Thursday, August 16, 2018

111 Places in Berlin That You Shouldn't Miss Revised and Updated Paperback – September 13, 2016 by Lucia Jay von Seldeneck (Author), C(arolin Huder (Author), Verena Eidel (Author) (Emons Publishers/Emons Verlag)



As a concept, this makes for a great series. Get off the beaten-tourist track and discover some hidden gems. "This is Berlin for the curious, for the explorer - off the beaten track".... Yes, well, read on.

The edition we took was 2016 (you will see the relevance of why I mention this in a moment). And we chose three places to visit.

12. The Berlin Room, built by the Heyn family in the 1890s and kept as a museum for visitors. Details are correct in the book but the description is clearly translated from the German and doesn't feel English. You leave a tip at the end as it depends on contributions. So far so good.

2. The Abandoned Iraqi Embassy. From the description one might be led to believe that one can bowl up and still explore this amazing wreck of 70s architecture. Wrong. The truth of the matter is that unless you are really into urbexing and wish to circumvent the police car parked up there at the perimeter gates, you are not going to get anywhere near to a first hand experience of the derelict property '...a burnt table there stands a typewriter with Arabic letters..." That may be so.. but it's unlikely you will really get to see it from the inside. The building has also been freshly boarded up, so you would need immense savvy and determination to get in.

103. The Tajik Tea Parlour. We let our 2016 guide lead us to the Tajik Tea Parlour in the Festungsgraben only to find that it had relocated way back in 2012. That is FOUR years ago. That is an utterly dismal fail for a guide book not to update over a period of 4 years and that is why I am rating 3* here (who knows what other errors the book contains). The Tajik TP is now at Oranienburger Str 27 im Kunsthof and very nice it is too, should you want to visit. It is about a 20 minute walk from the originally cited location in the book.

Overall, I would probably use the book again, but I would always check the facts now before I visit anywhere mentioned in the guidebook. The title for each place isn't always obvious as to what it is called, so you have to study to find the name. Some of the texts are wordy, and terribly German in their turns of phrase, so minus points to the translator. It just feels that it was originally printed, way back when, and no-one has really bothered with it since. It feels as forlorn as some of the places it mentions.

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