Note: EDITED from home, Midnight EST, January 5th. Keep in mind I've been awake for 24 straight hours.
Guten Abend alles,
I am sitting in the Maple Leaf Lounge at Toronto Pearson Airport. I'm not home yet, and I have over an hour til my next flight boards, so I'll just use that time to write about the trip I just had.
As you may recall, this was not my first time in Germany. I attempted a Christmas trip there 3 years ago, and through poor planning, managed to make Germany seem boring and generally awful. Well, Berlin just might have changed that.
I arrived around noon on December 30th. I managed to find my hotel after taking a bus and getting lost in a Christmas Market (Christkindlmarkt or Weihnachtsmarkt), so business as usual. The hotel was actually an apartment which was great. Friendly and helpful staff, comfortable room, everything I needed for my stay. It was the Citadines just off Kurfürstendamm, in case you were wondering. Anyway, I was pretty tired, but I wanted to see the city at night, and have a fancy dinner, so I walked to the Kempinski Bristol Inn (one of two Kempinskis in Berlin) to eat at Reinhard's.
Although the service wasn't brilliant, the food was quite good. I was treated to a Duck consommé with some pâté and a homemade cracker, then a Duck filet with red cabbage and kale (or something green, anyway), and finally a chocolate cake with homemade apple ice cream and a French-style macaron. A nice way to start the German culinary experience.
The next morning I woke up early to go meet my friend Simona at the airport. This whole thing was her idea (and I suspect I haven't thanked her enough yet) so it was the least I could do. It was easier to find the hotel this time, so after we dropped her things off, we started to explore Berlin.
Berlin is an impressive city. It's kind of big, and sometimes the transit system actually works. Like Paris. There are lots of people, though for New Year's, these were mostly tourists. The monuments are beautiful (I recall seeing a church, a gate, a tower, and a wall on the first day. I think. It's all kind of a blur) and there are a lot of them. The best part is, they're all conveniently located within walking distance of each other (though it should be noted that to Simona, "walking distance" is anything within roughly 10 km).
That night, of course, was New Year's Eve, or "Silvester" in German. We went to Potsdamer Platz, where some crazy people were setting off homemade fireworks (this had started the day before). About a 5-minute walk from Potsdamer Platz is the Brandenburg Gate, where the biggest party in Germany, if not Europe, is held. We went there, too, to enjoy an outdoor club-like atmosphere. All in all, a great night.
Our tour of Berlin continued the next day when we woke up around 4 p.m. The sun was already setting, so we decided to have breakfast at a nearby café. Then, we made our way to the Olympic Stadium. That was pretty cool, but it was also dark and cold, so we went to a Video Game Museum to warm up and play some Mario Kart (SNES). At least, I think that's how it happened. The free alcohol in the Lounge is getting to my head and the order of things is a bit fuzzy.
Anyway, after a Mexican-style dinner, we tried to find a club to go to. Unfortunately, this being Berlin, everything was closed on the 31st and 1st (other than really major tourist places), so we just kind of walked around Potsdamer Platz again for a few hours. Which was actually completely ok, because it produced this picture:
One the 2nd, we woke up at a more reasonable 1 p.m. and decided to take the day to explore Kurfürstendamm, the Champs-Élysées of Berlin. Basically, we went shopping. It was pretty cool. We both found things we wanted to buy, from places I am probably not going to see again for a long, long time. That night, we went to see the Blue Man Group at the BlueMax Theatre. It was quite an entertaining show and I'm glad we had the opportunity to go.
We followed the show with a beer at a local Biergarten (or Bruhaus or whatever it was called). It was our last evening before Simona had to return to Torino. Most of the Berliners' fireworks had subsided by this point.
We managed a solid 4 hours of sleep before getting up and heading to the airport. It was a very sad morning, if I'm honest, so my afternoon pretty much just involved some more shopping, watching some TV, and devouring a container of Southern Italian sweets (ringrazie, Simona, they were delicious!). My own flight home was this morning, and, well, here I am, 15 hours later, still waiting to board the last leg of my trip.
I'm going to go eat now, I'm starving, and it's nearly midnight (in Berlin).
Ciao a tutti, e Buon Anno 2013!
(or was that Auf Wiedersehen?)
Here are some more pictures, mostly of monuments and such:
Guten Abend alles,
I am sitting in the Maple Leaf Lounge at Toronto Pearson Airport. I'm not home yet, and I have over an hour til my next flight boards, so I'll just use that time to write about the trip I just had.
