Berlin • Munich • Gunzburg (Legoland)

Magdeburg • Stuttgart

Reviews of Attractions in Germany

Also see our reviews of:

Germany: Hotels Berlin • Munich • Gunzburg (Legoland) • Colmberg

Sandy's family of 5, with 3 boys, ages 9 and 13, went to Germany in June/July of 2008.  You can read their reviews below.

Berlin

Haus am Checkpoint Charlie - Museum

First, see the copy of the Checkpoint Charlie station, once a crossing of the Berlin Wall for foreigners and members of the Allied Forces. It is a bit awkward though, as the booth stands in the middle of a busy road, so you must crowd on the sidewalk and watch others pay a bit to have their photo taken with the 'guards' (They seem quite casual and jovial - are they real, or actors? We wonder.) Other 'guards' are stationed at a tiny kiosk on the sidewalk, selling the chance to have your passport marked with a Checkpoint Charlie stamp.

Enter the museum in the middle of the block. It is expensive, as there is not a family ticket option, adults are €12.50 each, and our 13 year old was €7.50. The 9 year olds were free. You must deposit your backpacks and such in lockers downstairs (insert a Euro, lock it and keep the key. When done, unlock it and your coin pops out). And renting an audio guide is in a room across from the ticket counter, for €3.00 each. There is a brochure, but it just generally tells what the museum holds - it isn't a guide with room layouts.

Think about a morning visit. Not only would it be less crowded, but likely cooler. There are many convoluted rooms and tight doorways, and no air conditioning, and it was very hot in places. Some rooms have the same entry and exit door, and the flow of traffic is confusing. We had good experiences in other museums using audio guides, so that our kids' attention would be held longer, and they were less frustrated having to read so much. However, this museum's audio guides included very, very lengthy, monotone descriptions of displays, and we stopped using them right away. So, I resorted to reading aloud items the kids selected, and tried my best to speed-read other items I wanted to absorb before we moved to the next space.

The museum feels authentic to the subject matter, in that the displays seem amateur and sort of hodge-podge in their order and placement among strange, highly symbolic artwork. It reminded me that the people who risked everything to help others escape took action without the benefit of large organized assistance.

We very much appreciated that the great majority of escape stories and biographies and history tales were written in 4 language versions, including English. However, some of the English was faulty, in that even after reading it, I still was confused about what was being described. The kids and I were too tired and too hot to go up to the rooms that display other world leaders of freedom. We exited down into the museum shop, located on the corner of the street, and tried to find a shady, cool spot to wait while hubby read every single word of every single exhibit. (He had been to Berlin before the wall came down, and was intensely interested.)

www.mauermuseum.de Not much to see on this website, but click your language, then click Service for hours of operation, and entry prices.

Topography of Terror

Photo to right is of fenced portion of Berlin Wall near Topography of Terror

This is an outdoor exhibit showing with photographs, and describing with text panels in both German and (excellent) English, the key places and people involved with the times of the Nazi government. It is free, and there are free pamphlets about the exhibit in multiple languages that briefly tell of the history of the site and how the exhibit came to be.

Unfortunately, the corridor of displays is long and narrow considering the crowds visiting. As we walked along, I tried to read aloud items that would interest our youngest, who are well-versed in WWII history, yet still found the quantity of material overwhelmed their attention. There was a gypsy beggar and a class lecture that we had to maneuver around.

It was also a very hot day when we visited, and we rushed through the last half of the aisle.

www.topographie.de A very good website that has a well-written English version. There are a couple of small photos of the exhibition, and easy navigation to its history.

Legoland Discovery Centre Berlin

We didn't expect it, but our Legoland season pass, purchased in Munich, provided free entry here! Otherwise I think it may have been €49! For our kids' ages, it would have been money unwisely spent. If your kids are 6 years old or younger, the Discovery Centre would likely provide a few hours of fun, and there are plenty of places for adults to sit and have a snack or just watch the kids play.

build area of Discovery Centre

However, our youngest are 9, and though the 4-D movie about a Lego-Merlin medieval hero was very enjoyable for all of us, and we all liked seeing the 3 Berlin sites built from Lego, our kids wanted no part of the rest. Upon entry everyone is herded into a very quick (maybe 5 minute) movie, then into the factory where a selected kid gets to push buttons for the scientist-host and create a souvenir Lego piece for everyone. Kids get a small form with symbols for each of the play areas. As each play area is visited, kids can stamp their form. There is a large climbing aparatus with tunnels and compartments, and tables for building with Duplos, including buttons to activate an 'earthquake' to test the kids' created structure. There is also an Indiana Jones animal scavenger hunt area. The indoor, miniature dragon ride was out of order when we visited. www.legolanddiscoverycentre.com (Tickets can be purchased online, too.)

