The New York Times recently published a fairly detailed itinerary for the hurried traveler in Berlin. Berlin is a rapidly changing city. Consequently, it’s hard for me to vouch for every one of the stops mentioned here, but based on the stops that I know, this is an excellent plan for you if you find yourself with fewer than 2 days to see Berlin.

Of course, an entire year is probably not enough to see everything that Berlin has to offer. Visiting the hundreds–yes, hundreds–of museums alone will take at least two years.

Fortunately, however, you have a nice list from the New York Times on all the current hip places to see, and you have the walki-talki.com walking tour of Berlin to blast through the city’s illustrious and unmatched history. The tour is available as an app for your iPhone or iPod Touch through The App Store, and as a combination of mp3 files and PDF map for any device.

If you’re in a hurry to see Berlin, this is your itinerary.

Checkpoint Charlie on the iPhone walking tour App of Berlin

This wonderful walking tour of Berlin introduces you to the key historical sites of Berlin, from the origins of the city, to the remarkable history of culture, suppression, repression and rebirth recounted in sites like the Bundestag/Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie and Gendermenmarkt. Best of all, with this new app package for the iPhone and iPod Touch (OS 3.0 or higher required) there is no hassle of printing a paper map to take along. (That option is, of course, always available.) Our self-contained app has an interactive map that shows you the path to follow, to skip tracks if you so desire, and to see a picture of the landmark at each site so that you can be certain of your whereabouts. All of this is on your device with no need to connect to any network for information.

This app is pure walking bliss, and our Berlin tour happens to be the longest tour that we offer in terms of time. You walk a great distance to visit a great many sites and to learn history unrivaled in its complexity and importance. It is a lot to take in, and you can do it all now from the comfort of your iPhone or iPod Touch, at your own leisurely pace. Take two hours to do the tour, or take six hours. Just make sure your battery doesn’t run out.

As the Guardian article points out, squatting is not quite the write word for it, but it persists because the phenomenon of the Volkskueche (“People’s Kitchens” or “folks’ kitchens”), or Vokue for short, is rooted in the practice of squatting in abandoned buildings, of which far too many could be found in the former East Berlin soon after the wall came down. The sense of camaraderie that suffuses this piece is palpably present in every trip to the hippest neighborhoods of the former East Berlin. Prenzlauer-Berg was the first eastern neighborhood to go through a remarkable resurrection to become an amazingly active social and cultural district. Now, it isFriedrichshain’s turn. (In fact, a young doctor who had grown up in the former East Berlin told me on a train ride to Berlin that she was among the first wave of youngsters who brought Prenzlauer-Berg back to life and who subsequently moved to Friedrichschain once PB became too hip and, consequently, too expensive.)

Tacheles Volkskueche, from The Guardian

Squatting happens to be a big feature of many European cities, Amsterdam in particular, but it is a practice that seems to be on the wane these days as globalization opens the floodgates of capital to the world’s most storied cities and brings in foreigners eager to partake in the hallowed histories. One ought to partake in these fantastic social experiments, therefore, while one still can. Our walki-talki self-guided mp3 walking tour of Berlin (soon available as an iPhone App, like our Paris and London tours) will provide you with an excellent historical background on Berlin and give you a great appreciation of what’s going on in the former East Berlin. To get to Prenzlauer-Berg after the tour, continue walking east to Alexanderplatz and take the north bound (to Pankow) U5 subway train. To get to Friedrichschain, take the south bound U5 subway train from the Alexanderplatz station.

This really is your ticket to cheap and fantastic food and entertainment in Berlin.

Our walking tour of Amsterdam, however, offers entertainment of an entirely different variety.

The above Guardian article mentions perhaps the greatest treat for the cost-conscious traveler in Berlin: nostalgia, history and cheap prices. The Ostel in Berlin is a budget hotel that recreates the East German way of life. At nightly rates that are quite low compared to standard hotel rates in Berlin, guests stay in rooms decorated like the standard issue apartments of the communist era. (The beds and sheets, we are assured, are new.) For as little as $20 a night, you can bunk with other travelers in multi-occupancy rooms that harken to the Free German Youth summer camps of the former DDR.

Naturally, you will want to take the walki-talki.com mp3 walking tour of Berlin with you to get a better idea of why the Ostel hostel is so special.

The Ostel’s official web is www.ostel.eu.

You can find complete photo galleries here.