You know the story: your friends are coming to Berlin and you immediately get visions of six-hour walking tours looking at sights in Mitte you know little about. But don’t fear: help is at hand with About Berlin. Produced by the Visit Berlin tourism board, this app offers over 200 location-based stories that let you dive into Berlin’s past, exploring everything from radical 19th century art movements to the green initiatives of the 2000s. Naturally, many stories cover the years of war and division, but even old tales of East versus West are given new life here. The app offers GPS walking tours, though the greatest joy is simply putting in your current location and exploring the history right around the corner. Opening it in my area of Neukölln, I was taken back to the 1930s and the monumental Karstadt department store that once stood at Hermannplatz. From Cee Cee’s Mitte studio, we learned about the original pioneering 90s club Tresor located nearby. The app offers a genuinely engaging experience for newcomers to Berlin – and it teaches us oldies a few new things too. (Text: Benji Haughton / Photos: Johanna Radermacher–Flesland & Çiya Rädler)
You can download the About Berlin app for iPhone and Android.