German History Museum

Enter into a spacious lobby with friendly counter helpers. The price is great: €5 for adults, kids under 18 are free. You must check your bags at the attended checkroom. The restrooms are new-looking, with sleek surfaces, and auto-flush toilets. However, they are well-used, and after rejecting 2 men's restrooms, we finally found a clean one on the 1st floor for the boys. The museum has a 'familienpake' to rent audioguides, and so renting 5 of them was just €6. The audioguides are operated by pushing a 3-digit number on the keypad and placing the wand near your ear to listen to a description of the display. You could read along with the narrator, since the majority of displays also had an English version.

This museum is so beautiful. It is housed in a building conceptualized in 1695 and finished in 1730. The height and expanse of the spaces is grand, and the displays fit the environment. There are interior information panels, expertly hung art pieces, and artifacts housed in glass cases. The layout provides a walk through time, and there is plenty of space to contemplate the visuals and information. We arrived in the afternoon, and it was not crowded at all. It is quiet, and there are guards posted to make sure visitors don't touch.

My favorite sections were of the times from the early German tribes, through medieval ages. I liked linking the early towns described with the cities and castles that still dot the German countryside. My husband progressed quickly with the boys, each listening to their audio guide according to their own interests, through the WWII section, while I took my time in the earlier periods. We never made it to the Pei building and its exhibitions, nor the museum gift shop.

www.dhm.de This is a wonderful website, click English in the upper right side to get started. Some pages are offered in 8 additional languages. The Permanent Exhibition link shows the layout and gives descriptions of the main displays. Click on About the Museum, then History of the Zeughaus for a history and photos of the building. The 'Concepts' section is also a good overview. Just for fun, click on the Webcams photo to see real-time photos of Berlin streets from the Museum's exterior.

Reichstag

Berlin Zoo

KaDeWe

Photo to right is of our table with barstool seats at which we shared two half chickens with fries and beverages.

This huge department store has a fun-to-say name, pronounced kaw-da-vay. It is a must see, even for families like ours with no budget for shopping, and family members who dislike shopping. We hopped off our tour bus nearby, explored the many floors, bought some tiny souvenirs, ate a very reasonably priced roasted chicken lunch, then hopped back on the bus to complete the tour. The fun floors for the kids were those with food. Any type of food you could think of has its own section for take-home purchases, as well as separate, small eating spots. The kids thought it funny to see maple syrup from Canada, and shelves of 'American' food like Hershey chocolate syrup, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and the only root beer found on our entire trip. The restrooms have an attendant with a dish for coin tips.

Sony Center

Photo to right is of boys playing a video game in the 3-story Sony store.

Unless you enjoy shopping and eating very expensive meals, there is not much here. We enjoyed seeing the architecture and then the kids were so happy to play a video game in the Sony store, where we spoke with friendly German students on a field trip, while their dad explored the rest of the Sony electronics. Legoland Discovery Center is in the same block. There was no cafe for just a quick bite to eat, or any take-out place for a beverage. You can easily zip underground to the u-bahn though, where inexpensive take-out foods abound.

To see what is here, click here and then click on the small gray shapes for a building photo and list of what it houses.

To see more about the architecture, click here.

Hauptbahnhof

This is Berlin's main train station, opened in 2006. For the architecture alone it is a site to see, even if you don't plan to catch a train. We used it for getting to our hotel from the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. There are plenty of great places to eat with kids.

For a list of food choices, click here. You can click around for the station's history and services, too.

To see excellent photos taken by the BBC when it opened, and during construction, click here.

Munich

BMW Museum

Duetches Museum

We walked to this museum from our hotel in the city center. Our family ticket price for the museum was €17. It was a warm and cloudy day, and oddly, though the museum had a few windows open here and there, it was very hot in places - enough to make us want to exit certain display rooms quickly. The third floor was especially hot, but a good place to use the restrooms. Initially, there were masses of student groups crowding around displays, and the ground and first floor restrooms got 'unattractive' very soon. It seems, though, that the student groups are there for just specific display areas or for just a couple specific hours. Early-on, as we migrated up levels, we found near emptiness. And, the large groups on the lower floors cleared out by the early afternoon.

It is a huge place, too big to see everything, though we tried over a 5 hour time period, not including our break for lunch. We found a rack with layout maps in multiple languages. We grabbed a few and decided what each person most wanted to see floor by floor, then we dove in. You really, really need the map, as some rooms are branches off of other rooms, and don't have a way out other than how you came in. There are main staircases and elevator banks, and even using the map, we had trouble getting from one floor to another at the back of the building. Plus, if you're not going to spend two days here, you don't want to waste time aimlessly roaming and possibly miss areas of interest to you.

