Fly on the Friday night from London Stansted with Ryanair – keep an eye out for their frequent sales, with flights as low as £5 each way. Take the train from Bath Spa to Stansted (advance fares from £8.60), and grab an early morning flight which will have you at Berlin’s Schönefeld airport just after 9am.
Hop on the S-Bahn train to the city centre (single €2.80), and check in at St Christopher’s youth hostel on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (dorms from €9 per night). Dump your bag in the luggage room, freshen up in the toilets and hot-foot it to the Brandenburg Gate to join the New Berlin free tour (3 hours; tip the guide at the end) from outside Starbucks, taking in all the city’s highlights. Afterwards, take time to wander through the Checkpoint Charlie museum (admission €9.50 for students – expect to show some ID), then head back to the hostel for dinner (currywurst and schnitzel from €3.50) and drinks (cocktails, spirits and beers from €2).
Rise and shine early the next morning for free breakfast at the hostel, and head back to the Holocaust memorial to take in its sobering museum (admission free). Make a stop for hot chocolate and apple-crumble-like streusel cake at the café on the little row of shops behind the memorial – grab cheap postcards and stamps next door, and maybe a cheeky currywurst for lunch. Head back along past the Brandenburg Gate and towards the Reichstag – take a free audio guide up through the dome and admire the view over the city.
In the evening, hop on an U-Bahn tube train from opposite the hostel, and make for Warschauerstraße. Grab food at one of the many restaurants in the Kreuzberg area – you can’t go wrong with veggie joint Seerose, (47 Mehringdamm; www.seerose-berlin.de), which serves up buffet-style meals from €4 a plate. After dinner, head back to the hostel and get your gladrags on before making for trendy Week-End club on Alexanderstraße (entry a steep €12), which keeps going until well into Sunday.
Treat yourself to some retail therapy on the Sunday – check out at the hostel but leave your luggage, and browse the shelves at department store Galerie Kaufhof on Alexanderplatz, before jumping on the U-Bahn to Zoologischer Garten (day ticket €6.50 for zones ABC, including to the airport). Here, gaze at the remains of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which was bombed during WW2, then walk to Tauentzienstraße (or be lazy and hop on the tube to Wittenbergplatz) and gaze equally at the shelves in the food hall of KaDeWe, Berlin’s answer to Harrod’s. Treat yourself to a souvenir or two and grab lunch from a street stall on the way back to the tube. Head back to the hostel for luggage, and then it’s off to the airport for a mid-afternoon ride home.
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