Talk:Berlin/Archive 2013-2015

District allocation

Has there really been a strict separation of the districts and Bezirke ?

The Guide article Berlin e.g. allocates Tiergarten to the City West and Wedding to the North district articles, as do the maps. The City West-article does have content on Tiergarten, as does the Mitte-article, which claims (correctly) Tiergarten being now a part of the new Mitte-Stadtbezirk administratively. On the other hand Wedding, now part of Mitte-Stadtbezirk, too, is also mentioned in the Mitte-district article, but not in the North-district article, though it should be there (or not ?). However this is in contradiction with the allocations given in the Berlin-article. --AnhaltER1960 (talk) 12:50, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

No, there really has never been in recent years "a strict separation of the districts and Bezirke" ?

Fortunately I have a strong suspicion that you understand German (and French!) so you might want (or not want) to take your cue from our German version, AnhaltER1960. I'd give you a hand but I already have enough on my plate with more than a thousand articles on my watchlist and going into hospital in the next 7 days... It's dreadful hitchhiking in France isn't it - especially in the South! --W. Frank^email_talk 17:44, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

The German article, thorough as we Germans are, dissects Berlin into more than 80 articles (without being able to fill them). Much overdone and therefor I do not see it as an example. I agree that a subdivision of Berlin into roundabout six districts is okay and am happy with either solution. Just want it done properly. Greetings --AnhaltER1960 (talk) 23:18, 11 October 2013 (UTC) Btw, my hitchhiking memories to France, the south better than the north, are not that bad - but 30 years old :-)

I am very happy to hear that not only do I have this uneasiness about the current division of districts in the guide. I specifically find it unnatural and pointless for Tiergarten to be separated from the rest of Mitte. I do not believe this is a problem because it does not follow the administrative division, but because it makes writing a guide to both central Berlin and outer West Berlin (now confusingly named "City West", what's so "city" about Gruenewald???) very difficult.

On the one hand, we have the Reichstag area covered in both articles, on the other, going west of Potsdamer Platz requires one to switch to another guide (when one can easily do that by foot and there is a natural flow of attractions and sights along the way). Furthermore, an article that tries to cover the densely-packed attractions of the Tiergarten area with the widely-spaced ones of the outer districts is also hard to write in a coherent manner, not to mention that the map would be unusable for the crucial Tiergarten area when it would include all the POIs in the outer districts.

Do you share my uneasiness on that and would agree that Tiergarten should be included in the Mitte article? PrinceGloria (talk) 07:36, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

PS. W. Frank, whatever brings you to the hospital, I hope you will be back soon and all well!

The Article Berlin/City West, starting with a picture showing Potsdamer Platz, actually located in Mitte, demonstrates the fuzz just by this.... Tiergarten can stand for the former borough (until 2001) as one in twenty boroughs, for a subdivision of Mitte as from 2001 or for the park itself. So, if you specify your understanding of TiergartenI will comment. I understand that from a tourist point of view putting Brandenburg Gate and the Reichtsag or Potsdamer Platz and Culture Forum, being on the same walking routes, into two different articles is not good. I opened a similar debate at wikitravel] with its very similar article and neglecting any debate on who cloned whom and proposed three alternatives: Leave things as they are (Mitte seperate article, Tiergarten to City/West, Wedding to North; just doing it properly OR merge Tiergarten and Wedding to Mitte to follow administrative borders OR put the eastern parts of Tiergarten adjacent to Mitte to the Mitte article and leave the other parts of Tiergarten (I am talking about boroughs in their former (until 2001) meaning) in City/West and Wedding in North. There are pros and cons to any of the alternatives. I just would prefer a strict handling of whatever the result will be. --AnhaltER1960 (talk) 11:24, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

PS - join in on the wishes to Frank.

