Travel

The conference will be held at the Intercontinental Berlin Hotel

WSC 2012 will be held in Berlin, Germany at the Hotel InterContinental Berlin which is located in the heart of the city, in the triangle formed by the Kurfürstendamm Boulevard, the government quarter and Potsdamer Platz. The Berlin Zoo and Berlin’s largest park, the Tiergarten, are just around the corner. The 37 conference and 558 modern sleeping rooms and suites provide the perfect home base for the attendees because the hotel is surrounded by the infrastructure of a metropolis and is easy to reach by plane, rail or car. Hotel amenities include a Michelin-starred gourmet restaurant, a bar, a 1,000 m2 design award winning full service vitality club and spa with indoor pool, and a 24-hour fitness centre.

 

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General Information About Berlin

With 20 million overnight visitor stays for the third year in a row, Berlin is one of the world’s premier travel destinations. Foreigners comprise 40% of this figure, double than, e.g., New York. Berlin is certainly one of the most-attractive cities in Europe, fascinating in its diversity, openness to new ideas, and the continuous change that it has undergone since the Berlin Wall fell down in 1989, before which the city had been cut in two pieces.

Monuments like the Brandenburg Gate, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Reichstag provide a feeling of living history. Five high-ranking museums, just to mention the famous Pergamon Altar, are located at the Museum Island, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site in the very center of the city. You will find additional excellent museums, like the Gemäldegalerie (Painting Gallery, with paintings of the "old masters"), the Neue Nationalgalerie (designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, specializing in 20th century European painting), the Hamburger Bahnhof (modern and contemporary art), the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German history), the German Museum of Technology, the Museum für Naturkunde (natural history, with the largest mounted dinosaur in the world and a preserved specimen of an Archaeopteryx), and many, many more spread across the city.

Germany's capital and largest city is full of life both day and night. Several areas, for instance, the streets around the "Hackescher Markt" Station, offer plenty of shops, restaurants, clubs, bars, and galleries. Berlin continuously attracts young and established artists to perform here, many of them also settling in the city. UNESCO has awarded Berlin the title of "City of Design".

Three major opera houses (with Daniel Barenboim being the musical director of the Berlin State Opera) and seven symphony orchestras serve visitors interested in music. The "Haus der Kulturen der Welt" (formerly known as Kongresshalle, a gift from the United States) provides exhibits on intercultural issues and stages world music and conferences.

Moving within Berlin is easy due to its excellent public transport network. Further attractions around Berlin, like the famous parks and palaces of Sanssouci (the largest World Heritage Site in Germany), are in a travel range of one hour, also without the need for renting a car. Berlin has a temperate seasonal climate. Winters average high temperatures of 3 °C (37 F) and lows of -2 to 0 °C (around 30 F). Snow is rare in early December and thus exploring the city is usually a comfortable undertaking.

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