The Westin Grand hotel in Berlin has recently added a surprisingly creative package to their lineup of perks.
Instead of the usual drab spa services, or package with a snack in your room, the Westin is offering guests the chance to stay at their hotel and take home a piece of the Berlin wall.
Right in the main lobby of the hotel is an authentic piece of the wall, weighing in at 2.7 tons.
Guests who book the “tear down the wall” package will receive a night at the hotel, along with a safety helmet, goggles and a hammer and chisel. They are then free to bang away on the wall and grab their very own piece of history.
After the hard work, guests can visit parts of historic Berlin with a complimentary guidebook. The package even includes a glass of Champagne and a Currywurst.
You’ll find plenty of German tourists at just about any major destination in the world, and this is unlikely to change. As of October/November 2008, German tour operators are reporting a 4 percent to 9 percent increase in tour bookings.
Trips to the United States were up 5 percent for the first 11 months of 2008 compared to the same period in 2007. Seventy-nine percent of the tour operators surveyed believe that bookings to the United States will be up for the last quarter of last year. Major cities are on the agenda, so look out, New York! The Germans are coming!
At the time of the survey, German bookings to the United States were up 10 percent to 15 percent average for the fourth quarter – and that’s over 2007’s 15 percent gains from the fourth quarter of 2006.
And, the trend is expected to continue this year. Sixty-four percent of German tour operators project a 4 percent to 9 percent increase in the first quarter of 2009 (relative to the first quarter of 2009.
I’m not a big fan of lists, so please don’t be surprised at my dismay with Forbes.com’s newest attempt to show how Western countries are full of the friendliest people on earth. In its latest “Top Ten” list, David Sutton identifies what he believes to be the world’s friendliest expat countries. The top three on his list: Canada, Germany, and Australia.
Please don’t get me wrong. I think these countries are wonderful, and they clearly offer great working opportunities for people who hope to live abroad. However, I noticed a few unfortunate gaps in the list — the biggest of which are Indonesia and Costa Rica. I believe these countries are full of happy and friendly expats. The article’s obvious third world country oversights are dismissed by claiming that “cultural differences from the West [makes] integration difficult.” I would argue that the real issue here is that businessmen living abroad don’t bother to integrate and adapt to their environments. It should certainly not be the host country’s fault that it is a third world country and therefore unable to accommodate for a rich expat. As always, lists like these could create unnecessary fear in travelers and continue to widen the gap between privileged and unprivileged nations rather than bring people together and teach us how much can be learned about cultures unlike our own.
Most of the time you can find yourself in Cologne, Germany, and not really know why you’re there — that’s how relatively unexciting and nondescript Western Germany’s largest city is.
But say you find yourself on the platform of Cologne’s main train station at around 6 a.m. on a Thursday (this Thursday, for example). You’ve just arrived after a night journey and your eyes are trying to snatch some focus in the early morning darkness. You move through a constant clamor: screams, shouts, yawps , laughter. You see figures, more than you should for this hour, crisscrossing, boarding and alighting from trains. Further into the station the din grows louder, and you can see the people more clearly: Everyone’s in costume, and most are carrying crates of beer.
Welcome to Day 1 of Cologne’s Carnival (or Karneval in German).
This is a Carnival celebration that is not on many people’s radar screen, even though, with more than 1 million people annually in attendance, it amounts to one of Europe’s biggest street festivals, and certainly Germany’s largest after Oktoberfest in Munich.Officially, Cologne Carnival starts every year at 11:11 p.m on November 11. But it hits its full celebratory stride starting this Thursday, the beginning of the “crazy days,” and won’t end until next Tuesday — so-called Fat Tuesday, for all you Mardi Gras fans out there.
In fact, Cologne’s festival has much in common with other Carnival celebrations around the world, like Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the carnivals in Rio and Trinidad and Tobago. Historically, they are essentially Catholic celebrations ahead of Ash Wednesday, the official start of the Lenten season. In reality, of course, such revelry doesn’t seem very religious, but the celebrations all include the same basic ingredients: Costumes, parades, drinking and music (though I’ll admit, the Cologne Carnival lacks music with the same beat as, say, samba in Rio and is decidedly less sexy — see the video at the end of this post).
All throughout Germany’s Rhineland towns will be holding their own carnivals. Bonn, the former capital of West Germany, gives Cologne a good run for its money with its festival and one of the best ways to experience the party in this region is to divide your time between the two cities (they’re only 30 minutes apart).
This Thursday is known as Weiberfastnacht (Wieverfastelovend in the Cologne dialect), which translates roughly as “women’s day,” a day dedicated to the fairer sex, some of which seek to seduce male Carnival-goers by dressing in provocative, playful nurse and devil costumes, which traditionally means they are looking for some, em, attention. The following days feature small parades in the region’s various towns. Saturday night is a big night in Cologne, with several major carnival balls and an unofficial bar crawl through many of the pubs and breweries of Old Town.
Carnival’s biggest day is Rosenmontag, or Rose Monday, which features the festival’s major parade through Cologne, followed by street parties and an evening in the Cologne bars.
I find myself mentioning pubs and bars a lot. The few times I’ve been to Cologne Carnival, I’ve always thought of it as primarily a beer festival, one to rival Oktoberfest.
In this part of Germany, the traditional beer is Kölsch, a light, fruity draft that is notable in that it’s one of the only beers in Germany actually appellation-controlled: Only beer from Cologne can be called Kölsch (for Köln, Cologne in German). The same light beer brewed 30 minutes down the road in Bonn is known as Bonnsh.
I know Cologne Carnival is about much more than drinking. Still, it seems every year each day’s festivities ultimately come down to kölsch: That is, huddling with friends in a packed pub, dressed in something embarrassing (I was a cow one year; at right, a devil), plucking eagerly at tall, thin kölsch glasses (called stange) that are cradled by the 10 in a round wreath or kranz, and singing traditional Carnival songs at the top of your lungs, no matter how many times you’ve heard them that day: Da simmer dabei! Dat is prima! Viva Colonia! Wir lieben dat leben die Liebe und die lust wir glauben an den Lieben gott und ham uch immer durscht!
Let’s face it: there are tons of online travel resources out there, and they seem to be growing exponentially by the day. It came to my attention that one of those millions should not be overlooked. Despite its rather unfortunate name, I found Tagcrumbs, a Germany and UK-based company, to be quite useful and informative.
The premise here is simple. When you come across a cool place in the world (one worth remembering), sign into your Tagcrumbs account and tag it by location. You can then write a little blurb about it, adding specific recommendations if you like. Each Tagcrumb is connected to a specific location and has some tags added to it. That way you can easily search for nearby places that are relevant to you. The site will eventually provide a way to send your tagcrumbs to your friends as well as upload new tagcrumbs from your mobile phone.
Ultimately, Tagcrumbs is a comprehensive site that allows you to organize and share interesting stories, opinions and insider tips with the world. Right now, it’s just getting started, and while notable places in the U.S. have yet to be tagged, I could see this resource really taking off with the proper publicity. All this site needs is a little incentive for users.