Our trip from Munich back to Berlin went smoothly. No close calls at the station, no surprise transfers to a bus. The 1st class seats were the nicest of our 3 trips, except that the train was very hot. The trip took about 6 hours. I enjoyed watching the countryside, the villages and the cities go by. The landscape changed from hilly to flat as we headed north.
Our AirBnB host, Albert, was very friendly and very helpful. His flat was by far the nicest one we stayed in and they neighborhood it was in was far nicer and more convenient. Albert’s place was modern, roomy and immaculate. He had coffee available and eggs, milk, juice, butter and bread in the fridge. I wish we could have stayed there during our first Berlin leg—it would have changed our initial impression of the city.
It didn’t hurt that the weather was cooler and less muggy, though. Albert took the time to walk us to the corner to show us the way to is favorite restaurants. The flat was in or on the edge of a gay neighborhood, Nollendorfplatz that dates back to the beginning of the 20th century.
The local train station had a dome lit in neon rainbow colors. We weren’t sure whether it was an intentional landmark like the giant rainbow flag in the Castro of San Francisco, but it looked pretty neat. (I looked it up later and learned that it was intentional.) I copied this photo from the web (under an open copyright) because I could not get a clear picture with my point-and-shoot camera.
The place we went to dinner was in an area that was very busy with people out enjoying themselves.
We only would have one full day in Berlin this time, so we decided to take a hop-on-hop-off tour. We ran into Albert at the bus stop, so he showed us where to go to get the tour. It was a pleasant way to see the city, and it’s another thing I wish we had done during the first stop in Berlin. I think done of the most interesting things I learned was many of the historic sites that we saw were destroyed in the War, and the ones we were seeing were actually replicas. There were a lot of replicas, but it gave us a chance to see what pre-war Germany looked like.
Presidential Palace
Reichstag Building
Fredrich the Great