As we moved along, deciding as a group which area to head to next, I kept track of the subjects we saw and which were favorites. The older areas are in German only, and the newer, updated areas include English. Here is our rundown: On the ground floor, Marine Navigation is a multi-story exhibit and has boats of all kinds, and Aeronautics is also multi-storied with everything from kites to jet airplanes and space propulsion. The Electrical Power room had diaramas of how early power was used in train stations, and how the power grid works, but is also aged, and hands-on buttons were broken. A Tunnel Construction display shows the variety of methods and materials utilized in modern times. But our favorite from the ground floor was the Bridge-Building and Hydraulic Engineering. These displays are vast, and new. We spent a lot of time here.

On the first floor, Energy Technologies was a new area, showing solar and nuclear power and highlighting conservation. The Physics area kept the kids entertained for a long time with rows and rows of hands-on knobs and levers. However, none of it was in English. I grew frustrated quickly with not being able to have the physics principles described. But, the kids went on and on. It was late in the afternoon by the time we made it to the second and third floors. We sort of zipped through new exhibits of Astronautics, Geodesy (maps), Computers (sounds like it would be hands-on, but it's not --. really just showcases of types of early, huge computers), and Telecommunications, which would have interested us for quite a while, and which had some hands-on items, but it was nearing closing time.

There is a heavy-on-the-fried-foods cafe, a snack bar, and a restaurant that you may need reservations for, and to which we could not find the entrance. So, we walked across the Isar river to a restaurant with outdoor seating. It was expensive, and we split 3 dishes of schnitzel & fries and rigatoni.

Outside the entrance to the museum, right in the courtyard of this historical building, is a huge, carnival-type sky-ride. Our 13 year old begged us for the €3 to try it. There wasn't a line, though there was a steady group of riders. He really enjoyed it!

www.deutsches-museum.de The website is fantastic, and has a very well-written, friendly tone as it describes all the elements of the museum. There are also links to the museum's Transportation and Aerospace arms, located elsewhere in the city. You can decide to get a combo-ticket to the group if you like.

Residenz Museum coming soon

Transportation Museum Coming Soon

Legoland Deutschland (in Gunzburg)

Stuttgart

Mercedes Museum

We drove here from Gunzburg and we were well prepared for the drive. We had Google maps with detailed directions, a road map of Germany, and directions from the Mercedes Museum website. However, we had lots of trouble. First, the autobahn road signs listing the intersecting roads ahead did not match the road names according to our directions. My advice is to identify your roads on the map ahead of time. Secondly, even after reaching our turnoff to the museum, there were inconsistent signs. One would include the word 'museum' plus an arrow pointing the way, the next four signs would have only a checkered flag symbol that we had to figure out meant 'museum'. Amazingly, after numerous turns that we thought were perhaps incorrect, we found the parking garage.

Once we got our tickets, which were free for our kids ages 9 and 12, and just €8 for each adult, and were each supplied with a free English version handheld audio device with headset, we entered a space-age looking elevator to the top floor. The audio device automatically activates upon entering certain areas. Other displays require that the device be pointed toward an audio symbol and a transmit button pushed. Sometimes you have to get real close to activate the transmit button.

The path is circular, progressing through history and 10 levels to the basement floor. I especially loved the rich, thorough historical context described along with the Mercedes and Benz companies' stories. There is just one display of factual video and another science interactive screen per level. And though 'don't touch' is the policy for most of the vehicles, one or two levels has a bus you can enter.

While hubby Kurt finished reading and listening to every word of every exhibit, I took the kids to the cafe area for donuts and a salami-pretzel sandwich. Turns out we each get to keep the substantial Mercedes-Benz neck lanyard on which the audio system hung. A nice souvenir, especially since the gifts in the shop were quite expensive.

www.museum-mercedes-benz.com This website is very high-tech, but has lots of moving images and isn't exactly easy to use. Easier to use is the www.mercedes-benz-classic.com page about the museum.

Magdeburg

I first heard of this bridge when I opened one of those forwarded emails that had been spread to lots of people. I immediately thought it had been photoshopped, but decided to check other sources before completely dismissing it. Sure enough - it is real!

Since our family loves all kinds of sciences, including engineering, and we happened to be planning a trip to Germany, we put it on our itinerary. It is just outside of Berlin, so we stopped on our way into town. As you can imagine, it's not the biggest tourist attraction - the evening we stopped there wasn't another soul around. But there is a nice explanatory plaque telling of its construction, though only in German.

Years in the making, this is a bridge of water that can carry huge barges over a river that is perpendicular to it. I have not found one website that covers great pictures of it as well as its history. So, I'm listing three links: To see an aerial view, click here. To see the bridge's opening day photo, click here. To read about the bridge's history, click here.

View of water canal above the Elbe River.

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