Over the past decade, Berlin’s history – the most urgent and immediate history of any European city – has been removed from the streets. The legacy of the Cold War, those gaping nomanslands where the Wall used to run till just 35 years ago, have now disappeared. The empty space has been filled with shopping malls such as the Mall of Berlin by Potsdamer Platz, and by branded hotels such as the Hilton, Holiday Inn and Indigo by the East Side Gallery. At the latter, where the only remaining stretch of Wall has been preserved thanks to the famous imagery painted onto it, there’s far more activity ..read more

The latest German National Tourism Board annual report for 2022 has some interesting facts and figures. Overall, last year represented a decent recovery, ending up at 76 percent of pre-Covid levels, which is slightly above average for Europe. This year looks to have made further progress, increasing by approximately 20 percent, year on year. Far and away the biggest slice of the pie is in city breaks, at 41 percent. Next on the list is multi-destination tours, at 14 percent, then rural tourism, at nine percent. In terms of source markets, the Netherlands is top, followed by Switzerland and the ..read more

German cuisine has its denigrators, and it can be heavy and predictable. Most restaurants offer venison in a heavy gravy, pork and dumplings and some kind of schnitzel and sauerkraut. But the key things in the national cuisine are the simple ones, and they are done blindingly well: beer and bread. France may have a reputation for village boulangeries, but in my experience many of the latter have been driven out of business by local supermarkets. Germany, however, has very much preserved its local bäckerei, which are still village hubs all over the country. Not only are these places great for a ..read more

Carlos Valcárcel, Director at Europe Language Jobs, reports that German business is on the lookout for the right kind of people. Media headlines may still be dominated by the social and economic damage done by Covid 19, but there is plenty of good news for jobseekers to be found in Germany’s resilient labour market as the country wriggles free from these unprecedented times. Of course, the German economy suffered a significant blow amid the pandemic. But compared to the rest of the continent, the country succeeded in minimising financial catastrophe to the extent that its economy only shrank b ..read more

Daniel Lindenblatt, from Berlin-based Touring Artists, explains how his organisation helps international artists who intend to perform in Germany. Every year thousands of artists and performers of all varieties and ages arrive in Germany to populate a rich year-long cultural agenda. Many will have come before, and know exactly what to expect, but for others it could be a first-time experience. Some will be just on a short tour, others intend to stay for a protracted period, and still more will be looking to relocate on a permanent basis, particularly to Berlin. For all of these groups and even ..read more

Germany’s tourist organisation has recently published its latest top 100 tourist attractions, based on the feedback of international visitors. Once again Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland leads the way. It headlines as a model railway, but it is so much more than that. A triumph of model-making creativity, it combines humour and ingenuity in a series of different national scenes, with day and night lighting to bring it all to life. That’s followed by Germany’s theme park, Europa Park, which also has snapshots of different European countries in its various villages, and is considerably better value ..read more

Düsseldorf has long been the headquarters city for the Ruhr, Germany’s powerhouse industrial region. It is the place for worker relaxation and for the spending of big industrialist salaries, which in turn patronises great arts and culture in a succession of big public galleries. It pays for eyecatching city architecture, too, and the net result is the secondmost liveable city in Germany (after Munich). The city’s mostly pedestrianized centre is so new and modern it feels like an architect’s model. There’s Daniel Liebeskind’s curvaceous Kö-Bogen, whose ‘cuts’ in its façade sprout with gree ..read more

The Colossus of Prora may sound like a piece of ancient history, but don’t be fooled by the name. This giant of a building (originally the longest in the world at a massive 4.5km) was built on the holiday island of Rügen by the Nazi party between the two World Wars. Prora was planned to be an all-inclusive resort on an unprecedented scale, a new kind of tourism for the masses with 20,000 beds. It was the prototype of a handful of mega resorts intended by Adolf Hitler to create a nation of ‘people with strong nerves’, so they wouldn’t fail in a fight. You can see why this location on the cause ..read more

These past couple of weeks have been depressing for most Europeans, keen to squeeze in some kind of holiday before winter shutdown, whilst the weather is still warm and the evenings are relatively light. Quarantine has been slamming the door shut on increasing numbers of countries, taking more popular destinations such as France, Spain and some of the Greek Islands off the travel map. As the number of ‘safe’ countries diminishes, travellers are increasingly looking for new ideas, and Germany has become an obvious choice: the nation’s virus levels remain low and its borders remain open. So now ..read more

These days, the word ‘unification’ in association with Germany triggers images of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the subsequent rejoining of east with west. But the real unification of the whole nation of modern Germany took place over 120 years previously, as historian and guide Andrew Thomson explains. Unlike France and England, Germany never became a unified nation in the Middle Ages. It was so large, had unclear boundaries, and included large states that were powers in their own right, like Bavaria, Saxony, Swabia and Prussia. When Napoleon defeated all these states in the early ..read more