Scene in Berlin

Every year at this time I leave Berlin in search of Advent magic. When I first moved here 11 years ago, Berlin didn't really do cheer, let alone Christmas.

In the era before flamboyant Mayor Klaus Wowereit's successful rebranding, Berlin was too immediately associated with its repellent monochrome pasts. It was hard to coax a festive smile out of the festering local lumpenproletariat, and the other ingredients of Advent were sorely missing.

Berlin's much better now, but the southern Teutonic world still holds all the best Christmas cards, the little Austrian chapel that gave the world Silent Night, the snowy mountain views and the most famous Christmas markets.

The South also has Catholicism, lending that extra atmosphere of ceremony and showiness. A Salieri mass at Salzburg's Franciscan Church is an Advent joy. Yes, the Protestant Christmas capital of Nuremberg manages perfectly well without Catholicism, but perhaps that extra half-century of state-sponsored atheism in East Berlin just squeezed out too much of the mystery of this time of year.

You're better off in Prague

Even if you're one of the heathen, churches are the key places to fill up on Advent spirit, and there are not enough gorgeous churches in Berlin. The Berliner Dom cathedral is an outsized, tacky celebrity wedding cake of a building with none of the charm of Nuremberg's hauntingly intimate Sebaldus and Lorenz Churches, which need little ornamentation at this time of year because they are full of their original art, hidden in cellars during the war by a rightly fearful mayor.

Or go instead to Prague, that ultimate central European city of wonderful churches where almost no one goes to church, except middlebrow tourists lured by rehearsals of bits of Vivaldi, Mozart and the best of film music.

Berlin also entirely lacks the pillaged-by-Disney medieval Germanic old town feel, which stirs the heart all the more in December. Picturesque old Berlin is buried beneath the concrete of the TV tower and the Marx-Engels Forum - unless you're sufficiently undemanding to be moved by the pre-fab Baroque of the reconstructed Nikolai Quarter.

You would need industrial quantities of tinsel tracking across the concrete like gaudy ivy to redeem Berlin's cityscape for Christmas. Again, you're better off in Prague. Nuremberg was bombed worse than Berlin in the war, but has rebuilt just enough for a passing resemblance to the city depicted on the labels of its tins of original gingerbread.

Avoid the poison

In western Berlin, the Ku'damm Christmas market on Breitscheidplatz is clustered as usual around the stub of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, which is now swathed in scaffolding and plastic, robbing the market of its only feature. Alexanderplatz may have been designed as the expression of a utopian collective, but no one should be sent there in search of goodwill.

Livening up the Berlin market scene this year is the mulled-wine poisoner, who has been handing out free spiked drinks. I first thought this might be some brutal, new Berlin equivalent of Krampus, the genuinely terrifying extra-terrestrial goat-like creature that stalks Austria at Advent, rattling his chains and hissing at passers-by. But this Berlin Krampus has now made a dozen and more victims quite ill and has a photofit picture and a 1,000-euro bounty on his head.

So why is Berlin Germany's number one Christmas travel destination, with an additional half million guests descending on the city during the holiday season? Well, they aren't here because Berlin offers the perfect German Christmas, whatever Berlin tourist officials say.

They're here for the same reason they throng Berlin all year round: There are masses of fascinating things to see. As an Amsterdam resident said to me recently, "Berlin is twice the size of my city with five times more to do." Quite.

But here's the most important consideration for me now, and it should be written under the headline of every travel article in flashing font, especially the ones about the next hit destination: It barely matters where you go at all; it matters who you're with. That goes double at Advent.

If you're lucky enough to have the opportunity of togetherness of any kind this Christmas then go to that destination, and don't let anything poison it.

Author: Gabriel Fawcett

Editor: Kate Bowen