Advertisement
Thursday 4 June:
All breakfasted, showered, packed and ready to go about 9 so we headed into the city. After storing our luggage at the Hauptbahnhof (after Zachary had fallen over and grazed his knee quite badly because he was being silly rather than walking properly) we took a tram to the Altstadt area. Zachary and Heather went to the Transport Museum while I had another walk around the city. The Transport Museum was excellent. It had a variety of cars, bikes, planes and trains on display. Yesterday we bought Zachary a little Trabant car – and we saw one in service as a private sightseeing tour as well. The Trabant is (in)famous as the massed produced car of the old DDR. They were fuel-inefficient pollution machines! I remember seeing quite a few still in Berlin in 1994. There wasn’t a full Trabant in the museum however. The best part of the museum though was undoubtedly the children’s area. There were cars that children could “drive” around a track. There was a railway crossing and give way signs and traffic lights. Zachary decided that as he was a police car he could go zooming through the red lights!
There was also an area in which children could do scientific experiments about airflow. It is always a bonus when you discover a really great attraction that you weren’t really expecting. I had it on the list of possible things to do, but didn’t realise it was so good otherwise we would have gone yesterday afternoon instead of the park.
Back then to the Hbf to have some lunch and find our train to
Berlin. So that ended our time in Dresden. I am very pleased that I decided to include this city on the itinerary. I absolutely loved it and am still undecided as to whether or not I liked it more than Zagreb. They are quite different so hard to judge. But it definitely exceeded my expectations and it is a credit to the will and resilience of the last 3 generations of Dresden’s residents and governments (yes even the Soviet controlled ones) that the city has been rebuilt. It is a city which feels safe and welcoming and the first city in Europe we have been to in which we have not seen a single beggar (Munich was full of them!) There is still
a large amount of construction going on and it would be interesting to go back in 10 – 15 years and see the changes. It is definitely a city “going places” and I highly recommend it as a destination.
We got to the platform our train was leaving from to discover it was a Slovakian train. It had come from Bratislava and gone via Prague. Consequently it was rather full. Unusually it was all compartments of 6 seats. As we had a 3 year old plus a lot of luggage we weren’t too keen on joining a partly-full compartment. However a helpful employee advised us to go to the end carriage which had just been added on so we were able to find an empty compartment there.
So we headed north through lots of green, much like NZ. There are a lot of wind turbines in Germany it seems, however they tend to be scattered. You see a few here, half a dozen there, which suggests that many of them are privately owned.
Got to Berlin Hbf and chaos quickly ensued. After Heather did some shopping at the supermarket we headed for the local train, or S-Bahn. After battling with a ticket machine that demanded exact change (which I just managed to scrape together) we almost got on a train going the wrong way before I realised its destination was Westkruiz. Considering we wanted to go East this seemed wrong, and it was. So over to the other side where a large crowd was gathered. The train arrived, already full but we shoved our way on with all our gear. Flashbacks to Dubai as people crammed into spaces that didn’t exist. The temperature in the carriage was soon a pleasant 58 degrees Celsius but we only had 3 stops to survive. Then off that and onto a tram, which was quite empty and then a short walk to our apartment where the owners met us and let us in. It isn’t in what you call a flash part of the city. We are situated in the heart of old East Berlin and the architecture of the buildings reflect that. Lots of graffiti but right opposite is a playground which was very busy. Next to that is an ice cream shop and there is a supermarket and other useful shops within metres. The owner told us the area is family friendly and it does seem that way – appearances can be a bit deceptive at times.
The apartment itself is on the ground floor and is quite large. It has plenty of amenities provided, including a washing machine (a handy bonus) and as you have no doubt guessed, free wi-fi. Zachary has a separate bedroom, which is pink, so he thinks that it pretty cool!
We had a home-cooked dinner which was nice, then ice-cream and bed on time for Zachary.
Weather forecast for next few days is sunny with 27 degrees tomorrow, a nice tropical 33 on Saturday with isolated thunderstorms, and then a cooler 22 and sunny on Sunday. We’ll have to decide what is going to work best. We must do the essentials and there are also plenty of things for children around. Museums are plentiful too but not so good for Zachary so we may split forces 2 of the days and do one as a family. I hear you’ve had a bit of rain in NZ – hope you’re all warm and dry!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.328s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0853s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb