Berlin

Berlin - This was a city that was calling our names. After two short previous visits, we were looking forward to spending a few days here. Of course having Erik, Jen and Chris with us made it even better.         

We all traveled from Kiel to Berlin. Erik and Jen on the train, Svend, Nancy, Chris and the luggage by car. The train people won the race to get there first and were patiently waiting for us at the pretty nice hotel/hostel in the great section of the city.
      

We did the touristy thing of getting a city tour, one of the double-decker hop-on, hop-off buses. It was very helpful for getting an overview. 

Some un-realized Berlin facts - parts of the city were in rubble into the 80’s and in some cases the 90’s You would NEVER know it. OK, some of the areas are obviously only modern buildings, which is a dead giveaway in an old city. Although they don’t have the charm of the parts of the city that was formally  West Berlin, they are impressive an any case. And by the way, that East Berlin- West Berlin story - try to figure that one out! All I know is that there were 19 year olds with tanks and guns at Checkpoint Charley and thank goodness no one really panicked to set off WWW III.

Our hotel was near the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church which has a half a tower, caused by a World War II bombing. The powers-that-be decided to leave it as-is as a war memorial Or I should say anti-war memorial. Nothing like half a church spire as a visual reprimand against war. This was also the square that the Christmas market terrorist attack happened last December, killing twelve
people and injuring many more. There's a makeshift memorial of that there also. Sad on so many levels!

But Berlin is a wonderful city. There is no denying that. Our first night was a happy walk near the hotel to just absorb the vibe (and eat the food) of our new neighborhood. We passed what seemed to be a movie set, 1920's style cars and people. If they had been filming we missed that, but we sort of maybe saw somebody famous. Possibly.

 I don't know if it's the luck of the Irish or what, but the weekend we landed in Berlin,  happened to be the weekend of the International beer festival. The five of us were very

worthy beer festival attendees. And yet after several hours and only walking through one half of the allotted tents, we had to admit defeat. Oh but what fun we had being defeated.

We had  a traveler's adventure the night before when we  set out to go to the beer festival. We took the subway from our hotel and managed the ticket purchasing and finding the right trains like pros. Just as we were commenting on how easy it was to get around on the Berlin subways, the dreaded  "Actung" came over he loudspeaker. Poor Svend, as the designated German language understander, we all turned to him for an explanation. All he knew is that we had to get off the train. Giving that everyone was getting off the train, we actually could figure that out ourselves. 

We saw on a marquee something about "poletzi " Not for nothing but the possibility of police action in a Berlin subway, does not make one happy. But the calmness of the situation didn't lend itself to panic. So we tried  various tactics, like taking the bus that was supposed to come and never did, to trying to take a different subway line, looking for a taxi, etc. We felt like Charley on the MTA!
So we made a management decision to forget the damn beer festival  and got off at Alexanerplatz, a very happening place. and had a great night people watching. 

We still didn't get enough of Berlin, but Monday morning came too fast taking the Bostonians away from us. It wasn't our happiest time of the trip. We did what anyone would do in those circumstances - drove to Poland.

end of chapter 3