What’s not to like about The Sammlung Boros Collection? It’s a brilliant private collection of contemporary art held captive in a monstrous, symmetrical ex-Nazi bunker with two metre thick concrete walls, dominating an area of a thousand metres squared. It also doubled as a hardcore techno and fetish club in the ‘90s, of which traces linger in every corner.
I never knew this neighbourhood existed and went to visit a friend and was instantly transported out of Berlin into some sort of 50's utopia.
"The Hansaviertel is a prime example of modern architecture and urban planning in the fifties in Berlin.
36 individual buildings or ensembles still form the model of modern architecture and urban planning of the 1950s. The southern part of the war-damaged Hansaviertel, which lies between the S-Bahn line and Tiergarten, was chosen as the central demonstration area of the International Building Exhibition in order to present the "city of tomorrow" - in deliberate contrast to the East Berlin Stalinallee and the restored tenement barracks." - berlin.de
Also visit The Akademie der Künste, if not for the art then the architecture alone.
A very good reason to travel West: the C/O, next to the formerly infamous Berliner Zoo tube station, is an awesome museum dedicated to photography and visual media. Previous exhibitions include Larry Clark, Martin Parr, Anton Corbijn, Annie Leibovitz and Stephen Shore.
A very nice little second-hand bookstore, including a shelve with international books in French, English, and Spanish too. Always nice people to meet and a great selection of art and cook books, for affordable prices.