Germany city highlights with Elderhostel

“City Highlights Independent Studies” programs from Elderhostel (11 Ave. de Lafayette, Boston, MA 02111; phone 877/426-8056 or visit www.elderhostel.org) are shorter, include fewer meals and fewer group activities and are less expensive than the traditional Elderhostel European programs. I enrolled as a single in one of them, “Berlin: City of Many Faces,” Oct. 29-Nov. 5, ’04, and found it satisfactory in every respect.

Elderhostel used Lyon Travel Agency (Brattleboro, VT; 800/241-1404) to help those needing assistance with international travel bookings. A company called Group IST (International Specialty Travel; visit www.groupist.com) handled the other aspects of the program. Since I needed to be certain of traveling on United or Lufthansa, I booked my own air and enrolled “program only.” But I did talk to a Lyon agent, received the materials they sent to all the participants and found them both helpful and comprehensive.

Unlike with some group tour companies, Elderhostel’s program-only prices reflect a true deduction for the cost of the airfare. In the October ’04 catalog, the Program Only Price was listed as $1,561, with a single supplement of $450.

Our educational staff included Anette Moos and Stefanie Remlinger, both native Germans with extensive backgrounds in American Studies, and Thomas Abbott, a specialist in art and architecture who has lived in Germany since the late 1980s.

Before we left the USA, IST sent us a booklet of materials discussing the day-to day schedule, hotel accommodations, money, packing advice and more. At our first meeting after arrival, we received a more detailed program schedule, a comprehensive museum guide, a 4-day museum pass, a background introduction to Berlin arts and architecture and some self-guided walking tour information.

Our hotel was the centrally located Berlin Mark on Meinekestrasse, just off the Kurfürstendamm, or Ku’Damm, the major shopping artery of West Berlin with excellent transportation alternatives throughout the city by bus, underground and elevated train systems. (We were warned against jay-walking, which Americans are prone to do but which is not common in Berlin and is therefore very dangerous.)

The rooms, even the singles like mine, were spacious, clean, comfortable and well lit and located on the quiet side of the hotel overlooking a large, landscaped interior courtyard instead of noisy Meinekestrasse. The desk staff was bilingual. (I asked about rates, which were €79 and €89 for a single and double room, respectively.)

A very good breakfast buffet was served in the hotel dining room every morning beginning at 6. After breakfast, our group of 12 usually met in the seminar room at 9:30 for two hours of lectures, which included The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall; Architecture as a Means of Understanding Berlin; Jewish Cultural Heritage; Germany and the Germans Today, and German Romanticism in Berlin and Brandenburg.

On day seven, instead of the lecture, we took a field trip to the Royal Prussian city of Potsdam where we toured the Sans-Souci Palace, summer home of Frederick the Great, and Cecilienhof Castle, site of the Potsdam Conference of 1945.

Lunch was on our own. After lunch the schedule varied. One day, Tom Abbott gave us a narrated bus tour of the major sites of the city of Berlin; on another day, Anette took us to the Gemäldegalerie (picture gallery) for a guided tour of the extensive collection of 13th- to 18th-century painters.

One evening, we visited the Kulturforum to attend a concert, a Bruckner Symphony performed by the Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchestra at the Berlin Philharmonie. On our last night we were treated to a farewell dinner at the upscale restaurant Savoy, on Fasanenstrasse.

I used my free hours on various days visiting several museums, including the Berggruen Collection (Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Braque, Cézanne, Giacometti and van Gogh); the Egyptian Museum (the bust of Nefertiti); the Pergamon Museum (spectacular antiquities and Islamic art); the Old National Gallery (mainly 19th-century sculpture and painting); the Käthe Kollwitz Museum (a block from the hotel), and the Jewish Museum (start at the top and work your way down to follow the chronological history of the Jews in Germany and Berlin).

I spent one afternoon in the wonderful Berlin Zoo & Aquarium, one of the world’s finest, if not the best anywhere.

I enjoyed walking around the neighborhood near our hotel looking at shops, including the giant KaDeWe department store’s incredible food court, a facility which makes Harrods’ food court in London look rather limited.

I also was able to get tickets to two operas, Verdi’s “Nabucco” and Handel’s “Alcina,” in two different opera houses.

Criticisms? I would have liked a chance to purchase tickets in advance of the visit. By the time I got to Berlin, tickets for performances of “The Magic Flute,” the opera I most wanted to see, were totally sold out.

The museum guide distributed to the group did not feature the outstanding zoo and aquarium. I think I was the only one in our group to visit it — a shame.

For at least one of our included dinners, I would have enjoyed eating in a restaurant featuring German food — not as easy to find in that very cosmopolitan section of Berlin as you might think.

But, in general, I was happy with the program. It was a good introduction to Berlin and to Germany, and I hope to return as an independent traveler to both in the near future.

— PAT BLAKESLEE, Carpinteria, CA