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BBS - Berlin Guides Association

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BBS - Berlin Guides Association

We are Berlin's official tour guides association comprised of expert guides working in and around Berlin.
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We use our network to establish partnerships with reputable museums and institutions and to further educate each other to become even better guides We are a Berlin guide association for experienced guides. We use our network to educate each other further to become even better guides.

27/06/2024

Berlin's most famous symbol is perhaps not the Brandenburg Gate or the TV Tower, or even the Ampelmännchen, but rather a crane. Indeed, since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Berlin has become a huge construction site. Once the Wall was removed, there was a ribbon of land running through the middle of the city that offered amazing opportunities for new buildings. And there were still things to be rebuilt from World War II. So construction started and has seemingly never ended, as buildings continue to spring up in all neighborhoods all around Berlin.

20/06/2024

Every summer, these adorable strawberry huts pop up all over town. Like most people, Germans love strawberries, but only in season, when they are fresh! The most delicious ones are grown locally and these huts are from Karl's Erdbeerhof, the largest grower of strawberries in the Berlin area. You can buy freshly picked strawberries by the kilo, as well as strawberry jam and strawberry candies. After you have eaten Spargel in the spring, stick around for strawberries in the summer!

13/06/2024

At the corner of Leipziger Straße and Wilhelmstraße, you will find a memorial to the workers' protest of June 17, 1953. Earlier that year, Stalin had died, and most East Germans hoped for better working conditions. However, the East German government was unhappy with the re-building progress and announced in 1953 that work quotas would be raised, but earnings would remain the same. East German workers protested peacefully on June 17 against the new rules, but were quickly squashed by Red Army tanks rolling in from Potsdam. There is a photograph on the square remembering that event, put down exactly parallel to a socialist propangda mural painted on the building that used to be the N**i Air Force Ministry, was then the House of Ministries during East German times, and is now the Finance Ministry. In Berlin, history can be found in layers, and is best understood with a guide!

06/06/2024

The nearest sea is located several hundred kilometers north of Berlin, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy beach life in the Hauptstadt. Every summer "beach bars" are set up along the Spree river, so that tourists and locals alike can enjoy the warm air and the long summer evenings over looking the water. This one is located at Monbijou Park. Besides the bar, there is also a dance floor and the Monbijou Theater. The area is just next to Museum Island, so definitely easy to find if you are visiting Berlin.

04/06/2024

👋 Meet Jonny from !

🎥 You may recognise him from Berlin history videos on Instagram

🗺️ Jonny has been a guide in Berlin since 2010

🕰️ He offers tours covering all areas of Berlin's history, including WWII, the Cold War, Weimar Berlin - and even a Berlin football tour!

🔍 Checkout his page for loads of Berlin history videos and maps so you can explore yourself

🎧 Want to go even deeper? Subscribe to his Berlin history podcast!

👉 Follow Jonny for more!

30/05/2024

A visit to Berlin is not really complete without a day trip to Potsdam, a charming town located just to the southwest of the capital. It is easily reached by a local train which leaves central Berlin every twenty minutes. While there, you will definitely want to visit the Palace and Park Sanssouci. Just on the edge of the park, there is the lovely Church of Peace, which was designed by Prussian King Frederick William IV and architect Ludwig Persius. It was based on an early Christian basilica in Rome and was built to accommodate an early 13th century mosaic brought from Italy to Potsdam by boat. The church is still used today and often hosts weddings. If the church is open when you are there, definitely head inside for a peek!

23/05/2024

Have you seen the Brandenburg Gate…in Potsdam? Yes, there are two! The famous one in Berlin was part of a series gates surrounding the city, marking the border. The gates were mostly named after the places in which they faced - so the Hallesches Tor led to Halle, the Frankfurter Tor to Frankfurt, and so on. So the Brandenburg Gate led to the town of Brandenburg. But Potsdam had entry gates too, and one led also to Brandenburg, so - two Brandenburg Gates! The one in Potsdam is in fact older than the famous one in Berlin and sits just between the historic downtown and the Park Sanssouci.

16/05/2024

Berlin has its fair share of beautiful palaces, but if you take a short train ride outside of the city to the town of Potsdam, you will see something truly spectacular - the Sanssouci Palace, built by the Prussian king Frederick the Great in the mid-1700s. It was built on a small hill and overlooks the town. The Palace is modest in size, but bursting with gorgeous decorations. This was his summer home, where he could get away from his duties in Berlin each year. He is buried just next to his beloved retreat and locals lay potatoes on his grave to remember him. Frederick was the one responsible for bringing potatoes to Germany. To hear the full story, book a tour with one of our guides!

