Heute reisen wir nach Berlin!

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Today, we said goodbye not only to Ulf, Andrea and Lars, but also to Barbara, Laura and Joe, who will be flying to Bristol tomorrow, and starting their British tour off in Bath. But, first Döner!

We got up much earlier this morning, showered, finished our last minute packing, ate Früstück (breakfast) together one last time, and headed to the bus stop for the trip to the Hauptbahnhof to catch our train. Our train didn't leave until 13:16, so we had planned to get to the station and then find a nearby Döner, because I still had not had not had any good Döner. As expected, it was quite tasty, and when we were done, our server dude offered us Turkish tea, which was very strong, but with enough Zucker, was also very tasty. Finally, it was time to go to our platform.

Once we found the platform, I got schooled in how to read the train layout so we would know where to stand. Our traincar was number 12, which corresponded with the "B" area of the platform, so we headed there. The train finally showed up, and we said our goodbyes, and scrambled onto the train, and the we couldn't find our seats, so I stayed with the bags while Cheryl searched for it, and eventually it got sorted, but the goodbye was a bit rushed, so I hope everybody was satisfied with the performance of their goodbyes.

It turns out that our seats were in a compartment; we got first class tickets because they weren't all that expensive, and also, because why the hell not? None of the other seats in the compartment were reserved, so we had the whole compartment to ourselves, which was awesome. It was warmed, so we turned the cooling down, and soon it was quite comfortable.

Now, one of the things about first class is, if you want a drink, you just need to wait a minute and somebody will come by and ask if you want anything, which they did, and we did, so I ordered a schwarzer Kaffee, and Cheryl ordered a Mineralwasser, and we settled in for the trip. Cheryl had a book, and I had my manuscript book, and the time passed quickly, and soon we were rolling into the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, where we bought a CityTour Card, which is the pass that lets us use transit in Berlin, and then headed up to the S-bahn platform to catch a train to our neighborhood. When we got to the station, we did it wrong and took the wrong exit and ended up having to walk a bit further to find our Pension, but we did find it, and we got all checked in.

The Pension is in a neighborhood where it seems like people just live and work, which is nice; it's not as touristy. The room is nice and cool, and has a teeny tiny teevee machine which seems to only speak German, which is okay, since hearing more German is more better.

First impression: I like Berlin.

More on the second part of our day in a separate blogpost.

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Photos

Pension Peters
Home until Friday

Our room
It's a nice room, and seems to stay cool through the day.