Our three-hour Walking Tour of Berlin with Glen on the hottest day of the summer was absolutely the…read morecoolest activity in which we engaged during our whirlwind four days in the City. From the moment Glen introduced himself, he shepherded our group from site to site, finding us shady spots whenever he could whilst sharing his voluminous historical, cultural, and cultural knowledge of Berlin and Germany. He also used multimedia very effectively to explain the sites and sights. His knowledge of Berlin and Germany is matched perhaps only by his love and respect for both--the latter of which was particularly manifest when he explained the book burning site, the location of Hitler's bunker, and the Holocaust memorial. Not only do my partner and I recommend the Original Berlin Walking Tour, but we also strongly recommend you ask to be in a group led by Glen.

Benny did a fantastic job with our tour group. He was engaging, informative, insightful and…read moreentertaining. He gave us great insight of both sides of the east and west Berliner perspectives through history.

I did the Berlin Highlights and Iconic Sites tour with Ru in late September. Ru was a good mix of…read morekeeping things educational but used humor when appropriate. It's clear he loves his adopted hometown and was full of recommendations for things to explore on our own, and kept the tour moving at a good pace. There's so much to learn and Ru was honest that we were just scratching the surface, but I got a lot out of the tour.

It takes a great guide to make a great tour. I took two tours with Insider (Explore Berlin and…read moreThird Reich Berlin), and both were guided by Hannah. She is one of the best tour guides I've yet encountered and I've taken a hell of a lot of tours. She speaks very clearly (we're both native speakers of American English, so that helped as well), projects her voice well, and almost always speaks with clear intention. I never felt she was wasting our time with too much detail or circular talking; the pacing of the route and stops worked very well. She did a great job managing the group, making clear where we were going and where we should stand to see and hear everything while not blocking pedestrian traffic. She encouraged questions and made the experience interactive, which kept us fully engaged the whole time. At no point was I bored or wondering when the tour would end; in fact, I was surprised at the end of both tours that 3 hours had already flown by. Hannah did a great job of demonstrating the modern relevance of history and exploring the conflicting interests and biases of the people involved in historical events. A lot of this history is very heavy, particularly on the Third Reich tour, and she gave it all the gravity and respect it deserves. I highly recommend these tours, especially for history-lovers.

Everything worked smoothly for us. In fact, the driver was patient with me and allowed us to get on…read morethe bus even though I hadn't gotten the actual tickets yet. We drove slowly at times due to traffic. Narration was pretty brief but thorough. We first sat in seats that had funky audio but it was easy to move to a functional audio seat. Drop off and pick up locations worked well for us. We use hop-on buses as much as we can and I certainly recommend this company!

So these tour companies are pretty similar, but I had to give a single star because of…read moremisinformation. They advertise stops which are unavailable. It takes 2.5 hours for a circuit and only runs one direction. It is a hop on and off format. I only wanted to get off for two stops, East Gallery and Charlotten Schloss. The later is supposedly only on weekends. What? This was not disclosed anywhere, and worse was the manner in which one of the vendors replied. Guess they already had a captive customer. It would be too much effort to file a formal complaint so I YELP. My brief research with the competition. Be Berlin has an app to trek buses. Another company breaks it off into 2 separate routes so you don't have to go a full 2.5 hours if you want to stop in a certain quarter. However, maybe due to the yellow color I noticed this bus more often than the others.