We arrived in Berlin after about 24 hours of traveling. For me, it began with a train trip from Seattle to Vancouver, BC, a trip to the airport by light rail, and the usual security rigmarole. (I thought the Canadian security people were surlier than my recent contacts with US TSA people.) I had not seen the King Street Station since was restored. It looks nice, but there is not much there.

Jess flew from San Francisco to Vancouver, and met me at the departure gate. I thought he would be able to stay inside the security perimeter and avoid going through it again, but that wasn’t the case. As it turns out, he had just enough time to make the connection, and they were getting ready to board our plan by the time he arrived.

The flight on KLM was very nice. We had opted for premium economy seats and they had lots of leg room. Unfortunately, the seats weren’t much wider—if any—and that made them a tight fit for me. Although we didn’t sit together, there were enough empty seats that we did not need to be crammed next to another passenger. Service was very good, including two pretty good meals and complimentary wine.

We had a connection in Amsterdam, which involved going through security again.* Finally, we landed in Berlin. We bought sim cards for our phones at the airport. Jess’ worked perfectly, and we thought we’d tested mine, but after leaving the airport, it locked up, so I have been without a phone so far.

Our hotel is “interesting.” I don’t remember staying in one like it before. It is a very small room with two pairs of Ikea-style bunk beds. Part of the name of the hotel is Jugendhotel—Youth Hostsel. I wondered if it was geared for travelling young people, but there are plenty of older people here too. We had some difficulty booking an affordable room in Berlin. What we didn’t realize is that there was a HUGE soccer championship going on this weekend. A cab driver told us that the tickets were going for around 2,000€. In checking room rates for our return through Berlin in 2 weeks, it looks like rates are about 1/3 of what they are this weekend.

After checking in, we wandered around a little and found a pretty good restaurant, where we got schnitzel. Since we were still acclimating to the time change, we took naps, then walked a couple of miles to the Brandenburg Gate. This was kind of a central meeting spot for activities leading up to the soccer match, so there was a festival atmosphere. I took some shots of the Brandenburg Gate and the Soviet War Memorial, we walked through the Tiergarten Park and took the bus back toward the hotel.

One thing that surprised me about Berlin, such a large city, is that people do not speak much English. I might not have been as surprised except for our experience in Sweden, where it was very easy to speak English with people, even in more rural areas far north of the Arctic Circle. Here, English is much more limited. We had problems with a couple of grumpy bus drivers. We couldn’t communicate where we were going and the first driver told us to get off because we were on the wrong bus (which we weren’t).

This is a picture I took on the way back to the hotel, and I just liked the way it turned out.

Once we made our way back to the hotel we found a very good Greek restaurant a block away, where they were very nice and even gave us complimentary shots of schnapps. The food and prices were excellent also.

*By the way, if you are traveling outside the US, although TSA no longer requires us to remove liquids from our carry-ons, other countries still do, so be prepared.

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