09/05/2024

While exploring central Berlin, you may come across the Soviet War Memorial in the Tiergarten, built immediately at the end of World War II to commemorate the Soviet soldiers who died fighting in the Battle of Berlin. But if you venture further out, to the eastern side of the city, you will find an even more impressive Soviet Memorial, this one in Treptower Park. It was designed by Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky and unveilved in 1949. There is a third Soviet memorial as well, at a place called Schönholzer Heide. Preserving and maintaining these monuments was part of the treaty that allowed the two Germanys to re-unite in 1990.

07/05/2024

There are about 223 cemeteries in Berlin, five of which are Jewish. Our members visiting the largest one - the Weissensee Jewish Cemetery. It was opened in 1880 and is still used. There was some minimal destruction during the N**i era and then it was neglected under the East German regime, but it has remained largely intact. Our guide Nirit gave us an outstanding tour, filled with interesting stories and anecdotes about the graves and the people (and things) who are buried in them. For example, there is a burial site for desecrated Torah scrolls. During Kristallnacht in November 1938, over 500 Torah scrolls were saved and hidden in the cemetery's mourning hall. Some were later damaged during an air raid, and then buried in the cemetery. The famous rabbi Leo Baeck (1873-1956 has a symbolic gravestone in the cemetery - he was very important to Berlin's history, but is actually buried in London. And Herbert Baum (1912-1942), a resistance fighter against the N**is, found his final resting place at Weissensee.

02/05/2024

If you happen to be wandering around Potsdamer Platz, be on the lookout for a small green tower with four clocks on the top edge. This is a replica of the first traffic light installed in Europe, in the year 1924. The light was operated by a person sitting up inside. Potsdamer Platz used to be an extremely busy square, with five crowded streets intersecting there, filled with buses, trams, coaches, and cars, not to mention the people bustling about. The square lay right on the path of the Berlin Wall however, so during the Cold War, it was a wasteland. Since the 1990s, it has been rebuilt with some incredible buildings, but it never quite regained the flare that it had in the 1920s.

30/04/2024

We are excited to introduce our next member in our Member Spotlight series - Ernestina Searle. She goes by Tina and is an Australian psychology graduate who came to Berlin for a nerdy history trip in 2017 and never left. She was kept here by Berlin’s special "vibe"; what artists and philosophers for over a century have referred to as "Berliner Luft" or Berlin Air. Tina turned her hobby-since-high-school of reading history books into a new career as a tour guide, so that she could stay in Berlin and become a "professional nerd", as she calls it. She’s wildly excited about all things Berlin, which makes her tours especially energetic, passionate, and engaging. In her free time, Tina loves immersing herself in the city‘s galleries, museums, restaurants, clubs, and live music venues. She collates a list of Berlin events on her Instagram tinastoursberlin every Thursday, which means she’s got her finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the city. To learn more about Tina or book a tour with her, check out her website: www.tinastoursberlin.com.

25/04/2024

If you come to Berlin, you will see lots of incredible historical sites, exciting architecture, amazing art, lots of construction, and pipes running through the air. Wait, what - pipes? Yes, these pipes can be found in many locations throughout the city, moving around from time to time. They don't carry anything exciting like beer, but rather ground water. Berlin was built on a swamp and whenever there is construction, the pipes are necessary to pump the ground water out of the construction site and into either the sewage system, the river, or a canal - whatever is closest. Once the foundation is set, the pipes are not needed anymore and can be transported to the next construction site. The colors vary too, based on the companies which own the pipes. They might not be pretty, but they are useful and have become part of the landscape of Berlin!

23/04/2024

At the end of March, BBS members visited a very unusual place - the former Berlin crematorium in the district of Wedding. It was built in 1909 as the first crematorium in Berlin and is located next to the Gerichtstrasse cemetery. Perhaps the most famous person to be cremated there was Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who led the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hilter in 1944. He and his co-conspirators were first buried in a cemetery in Berlin-Schöneberg, but were later exhumed on the orders of Heinrich Himmler. The building is historically protected and in 2013, an organization called Silent Green Cultural Quarter made the space its home. Many events take place here, such as concerts, film screenings, readings, conferences, seminars, and workshops.

18/04/2024

If you happen to be in Germany from around April to June, you will see the word "Spargel" written everywhere. That time is Spargelzeit, or "Asparagus Time," when the delicacy known in English as white asparagus is everyone's favorite dish. White asparagus is not so easy to grow, so when it is in season, everyone digs in. It is often prepared with white Hollandaise sauce, but some restaurants can get really creative with the vegetable. Most places, even some fast food restaurants, have a special asparagus menu just for this time of year! It may not be as well known, but Spargel is just as German as bratwurst and schnitzel.

