Your Berlin Tour

01/10/2022

Hello followers, I'd like to invite you to an event celebrating the publishing of my new non-fiction book, "Berliner Rebell*innen. Wie junge Jüdinnen & Juden die Geschichte Berlins prägten" ("Berlin rebels: How young Jews influenced the story of Berlin"). The book, aimed at teenagers and young adults and published in German and Hebrew, follows eight Jews who made an impact on the city's history and culture before the age of 25. The event will take place Saturday, Oct 8th, at 17:30 (5:30pm) at Tucholsky Buchhandlung (Tucholskystr. 47, 10117 Mitte) and will include a one-hour tour (in English) following characters from the book and then readings from the book itself (in German and Hebrew) and questions (in any language). The book can be purchased at the event, in bookshops and directly from the publisher at https://ariella-verlag.de/berliner-rebellinnen/.
Looking forward to seeing you there!

08/11/2020

Congrats, Joe Biden!
Berlin has a long tradition of honoring American presidents - whether it's John F. Kennedy at the Schoeneberg City Hall, where he said "Ich bin ein Berliner" or Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, where he called out "Tear down this wall!" But do you know where in Berlin is this statue of George W. Bush?
[Answer Below......]
The statue, erected in 2010 near the Axel Springer Building on the border between Mitte and Kreuzberg, is a part of a memorial named "The Fathers of Unity", privately funded by the Springer Publishing House to honor three world leaders who played a part in the fall of the Berlin Wall - Bush, Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl.

(photo credits:
Kennedy - OTFW/Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0
Reagan - Drrcs15/Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0
Bush - Jörg Zägel/Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-3.0

05/10/2020

I'm proud to introduce my newest venture: tours in Berlin for English- and Hebrew- speaking locals, including exciting opportunities for family outings and intellectual adventures.

https://www.facebook.com/Berlin4Berliners

Discover your city from a whole new perspective through unique, exciting tour experiences designed f

05/08/2020

I'm proud to share my article on Jewish Intellectuals in Berlin, which was published today as part of the "Long Reads" project of the Berlin Guides Association (BBS). As promised, it *is* a long read - but if you have some time and want to know more about this fascinating subject, I promise you won't be disappointed!

17/08/2017

- Where do we go tonight?
- Museums, of course!

The 19th installment of Berlin's "Long Night of Museums" is taking place this weekend, with 80 museums opening their doors till really late at night and offering numerous events and performances. My tips, based on previous installments:

- Plan ahead. Choose 3 or 4 venues and know where you want to be and when. (check the website, https://www.lange-nacht-der-museen.de/en/, for everything's that's on offer)
- Use public transport. The special buses for the event tend to fill up quickly, and the subway is in many cases faster.
- shove your wallet in your pocket or take the smallest purse possible, to avoid long lines at museum cloakrooms.

Enjoy!

14/08/2017

What's a 100 km north of Berlin? The guidebooks don't say, but it's definitely isn't nothing. A family vacation in Berlin's beautiful rural backyard produced a new post on my Blog.

Looking at guidebooks, you might think that Berlin is in the middle of a dessert. The around Berlin section of most guidebooks mentions Potsdam and Sachsnhausen...

03/08/2017

The reconstruction of Berlin's city palace (officially named 'Humboldt Forum') has been controversial from day one - rebuilding a 17th-century relic of the monarchy to house collections of non-European art isn't exactly in the vein of the multi-cultural narrative prevalent in Berlin - but the flames seem to have reached new heights, with a former member of the project's board comparing it to the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, no less. The Forum is supposed to open in 2020, a crucial year for the Museum Island, when many of the construction works in the area are due to be completed.

[kudos to my colleague Lee Evans, who made me aware of this]

The Berlin-based art historian Bénédicte Savoy was a member of the advisory board of Germany’s most ambitious cultural project in decades. A reckoning. By Jörg Häntzschel [[MORE]] Last week, Neil...

10/07/2017

I went to the Späti in my Kiez to get a Bullete and they gave me such Schnauze for not closing the door behind me...
Understand nothing? read my new post about the Berlin dialect and attitude.

It might be somewhat surprising that Berliners have their very own distinctive dialect. Sure, every major language has dialects, and German is no exception, but...

29/06/2017

This is *not* your typical Berlin weather... A once-in-a-century storms dropped 100mm of rain in seven hours in Wilmersdorf today, causing the entrance to this U-bahn station to become a waterfall.

26/06/2017

We may not know who he is, and there's a controversy as to what exactly he painted in Berlin, but for a limited time you can now see the works of Banksy - world's most famous street art - in the nightclub Felix in central Berlin.

The work of the world’s most famous – or most notorious – street art artist curated by Steve Lazarides is now in Berlin after Istanbul, Amsterdam and Antwerp.

21/06/2017

So... where in Berlin is Helmut Kohl commemorated along with George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev? Just behind the Axel Springer Building, on the border between Mitte and Kreuzberg, not far from where the wall passed. And these three got the honor because of the role they played in the end of the Berlin Wall - in the eyes of the Springer corporation, that is.
You can see a photo of the busts in the attached article, which deals with the question - is this art or propaganda.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve passed the Axel Springer building, which is located on the edge of former East Germany’s Mitte district and Western Kreuzberg. On my way along…