[BERLIN] — Several years ago I went to Berlin for a quick Thanksgiving getaway to scope it out for a possible move. I loved it so much I came back the next year over Christmas for a longer stay. I got a chance to stay at three great boutique hotels in Berlin — all were so completely different and in completely different areas, each felt like I was on a completely different vacation. Here are my favorites I found.

And here’s a link to a long post I made about how to spend a long weekend in Berlin, with lots to choose from.

Feel the Vibe at the Michelberger Hotel

What a find. The Michelberger Hotel is up there in the top ten of my favorite city hotels. Everything so thoughtful, different and special. Even their website is cool, a break from other humdrum hotel websites.

The lobby feels more like a community center. Stacks of books defining the space, shredded magazine pages crafted into lampshades. Endless comfy seating, with probably the highest pillow ratio of any hotel lobby. Cozy. That’s the word.

The Michelberger is in the perfect location, right across the street from the busy Warschauer Straße station, which connects to the UBahn and Sbahn. and the Uber Arena (formerly the Mercedes Benz Arena, what a downgrade in sponsors), the East Side Gallery, the giant Matrix nightclub and you can try to get into the famed Berghain around the corner, too.

To quote Conde Nast Traveler: “No hotel captures the youthful, creative spirit of Berlin quite like this indie hotel.” Set in a former factory building It’s in a perfect location in the club-filled district of Friedrichshain, formerly the East Side. Very convenient to launch your day or night.

There are only 132 rooms, some of them dorm-style for the younger groups prowling the clubs. Some rooms are called the Hideout Space, which are oriented more for families, with kitchenettes and loft rooms for kids.

Have a Drink in the Courtyard at The Michelberger Hotel

The inner courtyard of the Michelberger is a cool place. I was there in the winter, so they had wheeled in a Finnish sauna for the guests to sneak out to, but in summer I read that this outdoor cafe is jumping, complete with bands and DJs playing into the wee hours.

Eat at the Fantastic Michelberger Restaurant

Michelberger Restaurant was a such a blast to eat here, I came several times.

I was staying here over Christmas and Boxing Day, which was a godsend when nearly every single restaurant, bar and store was closed. But what a great surprise, when I couldn’t find anything else opened, I squealed with glee “oooh, I can eat in the hotel restaurant.” — something I normally would never say.

But this place was so perfect. Big community tables, gorgeous lighting and shiny subway tiles reflecting all the flickering candles. Giant windows open up to the metro station across the street, made better when a train sped by on the elevated tracks. It feels like eating in the original set of the old Saturday Night Live.

Here’s a great review in CNTraveler. And a review from A Hotel Life.

The last thing you’ll hear from me is “Let’s just eat at the hotel.” But the Restaurant Michelberger made me so giddy I was like “Ooooh, I can go back and eat at the hotel !”

The food was amazing, the staff super-friendly. They are hyper-seasonal, including sourcing from their own farm.

Because it’s part of the hotel, it’s open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I loved how easy it was to eat here solo, sliding into the bar once, the end of a long table the other night.

There’s also a great wine bar attached, perfect for a nightcap and planning for the next day.

You’ll Want to Just Hang Out in Your Room

What a delightful, inviting design. A big fluffy bed in the middle of the room. An entire wall lined with books, waving at you. And not just any flea market books, it’s like every book was specially chosen.

A discreet little shower tucked behind the bed, a big tub by the window to wash off the day.

The branding and communications of The Michelberger was just so spot-on for the whole hotel. And hip neighborhood.

Instead of boring signs and bad marketing materials like a chain hotel, every piece was purposeful and entertaining. Taking a mundane thing like a No Smoking sign and making it work of art.

But my favorite thing of all for the hotel was the custom local sites map for all guests. A specially curated selection of not everything, but just the cool things to see, with personal fun comments about what make each place special.

Broken out by shops, restaurants, museums, parks, museums, etc. It’s a brilliant idea I wish more hotels did. I worked my way all the way down the lists.(Make sure to read the descriptions below.)

— Last Visited December 2017, Post Created August 2024 —

Feel Like You Live in Berlin at Gorki Apartments

I could only get a room at the Michelberger for several nights over my Christmas visit, so I scrambled to find another cool place to stay. I found it. The Gorki Apartments. It’s more of an apartment-hotel, so you feel more like you’re living in hip Berlin, not just staying there, complete with kitchenettes and fridges stocked with drinks and booze.