16/04/2024

Our members can't get enough of politics. After taking part in an exciting lecture at the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs in Feruary, the BBS visited another ministry in March - the Federal Ministry of Finance. Many of our members pass by this building almost every day, explaining its fascinating past. But to see it from the inside is something really special. It was built on today's Wilhelmstrasse in 1935 and was originally the headquarters of the Reich Aviation Ministry (Luftwaffe) under Hermann Göring. It was only slightly damaged during WWII, so it was quickly repaired after the war ended. The East German Republic was founded in the building on October 7, 1949, and from that point on it was known as the House of Ministries. Then after the Berlin Wall fell, it became the Treuhandanstalt, the authority responsible for the privatisation of the state property in former East Germany.

11/04/2024

Berlin winters are infamously dreary and gray, so once spring arrives, the city starts to come alive again and everyone's moods are lifted. But something extra special happens in late April and early May, when Berlin's cherry blossoms bloom. The origin of these Japanese "sakura" in Berlin is very heartwarming. To celebrate the reunification of Germany, the Japanese television station Asahi started a fundraiser to collect money to plant cherry trees in Berlin. Many can be now found where the Berlin Wall used to run. This photograph was taken in the Otto-Lilienthal-Park in southern Berlin.

09/04/2024

All Berlin city guides know the Brandenburg Gate and the buildings around it on Pariser Platz, including the Academy of the Arts (Akademie der Künste). But our members are always keen to learn new things, so we jumped at the chance to visit the picture cellar (Bildergalerie) of the Academy on a guided tour. The space previously was used to store coal. The space is special today because many murals were painted in the cellar at the end of the 1950s as part of the Carnival celebrations. We were able to view them as part of our tour. Since 2018, it is possible to see them, but only with a guide.

04/04/2024

Just across from Hackescher Markt is an incredible courtyard filled with street art called Haus Schwarzenberg that we posted about last week. But if you look past the art, you will find something even more incredible - a little museum about a wood-working workshop for the blind, founded by Otto Weidt. Otto was a very brave man who defied the N**is by employing blind, Jewish workers and helping them to survive. When the War ended, he was one of the first and only people to discuss creating a memorial to honor and remember the Holocaust victims. There is a tree planted for him at Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile. The museum was established as a temporary exhibit in the 1990s, but is now permanently there and absolutely worth a short detour.

02/04/2024

Our Berlin Guides Association member spotlight continues with Jerry Strasburger, one of our members who specializes in bike tours. He grew up in Orange County, California from around age 8 to his early 20s, and then went back to his birth country of Costa Rica. He was raised bilingual (Spanish and English) and while in Costa Rice, taught English. During this time, he backpacked through Panama, Cartagena, and Barranquilla Columbia, and eventually combined his love of travel and language skills by becoming a tour guide, taking guests from the beaches to the mountains, to the jungles of South America. He came to Berlin in 2006 as a FIFA World Cup journalist assistant. Jerry met and married a German woman, settled in Berlin, and had three boys. Given his experience, it was an easy transition to giving tours in Berlin. He prefers to show guests around by bike, so that they can see even more than they would on foot. If you would like to see the city with Jerry on bike, contact him directly through his website - www.iloveberlinbiketours.com

28/03/2024

If you visit Hackescher Markt while in Berlin, make sure to peek into the courtyards, particularly the one at Rosenthaler Straße 39. It may look rundown, but don't let that fool you - it is one of the coolest spots in Berlin. Since the mid-1800s, it has been home to various companies, factories, and families, but now it is an exciting art gallery and collective. On one side of the courtyard, the walls are open to any and all artists for graffiti. On the other side, artists are given a canvas to create incredible street art. Every few months the murals change, so it is always worth a second look.

21/03/2024

This large boxy building is the Kanzleramt, where the office of Germany's chanceller is located. There is no official residence inside, as German chancellers live at their private addresses. The building was designed by Berliner architects Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank and built as part of the "Government Ribbon," a trio of government buildings running between the Spree river and the Reichstag. They were constructed in the 1990s, when the decision was made by the German Parliament to move the capital from Bonn in former West Germany back to Berlin. The building has been nicknamed the Washing Machine due to its square shape and big, round window. It was the office of Angela Merkel for 16 years, but is currently occupied by German Chanceller Olaf Scholz.

14/03/2024

When visiting Berlin, everyone goes to Museum Island, and rightfully so - it is amazing! But head further west, and you will find the Kulturforum, a collection of incredible museums built in former West Berlin. This includes the New National Gallery, designed by famed architect Mies van der Rohe and originally meant to be a cigar factory in Cuba. Today it is a stunning glass and steel building, home to a wonderful collection of European paintings from the 20th century.

