Travel to Berlin and Düsseldorf podcast
It’s been a while since we spent time in Germany, but we’re back! First in Düsseldorf, a little city with a lot of personality; and then in Berlin, a big city with a lot more!
To listen, hit play below or find episode 252 in iTunes or Soundcloud:
Things we loved in Berlin
Meeting people
We were lucky enough to meet Indie Travel Podcast listener Tina, as well as old friends while in Berlin.
Palaces
The Berlin Welcome Card made it easy to get around. Visiting the Charlottenburg neighbourhood for the first time was something quite amazing: a very different side of Berlin to what we’re accustomed to. We also made it out to…
Potsdam
Which was simply amazing! The gardens full of palaces, the little Russian and Dutch enclaves. Well worth a day trip from Berlin. But don’t make our mistake: hire bikes to help you get around.
History in context
Our Urban Adventures Storyline Tour of Berlin put us in the hands of Greta, a Berliner with a personal connection with the place. Touching briefly on the distant past, the focus was on the last hundred years, as we saw Berlin change through WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, as it played an important part of each conflict. We also headed underground with the Berliner Unterwelten group, exploring a WWII bunker inside a working subway station.
Things we loved in Düsseldorf
The city rally
Linda fell in love with exploring the city using the City Rally: a treasure hunting brochure put out by Visit Düsseldorf. The walking + cruising tour we did later took us to many of the same spots, but allowed us to understand better what we had seen.
Aquariums, museums, galleries, palaces, and geocaching
With the Düsseldorf Welcome Card we had free or discounted entry to most of the galleries and attractions. We saw a photo exhibition, the aquarium, the film museum, the ceramics museum, and took the tram out to Benrath Palace. At many of these locations, we joined our couchsurfing hosts in finding some devilishly well-planned geocaches.
The Alt Bier
This style of top-fermented beer is micro-brewed in several of the city’s oldest pubs. Needless to say, we had to sample as many as we could.
Want to hear the stories behind all these things? Hit “play” in the podcast above, search for “indie travel” in any podcasting app, or open it up in iTunes (for free) just here: Open Indie Travel Podcast in iTunes. You’re after episode 252: Travel in Berlin and Düsseldorf.
Thanks to VisitBerlin and Düsseldorf Tourismus for their help in these cities.
IndieRail is brought to you by ACPRail.com, providers of a wide range of rail passes and train tickets including Eurail, BritRail, Rail Australia, Japan Rail and more. Great pricing, friendly service. We’re glad to be working with them. Local day trips are provided by Urban Adventures. We’re sharing stories as they happen thanks to Droam: mobile data without boundaries.
I know these places are very beautiful to see and I’m also visited these two amazing cities they are so beautiful.The Brandenburg Gate is so great to see. I love those cities.
Thanks for so many great podcasts; I have downloaded for several years from iTunes. While listening to this entry last night I heard you mention Droam and am interested but I couldn’t tell whether you’d said “Drove” or “Drone” so thankfully you have the companion blog entries I can check!
Hi Bobbi, glad you love the podcast — great to have you with us 🙂
Yes, Droam is at http://droam.nl/en/ — really great to have this little wifi zone travelling with us! We’ll be sure to spell it out on the next show.
(And if other people are looking for the podcast, search “indie travel” in any podcasting app, or hit this for iTunes: https://indietravelpodcast.com/itunes)
Well, Berlin is so full of people from all across the world that anyone could feel at home there. Yet, when I was there a few years ago, I got the impression that it is simply dirty, whereas most cities in Germany are perfectly clean. Not sure if that was my impression or just the matter of Berlin’s size.
And just by the way – Potsdam is awesome. I was only awed by the fact that there were hardly any Potsdam-related memorabilia. For instance, most stalls sold T-shirts with ‘I love Berlin’ on, with no reference to Podstam at all!