Web posted on:
Thursday, May 13, 1999 5:02:16 PM EST

By Jamie Allen
CNN Interactive Senior Writer

(CNN) -- Rachel Kaplan, the writer of the popular "Little-Known Museums ..." travel book series, certainly has a cool job.

Based in Paris, she gets to traverse Europe and write about tucked-away haunts. Her books give travelers the inside scoop on places like the City of Light, London and, most recently, Berlin.

But Kaplan, admittedly a big thinker, sees her job as much more than a nice way to make a living -- she embraces it as a learning experience, and a chance to crash down walls and promote world peace.

A travel writer promoting world peace?

"Travel is the alternative to war," says Kaplan, 44. "Once you really take the time to visit people in other countries and get to know their heritage, find out where they came from, their cultures and customs -- it's the greatest antidote to war.

"If I can encourage cultural understanding through what I write, I will have added something to book publishing. I know it's a lofty goal. But if I can have a mission, I would like to do that."

Kaplan's latest effort focuses on a city that's been an epicenter for anything but peace during parts of this last century. "Little-Known Museums In and Around Berlin" (Abrams) takes readers on a back-street tour of the once-divided cold-war capital in the northeast quadrant of Germany.

The book also offers a fine history lesson to any traveler headed to Berlin.

"I'm a cultural historian, not just a journalist," Kaplan says. "I feel with these 'Little-Known Museums' you really get a sense of the people through it."

In the Berlin edition, readers are taken on a tour of 30 museums. Among them are the Anti-War Museum -- it includes records of Hitler's rise to power and the Nazi atrocities. Then there's the Sugar Museum, first opened in 1904, and documenting the sugar industry, the discovery and process of production.

Kaplan, as she does in "Little-Known Museums... Paris" and "Little-Known Museums... London," offers historical and factual tidbits, museum hours and directions. Photographs help give readers a taste of each experience.

Kaplan says her writing style isn't friendly to travelers who simply want to have their pictures taken in front of pretty castles before moving on.

"I write in a way that is descriptive," she says, suggesting that travelers read her books before or after they visit. "I try to write as objectively as possible, and try to make the people and objects the stars of the books."

Kaplan has a strong interest in Berlin. Describing herself as "a nice Jewish girl from New York," she remembers her first trip to the city in 1974, which included her "first and last" crossing at Checkpoint Charlie, separating East and West Berlin.

"I saw my first social-realism art and it was very striking because it was the only time I had seen pictures of people in concentration camps," she says.

But Kaplan was intrigued with "the other side."

"I liked East Berlin better. West Berlin was tacky, neon, filled with sex shops."

She also remembers returning to Berlin shortly after the wall came down.

"I was really touched by two different people rediscovering each other," she recalls of the West and East Germans. "They speak the same language, but they were entirely different."

Kaplan filters the information in the book through this experience and understanding. She says she falls in love with every city she writes about, starting with the first time she went to France at age 12. She wrote home to her father every day, she says, "a 10- to 12-page letter ... describing the things I saw, people I met."

Now she's doing it for a living, and hoping to take readers on journeys to the hearts of their destinations. She says there's nothing wrong with seeing places like Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower, but to Kaplan there's so much more -- hidden museums holding the histories of people and keys to understanding new cultures.

"The world all around us has tremendous wonders and we don't have to go to the cheap sensations to see that," she says. "If we can be adventurous every day, we'll be less tempted by the cheap and sleazy. I see people who take tours (and) are starved for something like this."