07/03/2024

Just outside the Friedrichstrasse train station is a very moving statue by artist Frank Meisler. It is called "Trains to Life, Trains to Death" and depicts two sets of children - one set, done in a lighter bronze color, depicts two well-dressed children being sent to England as part of the Kindertransport. The other, done in a darker bronze color, depicts five children with empty suitcases being sent to the N**i camps. It is estimated that about 10,000 Jewish children survived the Holocaust due to the Kindertransport, while approximately 2 million children were murdered by the N**is. Similar statues can be found in England, at the train stations were the Jewish children arrived.

05/03/2024

The Berlin Guides Association is excited to continue its monthly member spotlight with veteran guide Jeremy Minsberg. Jeremy is originally from Minnesota, but has been living in Berlin since the early 2000s. He was raised in a kosher, traditional Jewish home, so it is no surprise that he is an expert in Berlin's Jewish past. He studied history at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and spent his junior year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He came to Berlin with a great deal of angst, but quickly discovered that German society has changed for the better, as it comes to terms with its past and deals with its future. He is proud to be the highest rated private guide on Trip Advisor and to be featured as one of Rick Steves' recommended guides. If you would like to book "Mr. Berlin," as his friends call him, on a tour, please check out his website - www.theberlinexpert.com

29/02/2024

After World War II, the city of Berlin was divided, and re-building was a long and arduous task. Each side of the city re-built independently of the other, so that each side had its own infrastructure and cultural buildlings - multiple town halls, multiple long-distance train stations, multiple opera houses, multiple zoos, etc. But following German reunification in 1990, having multiples of everything was costly and complicated. So plans to bring the city's infrastructure back together started right away, specifically with a new, central train station. The new Hauptbahnhof was built where the old Lehrter Bahnhof used to be, in the geographic center of the city. It was opened to much fanfare in 2006. It has four flours, 14 tracks, and hosts roughly 330,000 passengers and guests per day.

27/02/2024

If you want to learn about the history of Berlin, you can visit museums, memorials, and sights. But it is also possible to dig deeper by checking out the federal ministries. In mid-February, some of our members had the opportunity to listen to a fascinating lecture at the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. From 1918 to 1933, the building was the site of the press department of the Weimar government. After the N**is came to power, the building became the "Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propoganda" and was led by the minister Joseph Goebbels. During World War II, the building complex was badly damaged. After the war, some parts of the building were removed, while other parts were restored. During the East German era, the building housed the study of Wilhelm Pieck (1876-1960) from 1949 to 1960. He was the first and only president of East Germany. After German reunification, since 1999, the building has housed the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.

22/02/2024

Tucked away just a bit north of Hackescher Markt, you can find a Berlin institution - Clärchens Ballhaus, a restaurant and place for dancing. It was first opened in 1913 by Clara Bühler and her husband Fritz as a dance hall. The upper floor, called the Spiegelsaal, was for high society, while the ground floor was meant for everyone. The exterior is somewhat rundown, but we think that adds to its charm. It is a popular spot for locals, visitors, and even celebrities. Tom Hanks enjoyed Clärchens Ballhaus while filming "Bridge of Spies." It is currently closed due to restoration, but when it opens again, it is definitely worth a visit.

15/02/2024

While discovering the courtyards of Berlin, you may be fortunate enough to smell the delicous scents of candy wafting from a basement in the Heckmann Höfe. The Bonbonmacherei, or Candy Factory, can be found just under your feet, or noses, as it were, just off of Oranienburger Strasse in Mitte. The company got its start in the early 1990s, having rescued antique machines and recipes. They make all sorts of candy - from sweet to sour, from caramel to licorice, from honey to herbs, and everything in between. They aren't open every day, but if you are lucky enough to walk by during production, it is a real treat!

08/02/2024

Every year in February, the gray winter weather is interrupted in Berlin by a glamorous international film festival - the Berlinale. It started in 1951 and is considered one of the three big film festivals in Europe, along with Venice and Cannes. Around 400 films are shown in many theaters around the city. Celebrities and locals alike come in flocks to see the movies and awards are given to the best ones at the end. Winter can be dreary in Berlin, but the Berlinale brightens up everyone's February each year.

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The BBS - Berlin Guides Association

The Berlin Guides Association (Bündnis Berliner Stadtführer e.V) is the German capital’s official association of professional tour guides. We use our network to establish partnerships with reputable museums and institutions in and around Berlin and have the best tour guides that the city’s tourism industry has to offer, who offer energetic and educational tours in the native language of your choice: Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Mandarin, Russian, and Swedish. We are Berlin.