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I should say bus traveling across Europe is a treat. On the one hand, they are so cheap. I’m going perhaps to try the Eurolines pass for 15 or 30 days next year. The only drawback is sleeping, but it is also quite a soluble issue if there are many vacant seats in the bus where one could stretch one’s legs or if you arrange short trips between different cities. On the other hand, distances are not very large (Imagine crossing Russia from end to end on a bus, or another large state) because European countries are not very large.
We arrived to Berlin at 9 o’clock in the morning. Check in at the good Berolina hotel this time was at 13-00 so we had to go for Yet Another walk (the first time I indicated in the booking that we needed early check in). I was very sleepy. At night, German police checked our identification documents on the route.
We went to KFC to eat and then took a bus to Charlottenburg Castle. At KFC I tried to use my German and the saleswoman bombarded me with German sentences which I hardly understood, only
saying ja, ja. So again I draw everyone’s attention to learning languages. Please do learn Azerbaijani phrases if you come to Baku, for instance. Definitely learn Russian if you come, well, even to our large cities. Just to make sure, because you never know.
The Schlosspark Charlottenburg is an amazing place. We did not go inside the Schloss because it would not be interesting simply to walk there without a guided tour, our time being limited. Generally all castle parks I’ve seen follow the same pattern and represent a desirable place for rest and peace. I must say Berliners should be most glad to have such places within their city. Even Tiergarten and Zoologischer garten are in the heart of the city.
To visit the Reichstag Dome, our second and last major destination during this trip, I registered in advance on their website using my telephone. We came at the appointed time, 15 minutes later, to be exact, and showed our IDs and were allowed inside and upwards on a lift. An audio guide was provided free of charge. The dome itself deserves every possible praise and respect and admiration. It is a modern
glass structure. Excellent views can be seen and the audio guide tells the details about every major building and monument you see as you go, but when I walked faster, the guide would jump to the next item.
We returned to the hotel to have a rest. After that, Luda wanted to see the monument to the Soldier and walking from Hauptbahnhof we saw crowds of football fans presumably going to watch the game on a large screen in the park. They (not the fans, but men on a truck) distributed free T-shirts with the words “Ballzauberer” (something like Wizard of the Ball) and Luda became very enthusiastic and wanted to take as many of them as we could; but we only took four because of my obstinacy. If they distributed free books I’d be in the first rows. So, we both liked Berlin very much and had the idea of buying a flat there and will definitely come back.
Bus to Riga departed at 19-30.
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