007 Travelogue: Berlin (GERMANY) 2023: Hamburg Break Out, Next Stop Berlin

Bond locations of this 007 Travelogue:

Checkpoint Charlie

Hotel Adlon Kempinski

+ PR photo locations:

Brandenburg Gate

Potsdamer Platz

23 February 2023

If you want to read our Hamburg 007 Travelogue first, click here.

After waking up at our hotel ibis Hamburg Alster Centrum, after a good breakfast we walked with our suitcases to Hamburg Central Station where we had bought tickets the day before for the train that would take us to the German capital, Berlin. Of course, this wasn’t our first visit to Berlin, but it’s always nice to go back there. Our train to Prague was a little late in Hamburg, but after we got to our cabin we enjoyed the beautiful scenery on the way.

After arriving in Berlin, we took a taxi to our hotel. You can already guess the location from the name of the hotel 🙂 : Mercure Hotel & Residenz Berlin Checkpoint Charlie.

Accommodation: Mercure Hotel & Residenz Berlin Checkpoint Charlie

Address: Schuetzenstrasse 11, Berlin, Germany

Room type: Superior apartment with double bed, sofa bed and kitchenette

Price: 398.70 EUR / 2 nights / 3 persons

Booking: Via the hotel’s website

After checking in and taking our things to our room, we immediately went to Checkpoint Charlie where the shooting of the movie “Octopussy” (1983) began on the 10th of August 1982, with Roger Moore again playing our hero agent. In the early 80s, getting to the side of East Berlin was still not that easy, so the film crew had to shoot only on the west side and PR pictures of Roger Moore were taken near the border station.

The Berlin Wall Speech was delivered by United States President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987. The speech is commonly known by a key line from the middle part: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had encircled West Berlin since 1961. (Wikipedia)

Checkpoint Charlie also has a Back-Factory cafe, which we visited in 2012, when there was a lot of different material from the film on display.

We went to eat in the nearby Veli’s restaurant and at the same time drank the Bond drink: Raki, the kind that Bond (Sean Connery) drinks in the film “From Russia with Love” (1963), Bond and Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendariz) drink raki and in the book “From Russia, with Love” (1957) and in “James Bond, the Authorized Biography of 007” (1973) Bond drinks raki as well.

We walked around the memorials of the Berlin Wall and visited the “Mall of Berlin” shopping center, which had e.g. the excellent “Studio of Wonders” with more than 30 interactive worlds. Creative ideas can be implemented in them. “Not only do we provide over 700 m2 of space for content creation, but also sets and backdrops that will make your social media feed stand out from the crowd.”

24th of February 2023

Our second day in Berlin started with a visit to Hotel Adlon Kempinski which is mentioned in the Bond book “James Bond, the Authorized Biography of 007” (1973).

“The original Hotel Adlon was one of the most famous hotels in Europe. It opened in 1907 and was largely destroyed in 1945 in the closing days of World War II, though a small wing continued operating until 1984. The current hotel, which opened on August 23, 1997, is a new building with a design inspired by the original.” (Wikipedia)

“He used to travel to Berlin and always stayed at the Hotel Adlon.”

John Pearson: “James Bond, the Authorized Biography of 007″ 

(Bond stayed here at the end of the 1930’s even though he hated the hotel)

From the hotel, we headed to one of the most famous places in Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate. We had already visited here on our previous trip.

Our next destination was the Deutsches Espionage Museum – German Spy Museum. There was a lot of interesting, real espionage material. We were told about real spies like Mata Hari, but of course we were most interested in the section dedicated to James Bond himself, where we found a lot of stuff related to 007 films and information about Bond films. Mata Hari also has a Bond connection. In the comedy “Casino Royale” (1967), it is said that Mata Hari and Bond (David Niven) have a daughter: Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet), who also works in the intelligence service.

See our more detailed presentation of the museum here.

In the immediate vicinity of the museum is also Potsdamer Platz, where promotional photos of Roger Moore were also taken for the film.

We walked around of the city’s famous observation tower and visited the “Disgusting Food Museum” which was an interesting experience as well, as right after we bought the tickets we were given the vomit bags in our hands 🙂

In the evening, we still had tickets for the Ukrainian band Go_A‘s concert which was at the Columbia Theater at Columbiadamm 9-11.

25 February 2023

On the morning of our departure, we still had time to jog to the filming location which was not the location of the Bond movie, but of “The Ghost Writer” (2010) starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan and directed by Roman Polanski. Exteriors and interiors set at publishing house in London were shot at Charlottenstrasse 47 in downtown Berlin (Mitte).

We still managed to visit one museum – “Magicum – Berlin Magic Museum” (Grosse Hamburger Strasse 17) which is the world’s first interactive museum of magic and mysticism.

Thanks Berlin, until next time. It’s always great to visit here!

See more 007 TRAVELOGUES here