Berlin - part one


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July 26th 2018
Published: July 26th 2018
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This was my first visit to Berlin. We stayed in a once fancy hotel in Mitte (formerly east Berlin), probably built during the east-west unification in anticipation of tourist trade. It’s previously state of the art gym and pool consists of a small room, akin to a cupboard, with a treadmill and elliptical and a basement plunge pool. No, I wasn’t about to embrace a healthy change, I was just being curious, ok, nosey.



On our afternoon arrival ‘we’ decided to go enjoy some local libation and catch up with Alan’s parents, who we hadn’t seen for nearly 4 years. After passing a few hours, and beers, in the local ‘summer of culture’ square (read forum for street performers) we returned to the hotel to freshen up before starting our adventure. However an Alan adventure was already upon us. He unzipped the front pocket of his visibly larger and now un padlocked suitcase and declared that someone had stolen our paperwork (not the first thing I would take if criminally inclined). Hastily he opened the main case, those crafty criminals had replaced all of his smelly clothes with little kids stuff...not. HE had taken the wrong one!



After a few expletives and lots of ‘craughing’ (crying and laughing) he rushed down to reception for assistance. Turning my phone on to help in the recovery quest I discovered three missed calls from a frantic mother searching for her suitcase, she had found the giant (unmissable) pink tag on a case that looked similar to hers (but smaller) in left luggage and took a gamble. The next few hours involved;

A conference call between Al, the Uber man, and me (silent), and went a bit like this; ‘where are you, I’m here’, ‘ where are you, I’m here’, ‘where are you’, ‘I’m here, where are you’, on and on...

An expensive Uber back to the airport.

Lots of queuing

Form filling

Gesticulating, in lieu of German. (That one is probably not true as everyone speaks excellent English, I just like to imagine it)

Swapping cases

Finally taxiing back about 3 hours later.

Small post script to this ‘adventure’, the poor family called again the following day to say the airport told them their case was still missing.



Next morning we eagerly dashed straight out to experience Berlin. Here I need to qualify ‘dashed’, we did have Alan’s folks with us. While his mum may still be ‘ninja granny’ (coined by Luke 10 years ago), his father would challenge a snail for last place. Heavily wearing every one of his 78 years we trailed along the Unter den Linden to the Brandenburg Gate. I felt like a toddler on a bungee cord, trying to race on only to be jerked back to parental pace. This 10 minute journey (I timed it later when I snuck out by myself) took over an hour. Yup that slow. To be fair we were snap happy but we weren’t whipping out the tripod and posing the people.





After that exhausting walk down the wondrously wide and stately boulevard the Brandenburg Gate was blocked off as was the Tiergarten, a huge, heavily treed green space and former hunting park of the emperor. Unperturbed we continued with the acquired crowds to the Reichstag (seat of power) in the hope of climbing up the clear glass dome. Circumstances finally got the better of us when we discovered that it was closed for a cleaning week! In need of succour and sustenance we found another cafe where they served a metre of beer, the boys smiles were as wide. That was my queue to exit as my cold was still hanging on.

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