Based on our last ICE reservation experience it was decided not to make any reservations for our tilting ICE journey through to Berlin. By the time we had purchased some breakfast and made it up to the platform to await the train's arrival a large group of prospective passengers had collected. As the train pulled up Belinda and I strategised that I should take the bags and put them in the racks while Belinda goes into the saloon to find and secure free seats. This strategy worked well, enabling us to secure seats while others had to stand. Forced to stand in the bag rack area were a group of young guys carrying cases of beer, who were slowly becoming drunk and rowdy on their way to the soccer in Berlin that evening. They provided entertainment for the carriage during the journey.
It was all over too quickly; we arrived into Berlin only a little over an hour after we had left on our 230km/h trip. The north-south railway in Berlin was a new experience for my and our arrival into Berlin's new Hauptbahnhof was great. We both love this station, Belinda commenting that it's her favourite so far. The design is not only attractive but clever; one can see the lowest platforms from the highest ones 6 stories above and there are shops at the interim levels. This means that passive surveillance and ventillation are at good levels and you never fell unsafe. This design has obviously proven successfull because we could not find any graffiti or signs of its removal in the entire complex, despite it having been open for a year already.
An added bonus was being able to take a regional train back through the north-south tunnels directly to Potsdammer Platz station, instead of the usual S bahn connection via Freidrick Strasse. From Potsdammer Platz it's only 700m to the hotel but we chose taking the S bahn 1 extra stop to Anhalter (Hitchhiker) Bahnhof, which is just next to the Etap.
We had a concert coming up that evening and we needed to print our confirmation to exchange for our tickets but had no printer with which to do so. Some enquiries at the Etap reception led us next door the Ibis where we could print for free off Belinda's USB stick. After printing it was time to show Belinda just a little of what Berlin has to offer and to have some lunch, so we headed back up to Potsdammer Platz to take the U-bahn. Unfortunately they were doing work on the line and wouldn't be reopenning it until 3pm so we took the S-bahn instead.
Up to Friedrick Strasse we travelled, changing to the east-west line down to the Zoologischer Garten station and thus the heart of West Berlin. Here we walked past the bombed church, down the main drag past crowds of people and many cars until we arrived at KaDeWe (Kaufhaus Des Westens). Belinda had be a bit sceptic of the little I'd told her of the wonders of KaDeWe but that all disappeared when we walked inside. Basically it's 1 massive department store, stocking everything and anything. Belinda was particularly sold on the place when we spotted the Bodo Hennig section. Unlike the other places we had visited thus far, KaDeWe had an entire double-sided display featuring almost all of their doll houses, furniture and accessories. Needless to say the selection, double the size of the next largest we'd seen, excited Belinda a lot but we decided to get lunch and let Belinda think about what she would like to purchase.
KaDeWe has its 2 huge top floors full of food so we spent a good deal of time perusing their selections. Unfortunately, as good and wide-ranging as their food selection may be, the dine in options are expensive so we pulled the plug and went back down the road to good old Ronald's for a late lunch. This store was cool because the kitchen was upstairs so the food came down on trays attached to little vertical lifts.
Before returning to KaDeWe we visited the large 5 storey Saturn electronics and CD store, where Belinda found an impossible-to-find-in-Australia Funés DVD for her father. Soon we were back at KaDeWe, where I enjoyed a visit to their extensive model train section and Belinda finalised her doll house purchasing decisions. We ended up leaving with a very large paper KaDeWe bag containing in excess of €200 worth of Bodo Hennig items.
Carrying such a large swag of goodies, especially in the fresh drizzle and growing darkness, meant we had to return to the hotel on the U-bahn. By this time the concert was approaching so we had to get to dinner, choosing the restaurant in the adjacent Ibis, for which we had free drinks vouchers. Both Belinda and I had the "Hunter's Schnitzel" from the "DDR Menu", which was basically sausage meat in a schnitzel, with pasta. Surprisingly tasty.
In order to go to the concert in a presentable manner Belinda felt that she needed to freshen up so we went back to the room before heading out to the concert. When we got down to the train station the train was late and then we had a sloppy connection to Stadtmitte, where the Berlin Conzerthaus is located. All this added up and meant that we arrived just as the concert was starting. The staff were unable to locate our tickets but eventually got their act together. We got up to our door and didn't have to wait too long with the rest of the late crowd for the end of the first piece, a Haydn number.
Belinda had chosen the concert for its piano pieces, and this is what was played once we found our seats. After interval was more piano and then a nice Mozart symphony. The piano pieces were composed by Strawinsky and Franck.
To save a train change on the way home we took the U-bahn an extra stop past Potsdammer Platz and walked home from here. It was a nice walk through the area back to the hotel, in which Belinda and I argued the dialectic differences of both German and French within Switzerland and the languages' home countries.
The following morning it was clear that we had overdone it the previous night, especially with the extended argument about rolling "arr" sounds. I was beginning to become sick and Belinda was extra tired. Nevertheless we powered on, beginning with breakfast at a bakery next to the U-bahn at Potsdammer Platz.
To begin the day's activities we hopped aboard the S-bahn up to Friedrick Strasse for a scenic walk along the river to the Reichstag. There are some nice modern buildings along this stretch, some of which we think may have been used in filming Aeon Flux. Some time was spent in the large park immediately infront of the Reichstag but we decided not to go in to the funky building itself because the queue stretched out the door, down the steps and into the park.
