BNA INDIA January/February 2015

GERMAN CITIES
270 movie theaters. The famous Babelsberg
Studios and the production company
UFA are located in Potsdam (30 kilometers
from Berlin). The city also hosts the
annual Berlin Film Festival 'Berlinale',
which is the largest publicly attended
film festival in the world.
As a multicultural city - more than
500,000 people of the 3.5 millions who
live in Berlin are
foreigners from all
over the world like
from Turkey, Italy,
Serbia, Poland,
Vietnam, China,
the USA, Iran, Lebanon
or Russia;
another 500,000
people are descendants
of international
migrants and
have either become
naturalized
German citizens or obtained citizenship
by virtue of birth in Germany - a lot of
intercultural events take place in Berlin.
The most famous festival is the annual
'Karneval der Kulturen' in May, a huge
street festival which resembles the Carnival
in Rio. If you come to Berlin you also
have to visit some of the 138 museums
and 400 art galleries. A must-visit is the
Pergamon Museum, the Naturkunde Museum
and the art gallery at Hamburger
Bahnhof. The best places for shopping
are Alexanderplatz, Wilmersdorfer Street
and of course Kurfuerstendamm and Tauentzien
Street. The Kurfuerstendamm is
home to some of Berlin's luxurious stores
with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial
Church at its eastern
end. Nearby
on Tauentzienstraße
is the shopping
mall KaDeWe,
claimed to be continental
Europe's
largest department
store. Another great
place to visit is
Potsdamer Platz
Tauentzien Street close to Ku-Damm with view to the with its Sony Center,
the Berlinale
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church
office, a casino, a
Cinemaxx, an IMAX 3D Cinema and the
shopping mall 'Potsdamer Platz Arkaden'.
You need at least one week to discover
Berlin at least a little bit and to get aware
of the unique spirit of the city and its
people. But actually, even if you live in
Berlin since years, you will never explore
every single part of Berlin.
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