Berlin is free

I love it when new experiences come free (see, for example, my notes on London). Don't get me wrong, I am more than happy to shell out for awesome museums or tickets to the ballet - but it's like shopping a sale: you love that cashmere sweater all the more when you know you got it for a song.

Berliner Dom

Berlin is like the Filene's Basement of new experiences.

Consider the public transit system: for the price of a day pass, you get the best view in town from the elevated S-bahn, which glides through the city's greatest sites as if it were a Disneyland ride and Berlin a diorama built to scale.

Or one night, we stumbled upon a mash-up of an old-school "monuments at night" tour and J.K. Rowling's Knight Bus: Needing to get from Alexanderplatz to Zoologischer Garten after dark, we caught Bus 100 and snagged the front-row seat on the upper deck. What followed was a weaving, psychedelic tour of the heart of Berlin: past Berliner Dom, down Unter den Linden, around the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, and through the Tiergarten.

Hurtling toward the Brandenburg Gate

Like any good capital, Berlin freely exhibits its government side - the crown jewel being the tour of Norman Foster's giant glass dome atop the German Parliament. These days you have to reserve your ticket in advance (you know, terrorism). This requires just a bit of foresight (go here for instructions), but on the upside, there's no longer any queue.

Winding around Foster's dome.

Instead you are whisked like a VIP to the roof and let loose with a free audio guide, which cues automatically to your location as you curve your way to the top of the dome. Twenty minutes later, I had more pictures of central Berlin than a proud mom at a ballet recital, and all the Berlin factoids I could need to sound adequately pretentious at highfalutin cocktail parties.

(Don't worry, I'll spare you.)

Monuments and memorials are always free, and Berlin is replete with the mournful, contemplative kind. Most notable on the experience scale is the new(ish) Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a mood-altering field of tomb-like columns that swallows you up before spitting you out on the other side. 

Note the slopping floor: adding to the discombobulation.

Memorials abound in Berlin, from the grandiose to the easy-to-overlook.

Stolperstein ("stumbling stones") memorialize individual victims of the Holocaust.

But of all the many many memorials in Berlin, I had two favorites. On the Bebelsplatz, in front of Humboldt University, the "Leere Bibliothek" (empty library) stretches down beneath your feet, a subterranean white room of empty bookshelves to mark the Nazi book burnings and the destruction of free thought. 

And my absolute favoire: The New Guard House ("Neue Wache"), originally a symbol of Prussian might, was remodeled in 1931 during the Weimar Republic as a monument to the fallen of WWI. The interior was stripped bare and left unlit, except for the onculus (fancy word for "hole") in the middle of the ceiling. After reunification, Käthe Kollwitz's "Mother with her dead son" - the only object now in the building - was placed directly under the onculus so that it is exposed to the elements. The simple yet universal inscription: To the Victims of War and Tyranny.

But Berlin is more than just a retrospective of the short twentieth century. For lighter (free) fare, we hit up the classic KaDaWe Department store - think Harrod's, but without the frenzied masses. And we spent a good afternoon dawdling through hipster vintage and designer t-shirt stores around Hackescher Markt and down along Krossenerstrasse. As hawkers everywhere like to say, it's free to look!

Of course, as I said, some experiences are worth paying for. I would plug in this regard Berlin Walks' Discover Berlin Tour, which covers all the highlights of central Berlin in an action-packed few hours. Also worthy of mention, the Jewish Museum - most moving in its abstract bottom floor, which invokes the loss of the Holocaust and the discombobulation of diaspora.

(I really like saying "discombobulation.")

These corner windows were a major innovation.
Note also the use of primary colors: very De Stijl.

And then there are some experiences that, even though free, are not worth their price. I have to admit I dragged Megan to the Modernist Housing Estates of Berlin, which believe it or not are inscribed on the World Heritage List. Allow me to translate: we're talking housing projects built pre-WWII by major German modernists (like Gropius, for those of you familiar with the Gropius dorms at Harvard Law School - not exactly a popular look these days). 

Unless you are an avid scholar of modernist architecture and/or urban planning, these housing estates will be monotonous and their surroundings less than boring. This is a World Heritage site best left in the abstract: yes, we should celebrate the idea that everyone should have well-designed, clean and modern housing, but most of us would get more out of an afternoon in the museums of Berlin's other World Heritage Site, Museum Island. Unfortunately, however, that experience comes with an admission fee.

(ps - Megan's the best!)