Berlin Hotels
|
  | |  |
Ich Bein Eine Berliners
Entry 14 of 36 | show all | print this entry |
After an uneventful flight we landed in Berlin, the pilot having made up for the late departure, at the scheduled arrival time. We passed through Customs effortlessly, unlike the Russian in the line in front of us who took some 10 minutes to convince the clean cut young man in the customs booth that he should be allowed to enter Germany. Next was baggage claim, I got my bag with a minimum of fuss, Belle's bag, however, fell off the carousel into the no-man's land in the middle. Someone eventually rescued it for us and we were ready to leave. We went out through the green 'nothing to declare' gate at which point I had some rapid German directed at me. The man quickly realised I had missed the sense of his comments and asked me for my passport. I was a bit taken aback at first as the man was dressed in jeans and an open necked shirt, looking much like all the rest of the travelers around us. He did have an official looking bronze badge and informed me that I had been selected for a baggage check. I handed over my passport, he looked at me suspiciously when he saw I had two passports until he realised that Belle and I were travelling together and the second passport was hers. I open my case for the man, he moved a few things around in a cursory fashion and then indicated we could go on our way, The Customs Officer in Belle was rather critical of the cursory bag exam and I could see her point as we could have been smuggling stolen antique Russian religious icons and he probably would have missed it despite checking my bag.
Once out into the airport we looked for an information booth and got instructions on how to get to the U-Bahn, the Berlin Metro. We were directed to a bus and after about a 10 minute ride we were at the U-Bahn station. We descended into the earth and hopped on our first train, some twenty stops and about 30 minutes latter we transferred to another train line for a further 12 stops and perhaps 20 minutes. This brought us to Osloer Strasser Station, the stop we had been directed to in the instructions we had received from the hostel. We got off the train and headed above ground. Before heading out onto the street we sampled some imbiss (snack food) from one of the shops - I tried currywurst - essentially a german sausage cut up and sprinkled with curry powder and drenched in tomato sauce, despite the description it was quite tasty. Belle had a somethingwurst, essentially a large sausage in a bun, the sausage was about four times as long as the bun. Having soothed the hunger pangs we headed off in search of the hostel. We identified the street on the map in a bus shelter and headed in the right direction for once. We found the street and started ;ooking for 23-24 Koloniestrasse. On one side of the street the street numbers were in the range of 100 to 130, on the other side of the street the numbers were in the range 14 to 30. I am not sure how the German street numbering convention works but it does not seem to make a lot of sense at this point. We found the hostel in a slightly run down looking building. We located the desk clerk, paid our dues and headed up to our room. It is a private room with a shared bathroom, the bathroom is shared with the room next door - we are hopeful that there is no-one in the room next door - so far so good. We both took a much needed shower, got into some clean clothes and immediately felt about 100% better. After a bit of a rest we went back to the desk clerk and got directions to a supermarket and also a laundromat. We headed back to the station to use the ATM and then went in search of the supermarket. We found it where we had been taold it should be, about 2 blocks from the hostel. It is called Lidl and is in everyway except name just like Aldi back home. We got a few things for a light dinner and also breakfasand then headed back to the hostel to put our feet up for the evening. Although today has not involved as much walking as we have been doing since we started to explore Moscow and St Petersburg, we were both feeling footsore and in need of an early night. Having made it safely to Berlin it is now time for us to turn our minds to working out what it is we want to see while we are here.
|
|
If you like this entry, search for other entries from Germany or try a new search. |
| |
Back to Entry - Back to Home
|
1 vote 
