#Berlin

I've been busy writing about so many topics now since our holiday. My last blog from the holiday was about our stay in Sellin on the island of Rügen. We said goodbye to the island and boarded the train to Berlin in Binz.

It took 3 ½ hours by train to get to the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

Wow! What a place. It was 14:37 hours when we arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof ‘Tief’. ‘Tief’ means our train was two stories below ground. The Hauptbahnhof is five stories high. It is huge; all glass, with escalators, and with stores and eating places everywhere.

When we got off the train, we were surrounded by a throng of people moving about. Everyone seemed to know where they were going—except us. We just stood there and looked. We took the escalator up to ground level and headed for the nearest exit. When we stepped into the open I pulled out the map I had printed out at home and discovered nothing familiar. We had no idea which direction our hotel was supposed to be.

We went back into the Hauptbahnhof and looked for information. There were already a score of people standing in line also looking for info. When it was finally our turn, the lady behind the counter told us we had to take to exit on the opposite side. So we headed with our suitcases in tow toward that exit. Outside again, we again checked my map, but my wife discovered the big sign of our hotel about a block away from the train station. Just then a young man asked us if we needed help. We thanked him and told him we already found what we were looking for.

Our hotel, InterCity hotel, was a huge building. Since it was already past 2 PM we were able to check into the hotel. The woman behind the counter spoke really bad German. We could barely understand her. It sounded like a Russian accent. Why they put people like that into positions where they have to deal with the public is beyond me. But then again, we used to have people answering the phone who barely spoke English in our hospitals and government positions. The woman gave us two magnetic keys and two tourist cards for the use of the buses, the U-Bahn and the train. Our room was on the third floor with the view of the Hauptbahnhof and a couple other hotels. It was an elegant place with a King-size bed, an ultramodern bathroom with a heated towel rack and other fancy stuff. We had an air conditioner that was controlled by a digital thermostat that was difficult to figure out. We are old-fashioned people J.

When we booked this hotel I didn’t book with breakfast. It was too expensive. We discovered that the hotel next to us, Meininger, served breakfast for 6.50 Euros, which was quite reasonable. That’s where we ate breakfast every day and it was a good breakfast with many choices, as good as the one in Sellin. Meininger is actually a hotel and hostel, which means a lot of young people. Sometimes it got a bit noisy in the breakfast room, not as quiet and serene the way we were used to in the other hotels we stayed in, but it didn’t bother us. Young people mean ‘life’ and excitement which is sometimes good for the soul of older people like us.

Our room had a fridge, a safe, and free Wi-Fi that actually worked in our room. We didn’t have to get a password. I signed into ‘The Cloud’ with my room number and my name and I was connected.

Once we were settled in we went for an ‘orientation walk’ to the Hauptbahnhof and after a while we didn’t find it as intimidating. We had supper at a place called ‘Hopfingerbraeu. I ate ‘Suelze with fried potatoes and Remouladen sauce’ and my wife had ‘Fried Matjes (Herring) with fried potatoes and Remouladen sauce’. We each drank ½ liter Berliner Pilz. The invoice came to 30 Euros which translates into 45 Canadian Dollars (That figure changed every day. It all depends how our dollar is doing on the world market! Crappy at the time of this writing). Not that cheap for Germany, but the food was good. We discovered there were not many restaurants in the train station. Most of the eateries were like fast food places. We had lunches later on in some and the food was okay and not expensive. There is also a store in there, Kaiser’s Supermarket, where we bought our bottled mineral water; 1 liter for 79 cents, which would be 1.20 Canadian Dollars. (That included 25 cents for deposit).

We also discovered a Thai-Food restaurant where we had supper a couple of nights later. Good food with generous portions and very reasonably priced.

The first day we took the City Tour bus, the white one. We paid 30 Euro (senior price) for the two of us. We got off at the #‘Alexander Platz’ and walked around a little. Then we took the bus again back to our hotel. After lunch we boarded it again and got off at #‘Checkpoint Charley’. There we looked at pictures from the era before the Wall.

It is difficult to believe that those things actually happened. People kept prisoners in their country, not able to leave or visit even relatives; being murdered, shot to death by border guards, when they tried to ‘escape’. It is nearly impossible to wrap your mind around that. Dictatorships and philosophies like communism or states ruled by rigid religious theocracies are terrifying and difficult to understand by people like us who live in free countries. It would be nice if we could eliminate all those awful theologies and dogmas so everyone could be free to believe whatever they want without infringing on other people’s rights and beliefs and without worrying they might get their heads chopped off for being different. Of course, that is just an impossible dream. As long as there are people who are ruled by greed, a craving for power, fanatic to the point of forcing people to believe what they think is right, or just a desire to inflict harm on their fellow humans things will never change.

We decided to walk to the next stop we had seen from the bus instead of taking the bus again. It is more comfortable to sit in a bus but you don’t really get the feeling of a place. I had a map which we followed. We walked all the way to the ‘Unter den Linden Strasse’ and discovered it wasn’t even that far. Those old buildings are so impressive. Lot of them were partially destroyed during the war and there are massive restorations going on all over Berlin.

Once we got tired from all that walking we searched for a bus stop for our ‘white Tourbus’ but couldn’t find one, so we kept on walking. How many kilometers we walked that day I can only guess. We finally found one of the buses standing just before we got to the ‘Brandenburger Tor’. By the time we got home it was six o’clock. Time to for supper.

There were not many places we could go to eat nearby, so we went to the Asian Restaurant in the Hauptbahnhof. Before we left for Germany I had sworn I wasn’t going to eat any ‘foreign’ food. I wanted to get my fill on German Food, but I was too hungry and too tired to start looking for a restaurant. We ordered the ‘Special’: Noodles with chicken and peanut/curry sauce. It cost us 10 Euro for both meals and it was plenty and tasty. We didn’t regret our decision. We also drank ½ liter ‘Berliner Pilzner’ beer each for another 8 Euro (for both). Can’t get a meal like that any cheaper.

I said it before and I’ll say it again: Beer is too expensive in Canada; be it from the liqueur store or in a restaurant. Perhaps that will change now that we have a new government and a new Prime minister. I mean, they promised to look after the Middle Class and make things better. Lowering the price of alcohol would be one of those better things. However, right now they are too busy bringing refugees into our country. They are more important than the issues the Canadian citizens have. Lowering beer prices is not exactly on top of the list. I sound like a boozer. Actually, I drink more none-alcohol beer these days. It is still affordable.

Aah, I’m dreaming again. The government doing something good for its citizens like lowering taxes and prices is only a pipe-dream. All those promises before an election, but when reality hits, they realize they can fulfill none of them. Let’s face it, the Senators and other Government employees with their high salaries, perks, and great pensions eat up a lot of taxpayer’s money. And let’s not forget the unbelievable severance pay they get if their jobs get eliminated. Who in the private sector gets that? Somebody has to pay for the nannies our Prime-minister hired to look after his kids. What about all the money needed to bring over those #refugees and to house them, feed them, and pay for their health care? The money has to come from somewhere. Oh right: The Canadian Taxpayer, which is the Middle Class. Those refugees are demanding. It will get even worse when they bring over their families and relatives as was promised to them. In fact, the new figure is 50,000 refugees until the end of 2016. Can't wait. I'm repeating myself. I wrote about most of that in my last blog entry.

Forgive me for straying again. Don’t let that discourage you from coming back to read my blog.

More on Berlin next installment…