Cheap Flights to Berlin

• British Airways
• Lufthansa
• SWISS
• Austrian Airlines
• Brussels Airlines
• KLM
• Alitalia
• Royal Air Maroc
• Eurowings
• EasyJet
• Flybe
• Ryanair

• Direct flights from London Heathrow to Berlin Tegel Airport are offered by British Airways and Eurowings. Both airlines offer daily flights. Indirect flights are offered by Lufthansa, SWISS, KLM, Alitalia and Austrian Airlines.
• Daily Direct flights to Berlin Tegel Airport from London Gatwick are offered by easyJet. EasyJet operates non-stop flights to Berlin Schönefeld Airport as well. These flights are operated regularly from the Gatwick Airport.
• EasyJet and Ryanair operate daily non-stop flights from Manchester to Berlin Schönefeld Airport. For Tegel Airport, only connecting flights are available. Lufthansa, Brussels Airlines and British Airways, among others, provide connecting flights from Manchester.
• Flybe operates direct flights from Birmingham to Berlin Tegel Airport on a daily basis. Connecting flights are offered by Lufthansa, SWISS and KLM.
• Edinburgh to Berlin direct flights (Tegel Airport) are operated by easyJet. The airline runs daily flights for this route. British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa and KLM are some of the major airlines offering indirect flights.

• With British Airways, it takes 1 hour and 50 minutes on a direct flight to Berlin Tegel Airport. The shortest connecting flight, operated by Brussels Airlines, takes 3 hours and 20 minutes.
• From London Gatwick, easyJet flies directly to Berlin Tegel Airport and finishes its flight in 2 hours and 5 minutes. From the Gatwick Airport, easyJet flies non-stop to Berlin Schönefeld Airport as well. The flight time is 2 hours and 10 minutes.
• Budget airlines like easyJet and Ryanair offer direct flights from Manchester to Berlin Schönefeld Airport that take 2 hours only. For Berlin Tegel Airport, however, only connecting flights are available. The minimum time duration for a connecting flight is 3 hours and 20 minutes. KLM is the operating airline.
• Birmingham to Berlin direct flights with Flybe take 1 hour and 45 minutes. Berlin Tegel Airport is the receiving airport.
• The minimum flight duration is 2 hours and 10 minutes on a direct flight for Berlin from the Edinburgh Airport. EasyJet makes direct flights to Berlin Tegel Airport from Edinburgh. As far as connecting flights are concerned, KLM completes its flights in a minimum time frame of 3 hours and 30 minutes.

Apart from a few winter sports junkies and German expatriates returning home to celebrate Christmas, few people consider visiting Berlin during winter. When temperature drops below zero, especially in January, it halts the progress of outdoor tourism and sightseers fail to make the most out of their trip. Some foreigners are not accustomed to such an extreme weather and may find their health, along with their trip, jeopardized. However, airlines and hotels offer limited offers and the like incentives to encourage tourism. This can be the best time to travel cheap.

• The Berlin Tegel Airport, having an IATA code TXL, is the main airport for international flights to Berlin. This airport recorded a maximum 20.7 million passengers in 2014 alone and thus got ranked as the 4th busiest airport in the country. Berlin Tegel Airport is conveniently located at a distance of 11 kilometres from central Berlin.
• The second airport – Berlin Schönefeld Airport – is situated 18 kilometres from Berlin centre city. This airport is mostly used by budget airlines like easyJet or other chartered airlines. Its IATA code is SXF.

The coming of May sparks a renewed interest in Berlin among travellers. Spring is colder than most people think and May is the only month when spring is both mild and beautiful. Summer season (July-September) is by far the most tourist-friendly. The average daytime temperature in May is 14 °C, in June 17 °C, and in July 19 °C. The arrival of summer brings a fresh lot of tourists which spurs the entire hospitality industry of Berlin into action. Cafés, terraces, public parks, shopping malls and even museums are jam-packed with tourists. Also, some of the major festivals occur during this period. Christopher Street Day and German-French Fair are celebrated in July, the German-American Festival is held in August. Also in August is the International Berlin Beer Festival. This is the time when people from all corners of the world are drawn to Berlin like bees.

Berlin Wall: Unlike some ruined rubble from a post-war film as many of us imagine, Berlin Wall is, surprisingly, an eye-candy. For years, it has served as a canvas for local artists to show their brilliant and avant-garde art. A promising site!

Museum Island: Tucked away in an island on the Spree River, this is a hub of different museums. To preserve the national heritage of Germany, many museums and heritage centres have been built on the northern half of this island. Artefacts of significant value have been saved from oblivion and are proudly presented.

Potsdamer Platz: The German counterpart of Trafalgar Square in London and the beating heart of Berlin. Surrounded by plazas, restaurants and entertainment hubs, many tourists start their vacations from here.

Berlin Cathedral: First-time visitors cannot help but marvel at its Baroque architecture with its richly decorated domes (inside and out) and an elaborate overall craftsmanship. This is the largest church in Berlin.

Charlottenburg Palace: A large-scale stately palace – the biggest in the city – remarkably well done and richly decorated. A large collection of indoor tapestries and artwork adorns the interior layout of the palace.

• Fernsehturm
• River Spree
• Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
• Sanssouci Palace
• Berlin Zoological Garden

S-Bahn is the standard commuter rail that facilitates passengers on 170 key points in a 330 kilometre network in and around Berlin. A total number of 170 train stations serving this vast rail network make different parts of Berlin (and the surrounding suburbia) easily accessible. This is not an underground train service. S-Bahn trains will be seen above ground taking the bulk of passengers in and out of the capital.

U-Bahn is the standard metro system in Berlin famous for its yellow-coloured trains that occasionally run above ground. But most of them run underground. The operational network has about half as much coverage as that of S-Bahn but the number of train stations is about the same (173). During rush-hours there is a train after every 5 minutes and like the S-Bahn, it provides a 24 hour service on weekends.

Buses offer a few more options (buses for the handicapped and hop-on / hop-off tourism buses) and cover those routes that happen to fall outside of the rail network. Metro buses, which launched to fanfare, attracted a high percentage of local commuters. These double-decker buses run 24 hours a day and there is a bus after every 10 minutes. There are also a number of night buses enlisted as the N-series (N1, N2…N9) which are jam-packed during the night when U-Bahn calls it a day.

Increase in the proportion of frequent users of ride-hailing apps has compelled many taxi companies to launch their own applications. Taxi is synonymous with comfort, privacy and flexibility. Even though taxis are just a call away, travellers can also book them in advance. Before sitting in a cab, make sure that it has a registered number plate and that it also has a metre.

Berlin’s five-star hotels define the true standards of luxe living. Some of the major 5-star hotels are:

• Hotel am Steinplatz
• Radisson Blu Hotel
• Sofitel Berlin Kurfuerstendamm
• Pullman Berlin Schweizerhof
• Hilton Berlin

Listed below are some of the more popular 3-star hotels that are cheap and provide value for money:

• Hotel Mardin
• Hotel Europa City
• Energie Hotel
• Pension Puschkin
• Hotel-Pension Arche