Ich bin ein Berliner

[dppintr]

After closure of Tempelhof airport in October 2008, I also had the historic Berlin Tegel airport on the list of airports that I would like to visit if possible. Due to the postponed opening of the new Berlin-Brandenburg airport, Berlin Tegel is still open, and we took the opportunity to fly there.

Tegel was constructed after the Soviet blockade for land-traffic to Berlin started. Western coverage represented the airlift that was set-up as to save west-Berliners from starvation, but that was somewhat exaggerated. It was thirteen years before the Berlin wall was erected, and Berliners were still able to travel freely in the city at the time of the blockade. The Soviets were using the blockade to gain control over the city by supplying the entire city of Berlin with food and fuel. The western powers wanted to prevent that.

Berlin is a fantastic city. In the 1990s following the collapse of the wall, Berlin was one big construction site, and although there is still major construction going on at some places (e.g. the subway Unter den Linden, area of former Palast der Republik), the efforts that were started in the 1990s did pay-off.

A trip report with pictures can be found here

[Keef]

Bist Du wirklich ein Berliner?

[caveman]

Berlin Tegel is the fourth busiest airport in Germany, after Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Munich. It is probably sorry that the new Willy Brandt airport takes more time to realize, but nice that a visit to Tegel is still possible

[CaptCrispy]

Bist Du wirklich ein Berliner?

Mmm, lecker!

[Irv Lee]

I remember the Berlin skyline of the early 90s, good time to be renting out cranes. Also having to jump off platforms and walk across main railway lines to catch local trains at Falkensee just inside old East Germany on the west side of the city just after they re connected the railway lines west of Spandau for a faster way to Hamburg, perhaps quicker than a health and safety department might have wanted if they had been consulted! Anyone interested in ancient railway artifacts would have wanted to jump in front of the bulldozers too as they rushed to modernize the little station there to cope

[Intercepted]

Berlin Tegel is the fourth busiest airport in Germany, after Frankfurt, Dusseldorf and Munich. It is probably sorry that the new Willy Brandt airport takes more time to realize, but nice that a visit to Tegel is still possible

...and it looks like you can do this for a landing fee of €12 and another €8 for 24hr parking! What are the fees at Gatwick and Luton again?

[dppintr]

We were lucky, as there was no handling agent present in the office when we left, and the airport staff was so kind to bring us through security and to the plane. When we had arrived the day before, the marshaller took us to the terminal. So we did not see a handling agent and we avoided the handling charges.

ATC charged us EUR 18 (that invoice we received a few weeks after visiting Berlin), and the airport charged us EUR 47.60. It took a while, but we finally received the invoice from Berlin Airport in February. In an e-mail we received in January it was explained that the airport sent the invoice to a wrong address at first, and they asked us to e-mail the correct address.