I am sorry, I forgot I need to be more precise when speaking of Germany - I did mean the Ortsteil of the Bezirk Mitte. I don't quite believe in using outdated administrative divisions anywhere on WV, this is just confusing, and I do prefer to follow the official borders whenever reasonable for consistency and easier orientation for the tourist.--PrinceGloria (talk)

Actual administrative inner-city borders in most cities are signpostings at some suburb crossroads, can have some statistical importance or determine which pharmacy does the sunday emergency job. Only in rare cases, and Berlin is one, turn of history carves out inner-city borders to fronts af a (cold) war. Therefore I see "outdated" inner-city borders of high touristic importance in Berlin, most tourists want to know on which side of the wall they are. I see the point of consistency within the project though. Coming down to Tiergarten, this Ortsteil reaches as far as Zoological Garten and Lützow Square - for my taste way too far into City West to be regarded as Mitte. Regards --AnhaltER1960 (talk) 22:52, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't think we have any consistency with regards to using administrative borders as district borders within the city. It is just my personal preference, as the official districts do not only ease navigation, but they are also usually arranged as they are for some reason. It is always very hard to draw a line between districts, so with so many possibilities, why not use the official ones, especially in the cities where the districts are easily identifiable, mentioned on signage and when addressing etc. Paris and Vienna are prime examples of where official districts are very useful, mostly because they haven't changed for ages.

I am not sure where Berlin is on that, but I'd be most wary of introducing the "old district" concept to a city where current districts have the same names and it will all become very confusing to everybody but the true Berlin history buffs who will take time to research the past administrative divisions of Berlin. I can still firmly remember the evolutions of the administrative divisions of my home town, and I still strongly feel some places belong to localities that administratively no longer exist or ones that never did, but me and my folks "know where they are", but I wouldn't offer that to a tourist, that would confuse them.

I would want some information on where the Berlin Wall was, but this is secondary to having a good walking and orientation map of an area I can navigate on foot. I guess whenever we have a dynamic map of the centre ready, we can add a "path" showing the location of the wall. Other divisions (i.e. administrative divisions WITHIN former West Berlin and East Berlin respectively) seem quite irrelevant to me, only the wall/national border has much significance.

AT ANY RATE, where should we draw the line then? I guess we need articles or at least maps for:

1. The very centre of Berlin that you can walk on foot through, which to me includes the Spreebogen area with the Hbf and Bundesregierung buildings, the Brandenburger Tor, Unter den Linden, Museum Island, Checkpoint Charlie and the Potsdamer Platz area. I don't know if this follows any official or historic borders, but I am tempted to say I would disregard them if it does not.
2. West Berlin beyond the Tiergarten park - Ku'damm, KaDeWe, Zoo and perhaps Grosser Stern. If the density of attractions we want to highlight on the map is scarcer than in the city centre, I could see us adding the Schloss Charlottenburg and perhaps other outlying attractions, but nothing outside of the Stadtring, otherwise it would make the article impractical for use for navigation
3. All of the other attractions in the West IMHO belong to a separate article, because they are spaced farther away and each of them, or a cluster of them, requires a longer journey from the centre and you cannot really pack them into one manageable walk. Moreover, showing them on the same map as the "City West" would result in an indecipherable mess in the centre.

So, in short, I would move some stuff from "City West" to "City Centre" (let's not call it "Mitte", if it really isn't Mitte), some to a separate "West" or even common "outlying attractions" article (if there isn't much to be seen in the outer West, East, North and South, why not combine the articles), and leave the City West as the area that is within the Stadtring but not covered by the City Centre article. The exact border is of lesser importance, we just need a map to show where the tourist should switch to another article, and if the line will run through an area where there isn't much (e.g. through the middle of the Tiergarten park and some residential quarters of lesser importance), it will be very easy to comprehend.

