We’ve shared our personal picks, but if you really want to experience Berlin like an insider, then let us introduce you to Daniel Cohen and Divya Zeiss of Swantribune. The two first met at the historic Haus Cumberland, on Kurfürstendamm avenue, where they discovered a mutual passion for bygone travel. The couple has since launched Swantribune, which began as a globetrotting guide and now encompasses their incredible illustrations of places they’ve visited around the world — souvenirs of their journeys. Here, the pair share insight into their hometown.
Berlin is like no other city because…
Once, its reputation lured the peculiar, the scholars, the explorers, the luminaries, the refugees, the curious and brilliant. Then it suffered destruction at the hands of great darkness, and the history turned infernal, yet the enthusiasm of Berlin is contagious. It rose and it is rising, its underground cool and overground romantic, in the corners where the older generation still read the local paper in their favorite cafes. Berlin is a symbol for metamorphosis.
Best city escape…
Visit one of Berlin’s flower markets, collect bouquets, pastries and coffee and then head to one of the many lakes to rent a rowing boat. Stay until dusk when the fairy lights light up and garland the whole view.
Know the history of Berlin to understand its great beauty. The history helps to understand the faint guilt, the pride, the peculiarity in a face that doesn’t always smile, the silence in front of a memorial, the noise in the night, which is like that of no other city. Once they know the past they should let it go and be fully in the present, because Berlin reincarnated from ash into a city that, once grandiose, today fascinates visitors with its constant reinvention.
The best view…
The roof of Hotel De Rome because you can see the silhouette of the city’s culture: Humboldt University, where great personalities like Schopenhauer and Einstein sat in its classrooms; the pink walls of the Berlin State Opera that hosted Diaghilev’s Ballets Russesi in 1928, and the Berlin Palace, which was destroyed in 1950 by the communist regime and today is being reconstructed exactly as its former self.
Best local restaurant…
Borchardt for its elegant diner feel. The old etiquette of Berlin loosens its collar after 10 PM and is stage to the alter ego of the city’s elite. The owner, Roland Mary, also owns Grosz, which, in our option, is the most beautiful cafe in Berlin.
Best spot for a cocktail…
Though we personally do not drink, Fragrance Bar in the Ritz has a great concept, where each drink is designed according to a perfume. For the more bizarre, there’s Buck & Breck, where you will find the eccentricity in everything from the secret entrance to the tattooed waiters who spoil you.
One thing you can get in Berlin you can’t get anywhere else…
Dinner in a ballroom (Clärchens Ballhaus), coffee in a pharmacy (Ora) and a hotel where you check in under a chandelier that was found in a box left alone for over 40 years.
And one thing only a local would know…
The Antelope House in the Berlin zoo, which was architected by the king, used to show off indigenous people against their will and was taken over by the Nazis. Today it returns as a house to antelopes and giraffes who walk dignified over the darker history of its earth.
