Berlin’s Fighting Spirit Proves It’s Still The Number One Post-Pandemic Destination For Artists And Creators

Because the world slowly adjusts to the post-pandemic new world order, the promise of unrestricted journey—with the ability to go the place we please, with out restrictions, to see new locations, new folks, and new experiences—feels tantalizingly shut. The journey business is steadily bouncing again from near-total devastation; a recent report from the World Travel & Tourism Council predicted the worldwide journey sector is on monitor to succeed in $8.6 trillion this yr, simply 6.4% behind pre-pandemic ranges. Now, these of us lucky sufficient to have the means to journey are remembering the transformative energy of latest experiences.

The one query that is still is: the place will we select to go, now that we will go? Will we search locations we’ve got visited earlier than, that supply us consolation and emotional sustenance? Or will we search completely new adventures, opening ourselves as much as experiences we might have as soon as been too frightened to hunt out? After greater than two years of being confronted with our personal mortality, has the pandemic emboldened us with a brand new spirit of journey?

For me, it was somewhat of each. Berlin has all the time held a particular place in my coronary heart: it’s the primary place I traveled to after I was a younger school pupil dwelling in Australia, as half of a bigger European journey the place I did my finest to soak within the continent’s wealthy historical past. In fact, the best way a 22-year-old views the world is vastly completely different from the best way a 37-year-old views the world, and whereas I’ve been again to Europe all through the years for enterprise journeys and the like, I’ve all the time felt a pull to higher perceive extra about Berlin’s inventive spirit.

So with that, at first of April, I left the US for the primary time in two years and landed in Berlin.

My first cease was the newly-opened Hotel Luc in Berlin’s central Mitte district. A part of Marriott’s Autograph Assortment, the 70-room, 22-suite boutique resort is strategically positioned reverse the French Dom cathedral, showcasing the grandeur, magnificence, and luxurious of Prussian-era Berlin. This central theme flows by the resort’s design, gastronomy, and persona, all bathed in a sensuous Prussian blue. Lodge Luc is as quirky as it’s elegant: nowhere on this planet will you discover a luxurious boutique resort that options potatoes—sure, you learn appropriately—as ornamental objects, for instance.

There’s historic motive for this, in fact: it’s mentioned that Frederick the Nice popularized the starchy root vegetable throughout his reign within the 1700s when he was in search of an modern new technique to feed a ravenous nation. At first, peasants resisted rising potatoes as a result of they thought them soiled and tasteless (they tried them uncooked, presumably), however Fred persevered, rebranding the potato as a “royal vegetable” and unwillingly kicking off one of many world’s first profitable advertising and marketing campaigns. In fact, if it’s ok for the king then it should be good for us, and so the common-or-garden potato started its sluggish path to dominance in German delicacies.

(Discover out extra concerning the resort’s distinctive design on this Lodge Luc Q&A.)

Lodge Luc additionally affords visitors entry to Marriott Bonvoy’s Tours & Activities program, which permits visitors to guide experiences in cities everywhere in the world. Earlier this yr, Marriott Bonvoy—Marriott Worldwide’s journey program and market that encompasses Marriott Worldwide’s portfolio of 30 resort manufacturers—launched a brand new world marketing campaign centered on the transformative energy of journey. The marketing campaign is inviting folks from everywhere in the world to attach on social media and share their finest journey reminiscences; what’s extra, it’s a concentrated effort to deal with how journey can change us—if solely we enable ourselves to be modified. (The marketing campaign aired throughout the NBA Finals, and likewise throughout the Olympics, the world’s greatest stage for world unity and connection.)

One in all my foremost causes for coming to Berlin was to be taught extra about why town attracts so many younger artists, designers, and creators. To be taught extra about this, I booked a personal tour by Marriott Bonvoy’s Excursions & Actions program, run by Travel Curious.

My information, Finn, took me for a stroll to find the city counterculture of the previous East Berlin. Finn informed me about life behind the Iron Curtain, how the Berlin Wall was erected and the way it got here down, and the way Berlin’s post-war id emerged by a deal with avenue artwork and self-expression. We visited a subterranean world of tunnels, storage rooms, air-raid shelters, and abandoned subway stations that when smuggled folks from East to West; graffiti-covered subcultural compounds, refurbished bookshops, artwork cinemas, and grassroots file labels; Soviet-era buildings and GDR-era relics; Chilly Struggle checkpoints between West and East Berlin; and the well-known East Aspect Gallery, the longest open-air gallery of historical past and artwork on this planet on the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall.

It was an eye-opening and heartfelt tour that left me in awe of Berlin’s spirit and resilience; it is a metropolis that now not runs from its previous, however shows its scars and classes with delight, for the world to see. On Finn’s recommendation, I additionally paid a go to to the Stasi Museum, which as soon as served because the headquarters of the GDR Ministry for State Safety, the key police drive that terrorized and spied on its residents from the Nineteen Sixties proper up till the autumn of the Berlin Wall. Among the many many Soviet-era relics housed within the museum are wiretap recordings, propaganda asking residents to tell on one another, and testimonies from dozens of former Stasi brokers who have been compelled to spy for the establishment.

Afterward, strolling again to the resort, I stumbled upon a hole-in-the-wall potato cafe. Simply potatoes. Baked, fried, mashed, you identify it. There was a line outdoors. I thought of Fred the Nice, and joined the queue.

And another factor…

• Berlin is dwelling to not one, not two, however three main opera homes. In the event you’re on the town, it’s worth checking out what’s playing.
• German delicacies is nice, however Berlin additionally has a big Center Japanese group, leading to various scrumptious Lebanese and Turkish eating places. Absolutely the hands-down winner is Casalot Restaurant, which has one of the best kunefeh in Germany.
• In the event you’re on the quirky motels of Europe path, be sure to try one other Marriott gem, the Moxy Amsterdam Houthavens, a classy oasis in Amsterdam’s oldest working harbor that includes a 24-hour bar, floor-to-ceiling home windows, and all-day bike rent that offers you the possibility to expertise Amsterdam like an area.