Just a few hundred metres from the Reichstag is the famous Brandenburg Gate. We walked through the gate to the East Berlin side so that we could enjoy the front view. It was interesting to note that on this Sunday there were not only beggars and living statues in front of the gate but also people in old soldier costumes, with whom you could pose as if it were still part of the Berlin wall.
The trusty S-bahn took us from the gate stop, Unter den Linden, back down to Anhalter Bahnhof, not to return to our hotel but to visit the German Technical Museum to the south. While there were closer U-bahn stations to the museum the S-bahn was more convenient for us and the walk would prove to be related to the rail section of the museum. Today Anhalter Bahnhof is just an S-bahn station but it was originally an above-ground station, serving as the terminus of 1 of Berlin's original private railways in the 19th century. Only a front section of this facade remains in place but as we walked down toward the museum we passed some old platform sections that had also been left in place.
The museum is located across the waterway from these old platform sections and down a bit. It's railway exhibits are housed in the original roundhouses for the railway and so the railway information here relates quite a bit to this particular railway. One can also observe that the new north-south railway uses a part of the old alighnment that used to serve Anhalter Bahnhof, and that a lot of this old infrastructure still remains, albeit disused and grown-over.
The collection of the museum was large but needed to be looked after better. It was good that we could walk around, above and under many of the locos and carriages but it was disappointing to see the rusty state of many of these items. Nevertheless the displays that were in English were informative and interesting and we spent a lot of time. So much time that we were really getting burnt out by the time we made a quick visit to the less stale aviation and shipping sections before leaving.
From the museum the U-bahn took us back to West Berlin where we could not resist the temptations of Mövenpick. Belinda in particular had been craving a coupe from this Swiss establishment and I figured a little sugar wouldn't go astray so we dropped in for what we thought would be a relativley quick experience. The coupes (sundaes) came pretty quickly and we indulged while watching the Carnival revelers out the window get progressively crazier. It took forever to get the bill after finishing our treats, so long that our half-an-hour experience turned into a 1 hour 15 minute experience! At least we were a bit burnt out so the rest wasn't unwanted.
Following on from our yummy coupes we went to the Zoo station and used one of the "marry me now" über-cool DB ticket machines to check when the next regional train across town was then proceeded up to the relevant platform. It's far more cool to travel on a regional DB train than the S-bahn, especially when travelling right across Berlin as we were. The double-deck RB took us around to Alexander Platz, where the famous East Berlin Fernsehturm is located. We explored the area around here briefly and decided against going up the tower due to the price. Dinner was some nice noodles from a small Asian joint under the station.
Tiredness was creeping up on us but we thought that an English movie would not go astray so we caught the S-bahn back to Potsdamer Platz. At the Platz is Berlin's only English-only cinema and here we investigated the session times for Cloverfield. We had just missed a session and thus returned to the hotel and then used the free internet at the adjacent Ibis' "business centre". Here we managed a blog update before returning to the cinema for the 8:30pm session of the movie. It was a really weird film and the handheld cinematography became annoying but I'm glad that I saw it overall.
The previous day had tired us out thoroughly and we were starting to show the signs of illness so we slept in until 10:30am the following morning. Breakfast was at a cafe on the way to Potsdamer Platz before we travelled west to the Bauhaus Museum. As well as documenting the Bauhus movement there are general design history elements to this museum and the architecture of the building itself is famous, being used for some scenes in Aeon Flux. Design museums are always interesting to visit and the Bauhaus did not disappoint; architects always deliver on the intrinsically good but unrealistic urban planning ideas.
From the west we once again headed east to check out the East Side Gallery, a long 1km+ remaining section of the Berlin Wall near Ostbahnhof. The wall sections have been painted with various messages, providing reflection on the past, the future and what the Wall represents. Our journey back to the west was a gradual process, beginning with the S-bahn to Alexander Platz. Belinda wanted to check out the shopping here, which we satisfied with a visit to the large Alexa shopping centre. This resulted in no purchases except for me getting a CD single of a German band that I can't get at home.
At Alexander Platz we took an East Berlin tram a few stops before we had to change services, to eventually arrive a bit further west at Friederick Strasse. We didn't daudle here, instead descending to the U-bahn for a trip south to the stop near Checkpoint Charlie. We got off here to see the famous checkpoint in the increasing darkness, so we can say that we'd been there and seen it.
Our hotel is really close to the checkpoint so we made the 5 minute walk back and headed up to the room to freshen up. We were soon once again in the foyer, meeting up with Belinda's parents, who had arrived in Berlin that afternoon. The Allen parents were very generously taking us out to dinner and so we led them on the S and U bahns to West Berlin. Belinda's Dad had wanted to visit a pizza joint he had eaten at 20 years ago but when we arrived it was closed. Instead we ended up at Mövenpick for a lovely meal.
Desert was at an as-yet-unknown to Belinda and I ice cream parlour at Potsdamer Platz, where the 4 of us indulged in some large and exciting sundaes. We then returned to the hotel on the S-bahn, where we exchanged gifts and Belinda offloaded her dollhouse collection before calling it an evening.
The following morning Belinda's parents were again generous, shouting us breakfast at the Etap. We didn't have much time before we had to rush out to take the S-bahn to Südkreuz (Southern Cross) station, where our ICE (1st generation) awaited for our journey to Hamburg.
Limited photos for now due to limited uploading capabilities here...
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