Berlin Travel Forum

Hi where in Berlin the weekend of the 28th of August.
Was wondering when the fixtures are announced for the bundesliga?
Would like to go and watch Herta at the olympiastadion if possible.

If Herta are away, whats the deal with the other local teams? I support a third division team in England so it dosent have to be the glamour of the top league.

Ive googled Union Berlin would you say there the next best??

Hi Rosstipha!

The fixtures will be announced only a couple of weeks before the games start. For this season they plan to start the first Bundesliga games in the weekend of 7-10 August so for sure Herta will play the weekend you are in Berlin but you will have to wait to see if that will be in the city.

You are right about Union Berlin, they promoted from the third division to the second division last season so they are the next best. According to my German colleague the second league is really worth it so it would not be such a bad idea to check Union Berlin out if they are playing in the city.

After Union Berlin the next best is Türkiyemspor Berlin. They played third division last season but unfortunately went down to the forth, again aksed my colleague and she said that it is not worth paying for such a low league, so that one is your last resort option I guess :)

Hope this helps!

OHannemarie
(Oh-Berlin)

good answer, but some news/additional hints:

- tuerkiyemspor (they did NOT play in one of the first three leagues) did not drop to the 5th league because of the bankrupt of 4th league team Kickers Emden (which dropped instead of Tuerkiyemspor). http://www.turkiyemspor.net

- There is a Potsdam football team playing in 4th league, called Babelsberg 03. Their stadion is also not that far away from berlin center.

So if Hertha and Union are not playing here (or sold out) you could switch to one of the above teams. 4th league is not that bad; if, it may be only slightly worse than english 3rd league.

Hertha or Union Berlin, one of this teams have a match at home at that weekend if you have your stay in Berlin. It changes normaly every week, one teams is mostly away. Hertha is the bigger club in the west part of Berlin with a great modern stadium. Union is a workers club from the former east-berlin. They have a fanatic audience and plays in the 2nd league. In the deeper leagues you have only small stadiums and only a few audience. It's only from regional significance.

Because the international worldchampionschip in athletics is in Berlin is it possible that Hertha starts in august with two away-matches, their stadium is occupied.

Look at www.bundesliga.de , you can see there the new schedule in the early july 2009.

Enjoy the match!

Thanks very much for your replies, I'll check the website out in early July!

The World Championships in Athletics end on 23 August, so it is well possible that Hertha will have a home game on the weekend you will be in Berlin. (BTW Your 28 August weekend is a Friday...) They can play the first game of the season at home (7/8 August) and then two games away because of the athletics championships. You can be rather sure that a home game will follow, and this would be on "your" weekend, almost certainly on Sunday (30 August), as they will have a Europa League game (the former UEFA Cup) on 27 August (Thursday). Where (home or away) and against which opponent will be known on 7 August.

The Bundesliga calendar that will be published on Thursday (2 July) will get some slight changes in the days after, as clubs will discuss if they would want to play on Friday or Sunday instead of Saturday.

The same applies to the Second League with Union Berlin. They BTW do not play at Olympiastadion but in Stadion an der Alten Försterei.

Keep an eye on the clubs' pages:

www.herthabsc.de

http://www.fc-union-berlin.de/start.php

Normally the Deutsche Fußball-Liga try to have only one home game in one city at a time. So it is most likely that Union will not play at home on the same weekend as Hertha. But you never know, and there are always exceptions.

Probably a bit late with all this but...
if you are wondering about how to get tickets for Hertha, a couple of years ago I emailed the Hertha box office (in my best German), paid via email, and collected my tickets at the stadium. That was before they hit the real big time, but you could still try. Otherwise, I would now try getting tickets from one of the Fan Centres - the most obvious one (i.e. easiest to find) would be the Hertha Fan Shop in the Europa-Centre shopping precinct near Zoo. The Ostkurve houses the Hertha hardcore, so a seat in the East end of the stadium might give you a bigger buzz...

Union Berlin play in a stadium in the woods near Kopenick. Kopenick makes for a fine excursion in itself. Never been to the ground, but have met some fans on the platform at Karlshorst S-Bahn station - an interesting bunch! Mercifully there is currently no prospect of Union playing Locomotiv Leipzig or Dynamo Dresden, since the latter teams now wallow in the mire of the lower leagues. Union games against those two used to be a bit like Cardiff-Swansea, Stoke-Vale, Millwall-West Ham (I hope you get the picture). No idea about tickets but I suspect they will rarely sell-out. Union is very much a fan-run club. Last time I looked at the website, there were pictures of volunteer fans repairing and repainting the ground. And if you pine for standing on a terrace, Union is your obvious choice...

Cheers, James.