We began our journey with a horrible experience on the train. Yes, you read that right, it was bad. We took the ICE train (super fast Inter-City Express) and were supposed to arrive in Berlin around 2:30 p.m. Welllllll, let's just say, at almost 7 p.m. we were finally checking into our hotel.
Our first train, a regional bahn, picked us up just fine and whisked us to our next train, which we soon found out was on a 60-minute delay. Ugh. No real problem there, except when the train showed up and sped away again without letting anyone get on! What? Luckily there was another train to Berlin right at that station at the same time, so we, along with everyone else who was supposed to be on our train (on which we of course had paid extra for reserved seats but didn't have that on this other train) got on this other train and stood the hour or so trip to Frankfurt. Not cool! We decided we were not going to stand the rest of the five hours to Berlin, so at the Frankfurt main station we got off and decided to try to get seats on a later train to Berlin. We did, and made it to Berlin, only to get very turned around with their metro system (They have a U-bahn, S-bahn, buses and trams). We finally found our hotel stop only to get turned around and walk about 30 minutes trying to find our hotel. We finally found our hotel, only to have them tell us they screwed up our reservation and put as at another hotel, lucky for us was only three blocks away and much nicer. Whew. So, it took about 10 hours total but we made it.
And in case you were wondering, apparently on our first train there had been some sort of "suspicious package" and the polizei weren't letting anyone on. It still went all the way to Berlin though. Figures, huh? Usually, the train system here is very reliable, but of course that one particular train wasn't! Oh well, at least we made it.
And then it was on to explore Berlin! What an amazing city! The first night we were too exhausted to do much, so we found a Hard Rock Cafe two doors down from the hotel and treated ourselves to lots of food.
The next day we went down the street to the Story of Berlin museum, which is pretty self-explanatory as to what it is. Very good museum, including a tour of a nuclear bunker from the Cold War era. I recommend that museum for a good overview, but be prepared to do a lot of reading. For the best overview of the city, I decided we should take one of those guided walking tours of the city. I had read about them in all the guidebooks and thought it would be a great way to really learn the ins and outs from someone who knows. We met up with Jen and Nate, who arrived that morning for the conference, and off we went on the walking tour with the Original Berlin walking tours company.
We were not disappointed! It was excellent. While it was long, and obviously included lots and lots of walking, we saw everything we wanted to see plus some things we really didn't even know about. Our tour guide was about Carl's age we guessed and grew up in the former East Berlin, so it was really neat to hear about life there from her perspective.
We saw the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, even the location of where Hitler's bunker was in which he committed suicide, the evil coward. I loved the tour and came away from it with a much greater understanding and broader knowledge of the history of that city and the way it impacted the world. We also visited an awesome chocolate store. Mmmm. :)
The following day, we visited the zoo and the aquarium. We love zoos, obviously, and I of course wanted to see the Berlin Zoo's most famous resident: anyone remember Knut the cuddly litte polar bear baby who became famous a few years ago? Well, I'm happy to report that Knut is still cute but he's huge now, and still very playful at his 3 years of age. He was playing in the water with a log. It was quite obvious he knows he's the star of the zoo :) The rest of the zoo was very nice as well. From there we went back to the famous Brandenburg gate and several other famous Berlin locations.
Then, it was time to start the conference. Lira made it with Leslie, and Nate had to leave, so that meant that while we girls were in the conference, Carl and Leslie ventured out into Berlin. They ended up going to the Checkpoint Charlie museum (they said it was overrated), up in a giant hot air balloon (it was tethered to the ground but still went really high) and to the aqua dome that was like an elevator through an aquarium or something like that. We also had time to make it to the DDR Museum (decent -- showing what life was like for East Germans in Berlin but it was a bit cheesy) and found several restaraunts we really enjoyed.
Oh yeah, and the conference was nice too -- good chance to network a little bit and learn some new stuff that's job related, but I'm not going to waste anyone's time by writing about that on here.
All in all, we would highly recommend anyone to visit Berlin. I'll try to post some pictures soon!