What do you think of the above (and let's not get involved in discussing the importance of historic districts but rather come up with a proposal to re-districtify the article)? PrinceGloria (talk) 05:57, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

"because they haven't changed for ages." That is exactly the point, which makes the difference to other places. Administrative reshuffling of borders is a speciality esp. in eastern Germany, sometimes with half times down to six/eight years. But back to Berlin: I agree with the walking area idea. This would be adding eastern parts of Moabit/Tiergarten to the Berlin/Mitte, drawing the line roughly along B 96 (putting Hamburger Bahnhof, Hauptbahnhof, Chancellor Residence, former Congress Hall (pregnant oyster), Reichstag, Soviet War Memorial to Mitte). Also, to avoid the triple point at Potsdamer Platz (whrere Mitte, Tiergarten and Kreuzberg meet (or the Berlin/Mitte, Berlin/City West, and Berlin/East Central-articles here) I would suggest to add the Culture forum with Philharmony, Mies van-der-Rohe's New National Gallery, and the Prussian State Library and so on to the Mitte-article. City/West, i do agree there is a natural limit at the S-Bahn-/Motorway-Ring. Means, we need a new place for Funkturm, ICC, Olympic Stadium and a few other places. An idea would be to create a new Berlin/West-article with western Charlottenburg (Ortsteile Westend and Grunewald) plus take Spandau from Berlin/North-article (and Spandau is not really "North" anyway). Giving in total seven Berlin district-articles, four articles for the outer suburbs (East, North, West and South) plus two articles with more central urban centres (East Central and City West) and one for the historical center (Mitte). I consider this appropriate for the size of the city, also in comparison with other european metropoles. Regards --AnhaltER1960 (talk) 18:49, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

I think we basically agree, even if I am unsure of some of the outliers (e.g. the "Soviet War Memorial", if you mean the one in Treptower Park, which to me feels detached from the naturally walkable area of Mitte). I also believe you have a much better grasp of Berlin's geography and a much clearer idea as to where to draw the borders - do you believe you could visualize your idea e.g. using Google Maps (the best would be to use our Wikivoyage Maps, but I don't know of a tool that allows to easily draw borders and such for those), so that we could show to it to the large community and ask for approval? PrinceGloria (talk) 21:39, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Just for the clarity: I am talking about the Soviet War Memorial on Strasse des 17. Juni, not the one in Treptow. It is not mentioned in any article here yet. Vizualising ? Cant promise anything, will try. Regards --AnhaltER1960 (talk) 22:30, 14 October 2013 (UTC) ... first attempt failed gloriously. --AnhaltER1960 (talk) 17:34, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

---

Thanks for your best wishes, gentlemen. It's nothing dramatic - just the usual diseases of old age, but if the surgeries mean I can get "parole" after effectively being under house arrest for some while (there's no lift in my 1857 Glasgow tenement and my flat is on the top floor) it will be well worth it. It's turned cold here lately and they have just increased my gas prices by 11%, so I may try and catch one of the more popular hospital infections to prolong my stay and save on the winter bills. I'm actually quite looking forward to the companionship. It looks like this article will be in very good hands while I am away! --W. Frank^email_talk 16:40, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Please do not catch anything Frank, come back soon and in good health and I am sure you will be better off that way, gas prices and whatnot notwithstanding. You are needed here! PrinceGloria (talk) 04:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

This is definitely a mess at the moment! We have points of interest within Tiergarten, that are described either in "Mitte" or "City West". I am going to add Tiergarten district to "Mitte" now and move all relevant elements from "City West" to "Mitte".--Renek78 (talk) 12:51, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

"Frequent"?

What do you think this means, in "Get around/By tram"? "Metrotrams frequent more often as well as by night." Frequent what? Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Alternative banner for this article?

old banner currently used in this article

suggested new banner (which is currently used in the parallel article in the Hebrew Wikivoyage)

