Shopping In Germany
Germany has a reputation for craftsmanship and this is reflected in the quality of locally-made goods. Traditional German buys include porcelain, handicrafts, toys, timepieces, beer steins, nutcrackers and cutlery, not to mention Mercedes and BMW cars.
Shopping In Berlin
Berlin has cast off its image as a drab center of intrigue to emerge as a shopping centre for fashion, antiques, furniture and home accessories. The most august shopping locale is Kurfurstendamm (Ku’damm). Most of the city’s premier clothes shops, boutiques and department stores are located on this famous thoroughfare.
A parvenu to the upmarket Berlin shopping scene is the new Friedrichstrasse. It’s a mile long thoroughfare which features a lot of design shops, car shops, coffeehouses (with the inevitable Starbucks) and the Galleries Lafayette. The nearby Unter den Linden features several boutiques, located mainly between Friedrichstrasse and the Brandenburg Gate.
A must-see is a legend from the cold war days, the Kaufhof on Alexander Platz. Once the haunt of communist bigwigs from Moscow and other soviet bloc countries, nowadays...