As you may recall, this was not my first time in Germany. I attempted a Christmas trip there 3 years ago, and through poor planning, managed to make Germany seem boring and generally awful. Well, Berlin just might have changed that.
I arrived around noon on December 30th. I managed to find my hotel after taking a bus and getting lost in a Christmas Market (Christkindlmarkt or Weihnachtsmarkt), so business as usual. The hotel was actually an apartment which was great. Friendly and helpful staff, comfortable room, everything I needed for my stay. It was the Citadines just off Kurfürstendamm, in case you were wondering. Anyway, I was pretty tired, but I wanted to see the city at night, and have a fancy dinner, so I walked to the Kempinski Bristol Inn (one of two Kempinskis in Berlin) to eat at Reinhard's.
Although the service wasn't brilliant, the food was quite good. I was treated to a Duck consommé with some pâté and a homemade cracker, then a Duck filet with red cabbage and kale (or something green, anyway), and finally a chocolate cake with homemade apple ice cream and a French-style macaron. A nice way to start the German culinary experience.
The next morning I woke up early to go meet my friend Simona at the airport. This whole thing was her idea (and I suspect I haven't thanked her enough yet) so it was the least I could do. It was easier to find the hotel this time, so after we dropped her things off, we started to explore Berlin.
Berlin is an impressive city. It's kind of big, and sometimes the transit system actually works. Like Paris. There are lots of people, though for New Year's, these were mostly tourists. The monuments are beautiful (I recall seeing a church, a gate, a tower, and a wall on the first day. I think. It's all kind of a blur) and there are a lot of them. The best part is, they're all conveniently located within walking distance of each other (though it should be noted that to Simona, "walking distance" is anything within roughly 10 km).
That night, of course, was New Year's Eve, or "Silvester" in German. We went to Potsdamer Platz, where some crazy people were setting off homemade fireworks (this had started the day before). About a 5-minute walk from Potsdamer Platz is the Brandenburg Gate, where the biggest party in Germany, if not Europe, is held. We went there, too, to enjoy an outdoor club-like atmosphere. All in all, a great night.
Our tour of Berlin continued the next day when we woke up around 4 p.m. The sun was already setting, so we decided to have breakfast at a nearby café. Then, we made our way to the Olympic Stadium. That was pretty cool, but it was also dark and cold, so we went to a Video Game Museum to warm up and play some Mario Kart (SNES). At least, I think that's how it happened. The free alcohol in the Lounge is getting to my head and the order of things is a bit fuzzy.
Anyway, after a Mexican-style dinner, we tried to find a club to go to. Unfortunately, this being Berlin, everything was closed on the 31st and 1st (other than really major tourist places), so we just kind of walked around Potsdamer Platz again for a few hours. Which was actually completely ok, because it produced this picture:
One the 2nd, we woke up at a more reasonable 1 p.m. and decided to take the day to explore Kurfürstendamm, the Champs-Élysées of Berlin. Basically, we went shopping. It was pretty cool. We both found things we wanted to buy, from places I am probably not going to see again for a long, long time. That night, we went to see the Blue Man Group at the BlueMax Theatre. It was quite an entertaining show and I'm glad we had the opportunity to go.
We followed the show with a beer at a local Biergarten (or Bruhaus or whatever it was called). It was our last evening before Simona had to return to Torino. Most of the Berliners' fireworks had subsided by this point.
We managed a solid 4 hours of sleep before getting up and heading to the airport. It was a very sad morning, if I'm honest, so my afternoon pretty much just involved some more shopping, watching some TV, and devouring a container of Southern Italian sweets (ringrazie, Simona, they were delicious!). My own flight home was this morning, and, well, here I am, 15 hours later, still waiting to board the last leg of my trip.
I'm going to go eat now, I'm starving, and it's nearly midnight (in Berlin).
Ciao a tutti, e Buon Anno 2013!
(or was that Auf Wiedersehen?)
Here are some more pictures, mostly of monuments and such:
 |
| Otto Von Bismarck Monument |
 |
| Kempinski's Hotel Adlon |
 |
| A very large and important Cathedral |
 |
| Long-distance view of a Synagogue |
 |
| The Wall on The Wall, Part 1 |
 |
| The Wall on The Wall, Part 2 |
 |
| New Year's Eve Party |
 |
| Olympic Park |
 |
| Giant Christmas Store on Kurfürstendamm |