In the Hebrew Wikivoyage we are currently using this banner instead of the one which is currently used here. Do you think too that this banner would would better than the existing one? ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 01:50, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The new banner is fine, but I think this is one of the best banners on the site. How do you get more emblematic of Berlin than the part of the Reichstag with the "Dem deutschen Volke" sign? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:16, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Even without knowing Berlin at all, I think the current banner is much more striking than just another skyline shot. Texugo (talk) 02:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The main thing going for the proposed banner is the inclusion of Alexandraplatz in the middle. That said, the existing banner is similarly iconic as the Statue of Liberty is for New York. I would keep the existing banner. Andrewssi2 (talk) 06:31, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The banner used by hebrew.voy is very similar to the one used for Berlin/Mitte here at en.voy. I'd say it's more of a Mitte banner than Berlin banner. PrinceGloria (talk) 18:30, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree with the above - maybe consider it for Mitte, but the current one is amongst the best on WV in my opinion. --Nick ^talk 19:23, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I like the current banner for Mitte better than this one, as it features pretty, iconic buildings. Ikan Kekek (talk) 19:37, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I like the current banner. It shows an image which is symbolic of the changes to Berlin with the parliament moving back to the Reichstag (from Bonn). I am undecided about using the new one Mitte - curiously both it and the current Mitte banner use photos taken on the same day. AlasdairW (talk) 22:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Having looked more closely at Mitte, I think I too prefer the present banner. --Nick ^talk 22:36, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Prefer present banner Matroc (talk) 03:09, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

As a general rule I have nothing against cityscapes but in this case it is nothing special. The present banner reflects the city better. When you are in Berlin you are in the city close up to building, distant views, although there are some, are less typical. --Traveler100 (talk) 06:39, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

University listings

There are four university listings in this article, and they do not appear to be traveler relevant. It is possible that they are worth visiting from a historical or architecure perspective, however the content does not point to that. Can anyone suggest why this should be kept? Andrewssi2 (talk) 08:41, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

It can be useful to know what universities are in a city, and where:

• • Student areas often have a distinct character - cheap places to eat etc.
  • Student accommodation may be available during the vacations.
  • Short (1 week or so) courses may be run - these might interest a traveller.
  • Travellers who are students or staff at home may be able arrange to use some university facilities. AlasdairW (talk) 12:19, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

For the most part that doesn't justify a university listing. 'cheap places to eat' go in the 'eat' section. 'Student accomadation' goes in the 'Sleep' section. 'arrange to use some university facilities' is ambiguous and probably not actually travel related.

The 'Learn' section is for the point number 3, 'short courses, which may be listed. I do not see any of these under Berlin however. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

I placed the universities in an infobox, which maintains the overview whilst proving space for actual courses that travelers can participate in. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:44, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. University canteens go into Eat and student houses converted into hotels for the summer goes into Sleep. If the university building is impressive/houses a museum etc., then that's a See entry. Basics about studying in the country in the country's Learn section. And the city's Learn section is for short courses that you can take as a tourist (language classes, lessons in the local culture etc.) with a duration up to a couple of weeks. We should not have degree programmes listed here. ϒpsilon (talk) 04:28, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Rebooting districts

I think we're halfway there now, and I would like to propose the following:

• Berlin/City West is limited to what fits in the district map as it is framed at the moment of writing
• Ortsteile (and not Bezirke) Kreuzberg, Tempelhof, Alt-Treptow, Neukoelln and Alt-Planterwald form a new district called South, or however you please.
• Friedrichshein, Prenzlauer Berg and perhaps (to be discussed) some other parts of other Ortsteile form the new Berlin/East Central
• Everything else in the current districts Berlin/South, Berlin/North and Berlin/East goes into a common district article called Berlin/Outer districts or however else you please.

What do you guys make of it? PrinceGloria (talk) 17:15, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

