Berlin's Hotel Concorde has long tried to be hip with its accommodation packages, and each deal they come out with does seem to get better and better. Learning French in Berlin was a bit of a stretch; their Fall of the Wall deal was pretty good; but now comes the most sensible idea they've had so far: a Shop in the City package.

Being all very cosmopolitan and cool, yet not outrageously expensive, Berlin is an ideal place to go on a shopping splurge. The Hotel Concorde is also in the right part of Berlin for this, right on the Kurfürstendamm shopping street, and even through winter you'll be able to easily get around to

Photo by geraintwn via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A line marks the path where the wall once cut through the streets. It’s been twenty years today since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Here at Jaunted, we love us some flash mobs and all of the fun and city exploration that come with them. But this upcoming Monday, November 9 in Berlin, a flash mob will take on a somber note as up to 33,000 people gather to recreate the Berlin Wall on the 20th anniversary of the night it came down.

The "Mauer Mob"—know that "mauer" means "wall" in German— will happen at approximately 8:15pm on Monday, lasting for about 15 minutes so that visitors, Berliners, and even those who were there for the original tearing down of the wall can commemorate the date and capture photos of the scene. Already almost 6,000 people have registered to participate on the event's official site, and if you're in the vicinity, you should not miss this opportunity.

For tips on what to see and what to skip while you're not becoming part of a human Berlin wall in the city, be sure to check out our Berlin Field Trip series.

Related Stories:
· Temporarily Recreating The Berlin Wall [Kottke]
· Mauer Mob [Official Site]
· Walk The Path Of The Berlin Wall And Crash Into A Starbucks [Jaunted]
· Berlin coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Jaunted]

East Germany must have been a really nasty place to live, because so many people risked their lives to escape to the west. A creepy tour in Berlin provides a stark reminder of the lengths people will go for freedom, with walks through some of the escape tunnels under the Berlin Wall. An interesting AP story points out that about 300 people managed to escape through various tunnels in the years after the wall was built in 1961, with many continuing to work from the west to free family members.

Design-minded travelers to Hamburg, Germany, will be happy to hear the Radisson Blu Hamburg reopens this week after a 48-million-euro makeover. Claiming the title of Hamburg’s biggest hotel, the hotel has 556 rooms and stands nearly 400 feet tall.

Thanks to the renovation, brand-new features include a 23,000-square-foot conference area/ballroom, freshened-up lobby with two lounges, two restaurants and bars, and a fitness center. Plus, the guestrooms have been re-imagined with individual themes.

The lobby now has white tile floors, black walls, and an under-lit reception area (see photo above — looks pretty good, dontchya think?). Think mod chandelier lighting and gold armchairs alongside Arne Jacobsen Egg chairs. Meanwhile, Swedish architect Christian Lundwall refreshed the guestrooms

That’s the central lost and found for Munich’s Oktoberfest, and, as you might imagine, the drunken masses lose some interesting possessions. Over the years, the Fundbüro has taken temporary custody of, among other things, “a prosthetic leg, a wheelchair, a Superman costume, handwritten notes by the composer Johann Sebastian Bach and 15,000 marks in a soiled pair of lederhosen,” writes Nicholas Kulish in the New York Times.

For more Oktoberfest craziness, check out Life’s then and now slideshow.

The W Barcelona may be stealing all the headlines but it’s not the only new kid on the European hotel block this autumn. The Aspria Hotel in Berlin looks pretty nice – and it’s rather more affordable, too.

Opening next month on 6 November in the posh Charlottenburg district (west of the Tiergarten), it doesn’t have the most auspicious of pedigrees – Aspria is a chain of health clubs in Europe - but they’re now offering accommodation at their digs in Hannover and Berlin. Original, but interesting – it means that the spa and fitness area are going to be souped up no end. In fact, the Berlin spa is going to be 14,000 m sq –

Back in 1997, an unemployed former hotel manager named Bertram Rohloff had a brilliant idea. Unable to obtain the necessary permits to open an outdoor sandwich stand, he found a way to circumvent the entire bureaucracy and wound up making portable food vending history. He invented a wearable propane sausage grill that requires no special permit, as neither the grill nor the food ever touches the ground. Thus, Grillwalker was born, a sausage oven with legs that can bring hot sausages to the hungry masses at some of Berlin's most heavily-trafficked urban spaces. As The New York Times points out, Rohloff's 15 sausage walkers are now fixtures at such sites as the Alexanderplatz, bustling Friedrichstrasse train station, and even outside popular nightclubs.

REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

A waitress serves mugs of beer to the thirsty crowds on Saturday as Oktoberfest kicks off in Munich.