The Old Piano Factory

Highlights

• Supremely stylish apartment with bold colour choices and lovely wooden floors.
• Modern amenities and the lovely, fab comfy bed ensure guests enjoy their stay.
• Ideally located in East Berlin, with fantastic access to lots of historical sites.
• Lots of excellent bars and restaurants in the area.

You should know

• This home is in a central spot, so noise is to be expected – light sleepers might want to pack earplugs.
• Laundry facilities here are shared with other residents of the building.
• There’s an area to store your luggage on arrival or departure.
• At full capacity, one guest will be sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room.
• This kitchenette is best suited to light bites.
• Your host can sometimes provide a cot and high chair – be sure to check.

When you're visiting one of the coolest cities in the world, it's only right that you stay in an apartment to match. Cloaked in muted blacks, space greys, and nearly-black teals, this apartment is impossibly stylish. Not only is it stylish, but it's also perfectly situated for exploring East Berlin.

You'll love waking up after a restful sleep in the luxurious bed queen size bed, and then heading downstairs to the on-site cafe for a hearty breakfast cooked for you. Then, you're ready to take on the city.

Whether you're in Berlin for work or to simply explore the city, convenience is always important. You're just an eight-minute walk away from the U Bahn, the underground subway. From there, you have all of Berlin at your fingertips. In under thirty minutes, you can explore the preserved Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and Karl-Marx-Allee. The city is a fascinating hub of culture, history, and politics.

It's also a great night out. You're right in the heart of Friedrichshain, a cool and alternative neighbourhood. Hop on the U Bahn for thirty minutes for a night at the famous Berghain (if you get in!), or stay closer to home and make the eight-minute walk to the Warschauer Bridge. Whatever night out you're looking for, you'll find it in Friedrichshain. By day, the neighbourhood is dotted with artisan coffee shops, restaurants, independent shops, and people relaxing at the park, Boxhagener Platz. The park is much loved by the locals and holds a flea market every Sunday, a must-see while you're in Berlin.

Just across the bridge from Kreuzberg and to the east of Mitte, you find Friedrichshain - a neighbourhood with an edgy, creative and slightly gritty vibe that’s popular with much of Berlin’s artsy crowd and students similar to Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Friedrichshain’s East Berlin heritage is still an integral part of its current identity with the monumental GDR-era boulevard, Karl-Marx-Allee, being one of the main arteries through the neighbourhood.

Other remnants of the past have, however, been given a Friedrichshain make-over with the most famous example being East Side Gallery, an open-air-gallery with murals painted on a 1.3 km stretch of the Berlin Wall located within the neighbourhood. In general, Friedrichshain is a buzzing neighbourhood with artistic spaces like Urban Spree that feel and look like microcosms of what Friedrichshain is all about - art galleries, artist studios, independent bookshops and concert spaces aplenty, complete with bars and Biergartens, of course. Friedrichshain is also home to some of Berlin’s most popular nightclubs that are notoriously hard to get into.

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