As per request of User:Ikan Kekek made in a private conversation, I am adding a map. This is a very low-quality rush job in PPT, but I hope you can make it out. Everything that is not shaded (i.e. the yellowish area) is to go into Berlin/Outer districts. PrinceGloria (talk) 17:59, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks a lot. As I said on my talk page, I am nowhere close to an expert on Berlin. That said, I'm wondering if this isn't a bit radical. Is it possible that a few more neighborhoods should be included in something other than "Outer districts"? I'm wondering about neighborhoods like Gesundbrunnen, Wedding, and some of the others that are easily accessible by the Ringbahn (though I guess the Ringbahn itself is arguably "outer"). I'd be particularly interested in hearing the views of people who either live in Berlin or have wide experience in the different neighborhoods, as I've spent most of my time in Berlin so far in Charlottenburg, Mitte, and Stralau. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:54, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for chipping in! Now, if by "Ringbahn" you mean the Stadtbahn Ringbahn, pretty much all districts lying within it are included. The exception are the Ortsteile north of Ortsteil Mitte, like Gesundbrunnen or Wedding, and this is because I did not find them to possess many POIs of interest to travellers (actually, my guess is that they possess next to no such POIs), this is why there is no "Northern" district corresponding to the West, South and East I propose. Do correct me if I am wrong. And even if I am and we still decide not to make the "North" district out of the abovementioned, and later Berliners and people more knowledgeable than us correct our mistake, we can alway add that district once POIs crop up.

Regarding the "radical" impression you get, I guess it is good to bear in mind that Berlin, as a separate Bundesland, is, at 900 sqm by far larger than most other European capitals and large cities (most are between 100 and 300 sqm) because what elsewhere would be suburbs in separate municipalities are included in the administrative borders of the city. This is why the yellow "outer" space looks so massive in this map. I still don't think it contains many POIs and they can easily be collapsed into one article that is still useful to the traveller.

If nobody else would join the discussion for some time, would you be OK with proceeding as proposed? PrinceGloria (talk) 03:25, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

No, not really, because I'm not sure all efforts have been made yet to encourage participation in this thread. Has this been posted to Requests for comment? It also might be good to post to de.wikivoyage's Berlin talk page, especially if someone can post in German and mention the differences between the division of Berlin in en.wikivoyage vs. de.wikivoyage. Note please that their division of Berlin is certainly radically different than your proposed division: They divide it into 12 Bezirke, further noting which Ortsteile each of those is divided into. Their overall Berlin article is a Guide, but all the Bezirke articles are classed either as Stubs or Outlines. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:48, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I posted to Requests for Comment. I can't read German well enough to really follow the discussion at Berlin:Strukturierung and Berlin:Strukturierung 2, but those discussions are clearly relevant to this one. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:55, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I may read those if I have too much time, but whatever they discussed, they arrived at a situation where pretty much EVERY ORTSTEIL has its own article (mostly empty for areas like Gesundbrunnen), which is to a large extent a copy from Wikipedia with less detail, and some areas within Ortsteile still, like Potsdamer Platz, have their own articles. In short, I find what de.voy made of Berlin a mess and wouldn't go by that at all. PrinceGloria (talk) 04:21, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we follow their lead. Perhaps they'd like to follow ours, instead. But either way, it would be interesting to hear their views and apprise them of this discussion. Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I'm generally against huge bagel-like outer district articles, they're not very useful. I'd leave at least the North/South division. Jjtkk (talk) 15:20, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Well, huge districts are hardly useful however we slice them, the POIs in outer Berlin are simply too far away from each other to provide for a reasonable districtification in the strictest sense. We just need repositories for POIs that do not fall in the POI-dense districts. I am OK with splitting the Outer Districts into two halves North-South or East-West. I will need to take a look which makes more sense POI-wise, bear with me. PrinceGloria (talk) 16:52, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, we haven't really moved forward since July, and the German Wikivoyage didn't either, they still have the division mirroring the official one, which leads to 95 small articles, some still not created, and most clearly underdeveloped. This also adds the middle level of Bezirke before going to Ortsteile. There are many agreements against it there, but the discussion seems inactive and no consensus has been reached or any changes made.

