Where to Stay and Play or Wine and Dine in East Berlin

Getting there: There are still only two ways for an American to enter East Berlin: Either by walking or driving through Allied Checkpoint Charlie or by taking the S-Bahn streetcar and passing through the border at the Friedrichstrasse station.

By car, crossing the border is a bit anticlimactic. Border officials are as likely to smile as they are to reinforce the rigid stereotype. Walking across is more of an adventure. You’ll likely wait in line (usually for 5 to 20 minutes) with Italians, French and Turks. East Germans shuffle through separate lines, laden with the proceeds of shopping expeditions to West Berlin bargain stores.

Regulations have eased dramatically in recent weeks. You no longer need to change money at the border. You buy a one-day visa for about $3 and you’re in till midnight. If you want to stay overnight or travel elsewhere in East Germany, you must have a prepaid hotel room booked by an East German-approved U.S. travel agency before a single-entry tourist visa (about $8) is issued.

Money: The requirement that Westerners daily convert a specified amount of hard money into East German currency has been dropped. Until currency union July 2, visitors receive two East marks for one West mark ($1 is worth DM 1.68).

Where to stay: Hotels throughout West Berlin are heavily booked from now through early July, and hotel space is “very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain,” according to the U.S. Government Mission in West Berlin.

The situation is just as bad in East Berlin, which has three Western-quality hotels: the Grand, Metropol and Palast. All are still run by Interhotel, the state hotel agency. All are ridiculously expensive, and only the Grand is really worth it. Cheaper rooms are available but can be Spartan. All accommodations are available at the central Reiseburo or travel office on Alexanderplatz. For Westerners, the best values remain in West Berlin, and travel between the two halves of the city is now so easy that the West is a viable option. A complete West Berlin hotel and pension guidebook is available at Tegel Airport and at the Zoo train station. Expect to pay at least $50 for a modest (bath down the hall) room in a pension.

Where to dine: The Wolga restaurant on Friedrichstrasse is one of the few places you can sometimes get into without a reservation. Generally you should be prepared to wait for a table, then again for a menu and then quite some time for your food. The restaurants at the Grand Hotel are good (see accompanying story, L6), but Peking, the Chinese restaurant opened by Grand management a block away from Checkpoint Charlie (Friedrichstrasse 58) is unspeakably awful. Don’t even think about it.

Smaller restaurants away from the main tourist area downtown can be far more pleasant and even occasionally relatively friendly to the taste buds. Try neighborhood spots in Prenzlauerberg, Pankow or along Karl Marx Allee. The Hoehers Gaststube on Rhinower Strasse serves pork chops and has a back room with a comfortable, down-home feel.

What to drink: East German beers, which retain some of the fine names of German brews, have been watered down through years of Communist production, so East Germans often stick to Czech beers, especially Pilsner Urquell. One good East German beer is Radeberger. Order it soon because the West German brands are already attempting to take over by offering barkeepers and hoteliers free glassware and coasters, if they serve the Western brands exclusively.

Nightlife: In Prenzlauerberg, check out the Franz Youth Club (Schoenhauser Allee 36), a converted brewery notable for its fascinating crowd and not for the German pop music, one of the most inexplicably foul forms of art on the planet.

East Berlin’s best dance club is Yucca on Wisbyer Strasse, but a European disco is a European disco.

One problem with all such places in East Berlin these days is that it has become chic for West Berliners to go out to the East in the evening, leaving East Berliners in a tiny minority in their own hangouts.

The Staatsoper, Comic Opera and Schauspielhaus, where the Berlin Symphony plays, have schedules packed with many of the finest orchestras and opera companies of the East Bloc. East Berlin concert guidebooks are available at most West Berlin hotels.

Hotels and tour operators can book tickets, but they are far more expensive than they should be. If you’re staying several days, go to the box office and buy your seat in advance.

Music lovers should know that a limited number of tickets always go on sale one hour before concert time. Standing room tickets are also often available.

Other walks:

--From Checkpoint Charlie along Leipziger Strasse, past the handful of show shops that were supposed to convince Westerners that communists could make consumer goods, to the River Spree and the Nikolai Quarter, a renovated section of neat shops and cafes.

--From the Gethsemane Church, a cradle of last fall’s people’s revolution, past the old Jewish cemetery, a sobering glimpse into the history that East Germany did its best to ignore, and on to Husemannstrasse, Honecker’s showplace for foreign visitors.

For more information, contact the Embassy of the German Democratic Republic, 1717 Massachusetts Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036, (202) 232-3134.