Customer Reviews

Time Out Berlin (Time Out Guides)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this guide before going to Berlin to study German for a summer. I had no experience with Time Out guides before this, but I just knew I was sick of the bland and sometimes out of date recommendations I kept getting from Lonely Planet guides and ready for something new. Well, what a great decision--I lived in Berlin for 11 weeks, and this guide was the only thing I ever needed. Ideal for the 20-40ish crowd, it definitely has a younger, more hip (or maybe "cosmopolitan" is a better way to describe it) focus than any guide I'd encountered before, and I loved that. For one thing, because of that kind of focus, I found all these great, inexpensive "art hotels" listed in the book, and the experience of staying in those amazingly unique hotels absolutely made my trip.

The guide also has great suggestions for fun bars and clubs, restaurants and cafes, shopping, and English-language bookstores. The history and sightseeing sections were thorough and fascinating to read, there's a section on the city's fabulously modern architecture, and there's a great guide to museums and art galleries. There are also sections on music (classical and opera), things to do in Berlin with children, sports and fitness, gay and lesbian Berlin, day trips (Potsdam, etc.), overnight trips (Dresden, Leipzig, etc.), and even a section on visiting Hamburg or Prague. Especially important is the guide's directory, which provides basic information about everything from the climate, to driving in Berlin, to health care providers, to public toilets. The vegetarian restaurant suggestions (important to me, personally) were reasonably ample, but as it turned out I mostly lived off falafel from street vendors anyway.

My copy is tattered and written all over after almost three months of continuous use, and I never found a single mistake in the book. Berlin has so many treasures, and this guide helps you to the best of them all. Highly recommended!

This is the best guide for you if you've think you've outgrown the Lonely Planet books or aren't getting enough detail and insight from the Eyewitness Guide. The color pics and maps outdo the LP guide and the variety of touristy and off-beat sites beat the EWG. While LP is best for the younger/collegiate, budget traveler and EWG is great for broad overviews in a colorful format, the Time Out is the ideal prep for a grown-up trip to Berlin and even better to have in your pocket.

I was in Berlin for two weeks, and this guide helped a lot. Its not a heavy book, easy to carry in a day bag, and all the tips for sightseeing etc were helpful.

The guidebook was helpful, gave great reviews of places worth seeing and mentioned places not worth a visit, I appreciated a candid review of sights and the street maps and street index made looking for locations super easy. What is excellent is the menu entitled "If you have....one day in Berlin, Two Days in Berlin, etc. It helps the traveler prioritize what to see in the number of days spent in this city. Great itineraries for each day depending on how long one stays in Berlin. I even went to some stores, like the Absinthe Depot, that locals did not know about but were glad to discover. I have used other guide books in the Time Out Series and have not been disappointed. Our whole group followed the suggestions here and everyone felt that they got a lot of value out of it.

We go to europe every year and i always get fodor or frommer guides to the city we are going. this was my first time using a time out guide and it was a mistake. the format of the book is really hard to use. not easy to find anything. the whole 'map in the back' set up makes it hard to go back and fourth. the info was good, but both me and my partner did not find it easy to access it.

When in Berlin, we stayed in the most helpful hotel (Circus Hotel). It was really wonderful and they pointed to Time Out as the best guide book on Berlin. But it was so comprehensive that I found it to be a bit overwhelming. If you're interested in a really hip trip to Berlin, full of clubs and such, this is probably the guide book for you.

Along with this book, we also had Froder's and Eyewitness. Froder's was probably the most helpful for us because it was the most up to date. Eyewitness was pretty and helped us get around the most popular areas of Berlin...but it was incredibly heavy and only had information on about 1/4 of the city.

When I left Berlin, I donated my copy of Time Out to the hotel for future guests to use. I took my Eyewitness Guide home as a souvenir because the pictures are so beautiful.

I chose this over the other guides for my recent trip to Berlin based on the reviews here. Normally I use Let's Go! or Lonely Planet guides. The layout took getting used to: it's arranged by category (hotels, restaurants, sights, etc) then by district within the category.

The biggest complaint I have with the book is that it's not targeted at the on-a-budget traveler. It was hard to find restaurants listed that were inexpensive - maybe 1 out of every 3 or 2 of 5 was less than 10 E for meals.

Also, the book has no mention of the (frequent!) German holidays, when businesses and museums have altered or no opening hours.

But it helped me in planning out what I wanted to see, so it wasn't a total wash.

Time Out's 320-page guide is both compact & comprehensive. I've used it to plan a visit to Berlin & will be in a much better position to assess how well its savvy-sounding advice pans out in actual practice after I've put it to the test. If Rimmer's opinions turn out being ill-informed, I'll post an update. So far, I'm satisfied that for $13 I got good value for money.