Therefore, I will proceed with building a test version of the Berlin/South Centre article for you to see whether it works for you. We can then work on a solution to handle the "bagel". PrinceGloria (talk) 21:37, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

I object to this. Bagel-like districts are rarely good, and here especially not. The current districts represent cultural areas within the city. Kreuzberg and Friedrichshahn especially go well together, so I question why Kreuzberg would need to be cut off and merged with a pretty random district created in the south. I'm not sure why these changes are necessary or how they improve the article in any way. It took years and lots of work to get to the current districts, and I think they do well. Globe-trotter (talk) 00:49, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

From my point of view as a tourist, Kreuzberg and Friedrischshain seemed anything but continuous. There is the singular bridge that connects them, and both sides felt different to me. Sure there is a bit of counterculture and such, but then I felt this all around Berlin. From the point of view of transportation and everything else, the cohesion is nonexistent - the only U-Bahn line that connects them ends right after the bridge. For a Berliner, they may be thought of as a common entity. For a tourist, they are not - visiting anything else in East Berlin is easier together with Friedrichshein, and the East German heritage is easy to sense everywhere, while Kreuzberg blends in quite seamlessly with Neukoelln.

My friends who recommended me stuff to see and do in Berlin were quite surprised - and so was I - when I told them of the administrative division of Berlin. Nobody felt like Kreuzberg, with its old buildings and 19th-century structure, belonged with Friedrichshein, which to tourists is first and foremost the stalinist Karl-Marx-Allee. Sure there are clubs in both, but they're everywhere in Berlin.

In short, trying to use our guides in Berlin as a tourist, I found them not to work at all. City West covers far too large an area, and there is nothing practical about grouping South, North and East together - the POIs are spread too far apart to make grouping them serve any point. For me, they all fall into one category - if you have the time, choose a POI of interest to travel to, as most of them cannot be conveniently visited together (and if any can, those are groups of two-three, not enough for an article). PrinceGloria (talk) 06:32, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

I want to bring this up again.

I'm quite new here and am reading - out of curiosity - the Berlin pages of the german and english version. I'm unhappy with both solutions, the german version is too detailed (the Ortsteile are often simply too small to fill an article - I couldn't write any interesting about Johannisthal and I live there!), the english version lacks detail. Especially "Berlin South" - the problem is already mentioned in the article.

I'm fine with "city west", the term is used in germany sometimes as well and "Mitte". For the rest of Berlin I would prefer an own page for each Bezirk from the time when there were 23 of them. Probably with the exception of Marzahn-Hellersdorf, as these don't differ very much and have only few "highlights".--Ichbins berlin (talk) 19:31, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I do not think we have enough content for 23 articles, it would be confusing for the reader anyway to have to figure out which districts they might want to visit out of 23. I would suggest carving out Prenzlauer Berg out of the "East" bagel. PrinceGloria (talk) 20:03, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

It won't be 23 but 19, if we use City-West and Marzahn-Hellersdorf. I see a few problems with the current districts:

They just don't fit: Berlin South: Zehlendorf is one of the wealthiest districts of Berlin, Neukölln one of the poorest with many immigrants and a high density, Köpenick the greenest and the one with the lowest density and contrary to the other two part of the former GDR.

Geography; although Berlin has a quite good public transport network, you can't get from Zehlendorf to Köpenick that fast.

If there are not much points of interest in a specific area the reader should know about that. I don't think it's that bad to have pages with few content, it simply tells the reader that the region is not very interesting for a tourist.

I could (and will) expand the articles a bit in near future, I could make a sample for the Köpenick district as I lived there for more than 10 years. I am, however, a loner and more interested in nature than culture, so don't expect too much, especially for regions I don't know well.--Ichbins berlin (talk) 20:44, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll look forward to your contributions. I don't like the idea of deliberately creating articles for districts about which not much could be written, though, if there's a way to avoid that. It just doesn't really seem in the interest of travellers to do that. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:11, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

The chances that any tourist would head towards Zehlendorf or Koepenick are quite small. Most of the tourist attractions are in the central districts as per the current split. It is only that, IMHO, Prenzberg has enough points of interest on its own to be split from Friedrichshein-Kreuzberg. We can deal with larger outer regions like South having diverse characteristics if they are not major destinations, this is the same for every other large city. PrinceGloria (talk) 08:56, 17 March 2015 (UTC)