There’s no bar or restaurant, but as Mr & Mrs Smith says: “Gorki guests benefit from the insider knowledge of the hip staff: they have the best connections with local restaurants, from new openings to well-loved institutions.” They hooked me up with some of my best restaurant visits. The sweet ladies there got as excited as I did when I described what I was looking for, “Ooooh, yes, yes. Here is where I would recommend.” The others nodding and purring in agreement.

There’s no real lobby, because this is your apartment. You check-in in a little office with super nice staff who can book nearly anything for you. And when you come back, you don’t have to pass through a lobby, just take the elevator directly to your floor. I loved this place, too. I can’t wait to come back.

The location is perfect, in Mitte district, right in the middle of everything. So you can’t beat it. The rooms are giant, more like a flat, so perfect if you need to get some work done, or two of you needing some elbow room. Here’s a great review from the Michelin Guide.

When I was there, the restaurant next door, Gorki Park, was a hip cocktail bar with a kitschy Russian theme, but looks like they’ve since de-Russified it and now (understandably), it is called the 100 Gramm Bar and looks totally cool. Check it out and let me know.

— Last Visited December 2017, Post Created August 2024 —

Look Over the Berlin Zoo from the Gorgeous Das Stue

I’d been seeing great posts from my Instagram peeps about a cool boutique hotel called Das Stue — it claims to be Berlin’s first boutique hotel. I stayed here on my first revisit to Berlin in 2016. Booking my trip at the last minute, there were no avails. But then I checked back again and rooms had suddenly opened up. I booked it on the spot, no time to think.

Set at the end of the quiet dark road near Tiergarten — Berlin’s enormous version of Central Park — amidst all the foreign embassies, Das Stue itself a former Danish embassy, with roomy rooms overlooking the Berlin Zoo, with seals moaning and emus strutting right below my window.

I wrote a separate post on Das Stue, you can read about it here.

Besides the cool design, the other great thing of Das Stue are the views, either overlooking Tiergarten or the Berlin Zoo. The Zoo-facing rooms even have binoculars so you can spy on the animals below.

It ended up being the perfect choice. Even more for the friendly people than the location.

As the taxi wove its way down the dark streets, embassies sprouting on either side of the street with their little guard houses and flags from every nation. Smart and stately apartment buildings speckled in-between. You get to the end of dark street and there it stands, rather, hides. A beautiful 1930s arc of a building, its entrance lit like a warm, welcoming fire.

The first thing that hits you when you walk through the massive front doors is the crocodile head, staring straight at you. Its sharp teeth ready to open your can of beer. Grand staircases line either side, like a Weimar movie set. But in stark contrast (as if the crocodile wasn’t) a modern constellation of lights hangs from the ceiling, like an undulating blanket. Yeah …. this is why I’m here…

Das Stue means “living room” in Danish, the doorman told me upon arrival. “So we want you to feel comfortable in every way.” How perfect is that?

It has an ambassadorial flair, with a little Weimar thrown in, and the lobby is Travertine Heaven. But they recently remodeled, with cool boutique feel by hot Spanish architect Patricia Urquiola, updating it to the coolest standards, with a couple more notches above that, including a small Michelin star Spanish restaurant.

— Last Visited November 2016, Post Created August 2024 —

More Information on Berlin’s Best Boutique Hotels

Here’s a great Top 10 List from TimeOut Berlin, which has Das Stue as #1 and Michelberger as #8. Here is a big list of the famous hotels in Berlin from Conde Nast Traveler and the always-dependable Mr & Mrs Smith Berlin picks. And a really sexy article of cool places in Berlin from Vogue.

And here’s a link to a long post I made about how to spend a long weekend in Berlin, with lots to choose from.

My Berlin Google Map

For years, I’ve been a clipper. I have a big four drawer file cabinet with all sorts of files, broken out by City and Country.  Whenever I run across an article of somewhere I want to go in the future, I rip it out and file away, waiting for the day I eventually go there. Before I go, I read through all those articles and find the cool places I want to check out and plot them on Google Maps.

When I’m traveling, I tend to just walk and walk and walk. So each day, I just look at the map I created on my phone and just head where the most stars are.  It’s amazing how effective this is. Instead of picking places randomly scattered all over the city, it makes more sense to go neighborhood by neighborhood. And it’s freakishly cool how, consolidating all these cool places, from so many different sources, from all these years, they all kind cluster together and point you where to go.

Here’s my map of cool stuff I plotted for Berlin. Restaurants. Shops. Museums. Cool things. With such a short time there, I didn’t get a chance to see many of them, or I got there and they weren’t open for lunch, etc.  Don’t do what I did and just go, do look them up to see if they are open first.

Here’s the link: https://goo.gl/maps/G1anXf62D3B2