts of the Early History / Pre-History. The Altes Museum has Romans/Greeks/Etruscans. I haven't been there personally.

The other two museums on the isle are the Bode Museum and the Alte Nationalgallerie. The Bode Museum is a little bit of everything . There's a lot of sculptures, both Byzantine and European and a huge coin collection. If you love the the 19th century, classicism and romanticism then you have to visit the Alte Nationalgallerie. It has excellent sculptures and paintings and lots of work from Caspar David Friedrich.

If you like visiting a zoo, there are two of them in Berlin. The west one, Zoologischer Garten Berlin, is the most visited and the most 'classic' zoo. It's inside the city, lots of animals and a cool aquarium. Last year we decided to visit the east zoo: Tierpark Berlin. It was set up as the east-German counterpart to the Zoologischer Garten and it's huge. It also has a very different set of animals. There's a few of the big ticket ones: elephants, tigers, polar bears and rhino's, but mostly lots of different ungulates: antelopes, buffaloes, deer etc. It's a lot of walking if you want to see everything, but because if it's size feels a lot less crowded than Zoologischer Garten.

I'd also like to recommend is the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park. As with the Tierpark, the sheer size of this Memorial is quite impressive. Combined with a nice sunny day and a walk through Treptower Park you can spend a lovely morning or afternoon there.

Then there is of course the museums and exhibitions about WWII in Berlin. They're not fun. They have a great emotional impact. It's definitely worth visiting them but they will stick with you throughout your vacation. The WWII part of the German Historical Museum also hit home quite hard for us, the Auschwitz model by Mieczyslaw Stobierski in particular. The Topography of Terror is no easy museum, neither is the Holocaust Memorial. The concentration camp of Sachsenhausen is quite close to Berlin and is also open to visit.