And just like that, it's all over. As the time has come to pack away the decorations for another year, I'm reminiscing about our trip to Berlin for the Christmas markets last winter. We were in an Uber on the way to Tegel airport when the driver checked which terminal our flight would be going from, and informed us that it was in fact cancelled due to the snow at Heathrow, despite the British Airways app saying otherwise. Hours on the phone to BA and a long queue at the airport later, we were rebooked on the earliest available flight and our three day weekend became five days. Stressful at the time, but rather nice having an extra 48 hours in one of my favourite cities.
I love Christmas market trips (we visited Cologne in 2016 and Lille this December), have visited Berlin a few times before - including a press trip earlier in the year and at Christmas years ago - but no one does Christmas markets like the Germans, so happily headed back for the fifth time. We stayed at the Ellington Hotel - chic hotel, lovely staff; highly recommended - and ate very well, with delicious dinners at Restaurant VOLT and Nobelhart & Schmutzig, lunches at Meisterstück and Oxymoron in the Mitte district, and plenty of wursts at the markets. We had cocktails at the hipster Cafe Kreuzberg and drinks at the buzzy Monkey Bar at the top of the 25hours hotel, where I stayed last spring.
We wandered around every market we came across, including Alexanderplatz, with its colourful carousel and huge wooden Christmas pyramid, and headed east to the family-oriented market in front of the lit up Charlottenburg Palace, but our favourite was the beautiful Gendarmenmarkt between two churches and the concert hall, which we visited each day. It's less crowded due to the €1 entry fee, and features sparkling Christmas trees, live music and rows of traditional huts with handcrafted glass baubles, local artisanal produce, the famous iced lebkuchen heart biscuits, food stalls and a champagne bar. We ordered a bottle of Moët & Chandon and watched ballerinas perform a version of the Waltz of the Snowflakes (possibly my favourite sequence in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker) on stage beneath the Konzerthaus, followed by a children's choir. We went inside one of the little tents to warm up and share a flammkuchen (the thin, crispy German pizza) before moving onto the next market. The perfect festive winter's evening!
We walked through the wintry Tiergarten and visited the Holocaust Memorial, Brandenburg Gate, the book burning memorial at Bebelplatz, Checkpoint Charlie, the beautiful tiled Hackesche Höfe - where the fabulous Chameleon Theater is - and the Kaiser Wilheim Memorial Church, with its impressive stained glass window designed by the celebrated Gabriel Loire featuring 22,750 pieces of blue and red glass.
On what was probably the coldest day, we hired bikes and cycled 35km around the city and its parks, including along the old Berlin Tempelhof Airport runways in the iciest winds. Face-numbingly cold, but great fun. On our final day, we wandered around the Mitte district beneath the TV Tower and visited the Berliner Dom cathedral on Museum Island, climbing the steps to the rooftop dome to take in its super views across the city. We had time for one last mug of glühwein before grabbing our bags from the hotel and heading to the airport once again. There isn't a bad time of year to go to Berlin, but if you haven't visited at Christmastime, you must!
