We arrived in Berlin Hbf around on Christmas Day and quickly located the automated sales machines to purchase the Berlin WelcomeCard that gave unlimited rides on all buses and rail lines within the Berlin area. As with most travel passes, you can purchase cheaper options if you are not planning to travel too far out of the city center. We purchased the card that included zone C, this covered locations like Schönefeld Airport and Potsdam. The WelcomeCard includes discounts for tours and admission tickets and even restaurants, so it’s quite a good deal for its price.
The city bahn network is very extensive but not as easy to navigate as the previous cities. Due to the division between East and West Germany back in the Cold War their transport systems were developed separately and independently.The government has tried their best to unify the transport systems but there are still kinks to work out. Which means the platforms of the U-bahn and S-bahn of a particular station may or may not connected; for these instances we would have to exit the station and look for the other.
We made our way to Maria’s apartment at Schonhauser Allee which was a charming old estate area populated by mostly young immigrants; wall art is a common feature in the neighborhood. It was Christmas Day but luckily thankfully, after some prior research, we knew that the Berlin Zoo will be open. In addition to the zoo, animals can also be viewed in a separate location know as the Tierpark Berlin. The Zoo-Aquarium was located within the zoo and can be visited by getting an additional discounted ticket. There was tremendous biodiversity in the zoo’s exhibits, and the animals were housed in large natural enclosures.
Berlin has tons of Christmas markets and luckily for us, some of them are open for a few more days after Christmas. The first one we visited was the one at Charlottenburg, just a few bus stops away from the zoo. We also visted a small Christmas market within walking distance from the zoo, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church Christmas market.
We had our dinner at The Bird, touted as Berlin’s best burger place and they were open on Christmas Day too. We made reservations through email to avoid the long queue. The burgers were juicy, the portions were huge, so make sure you come with an empty stomach! We were stuffed and re-energized, so we decided to visit yet another Christmas market at Alexanderplatz.
absolute honesty 