Planning travels is tricky, you need to find accommodation, need to book transport and look into logistics, plan an itinerary, and much much more. You definitely know the drill!
This is my recollection of my trip to Berlin. The (one of the) largest city in Europe. Defiantly the largest capital in Europe.
After tedious rather months of negotiations of where to go and where not with a group of 3, we finalized a Berlin-Prague early January/ New-Years trip. The initial negotiations were planning a Porto-Portugal, Spain, Austria or Hungry vacation (one of them, of course) but realized that traveling by road and rail would be safer and easier. Plus the pandemic was still ongoing.
We booked a conveniently inconvenient train at 2 am from Mannheim Hbf. An ICE to be precise to Berlin. This was the first high speed trains that I took and to be honest it was a bit disappointing. The seats were not comfortable for the price we paid! A quick side note, as time progressed we recruited two fellow travelers to our trip which also helped us to save on money. Now, we, a group of 5 were travelling to the capital city of Germany.
We occupied two family tables on the ICE so that we can try to get some sleep in at 2 am on a 7 hour journey. I did sleep well but not my fellow colleagues. We reached at around 8.30 am at the Berlin Hbf. It took me a while to understand the scale of that station, it is ginormous!. Multi-story - train, S-Bahn, U-Bahn and probably a bus Station.
The Airbnb that we had booked had provided us a luggage storage space. As our check-in was at 3 pm, we decided to dump our bags and go out to see the city. That's what we did! After walking, taking an S-Bahn, taking another one, walking for a bit, we got to the luggage storage. We then left for our first monument.
The first spot was the Brandenburg gate. Luckily the winter weather was co-operating with us and was okay-ish. Speaking of the gate, it was smaller than I expected. This was followed by the Reichstag Building, it was huge. We spent some time there clicking photos and chatting. This was followed by the Soviet War Memorial and then the Berlin’s version of the Hollywood walk of Fame at Potsdamer platz. The last one was a bit disappointing as it was not well maintained. To feed our selves we to a Saravanaa Bhavan at Potsdamer platz. It was not great and I would not recommend it.
We then grabbed a train and went to see the East Side gallery. A must if you visit Berlin. It is indeed a long walk but the murals are magnificent!
This was followed by boarding Berlins trade mark yellow coloured U-Bahn to Checkpoint Charlie. Well, it is just a post to click pictures at, nothing very fancy. But with a lot of history!
I also completed one of my lifelong dreams near Checkpoint Charlie, petting a Samoyed!. It was a cute little cloud. Thank you to that kind stranger who let me pet his dog.
We squeezed in one more museum in that day. The Jewish Museum Berlin. I don't have words to describe this immersive museum. The design and architecture accentuate a particular feeling that is hard to explain. Given the time limitation it was hard to complete everything. It is a must to go place and spend around 3 hours in the carefully designed museum.
To call it a day, we went to our Airbnb. I have no words to describe it too. It was one of the best places I have stayed in. If you are in Berlin with friends or family I would recommend this place. It is spacious, very clean and has a ton of amenities.
Next day, we chose to start it a bit late and go to the Charlottenburg Palace, which was a mere walking distance from the Airbnb. The weather on that day was not the best, but it was not worst too. We got a couple of good pictures and walked around the palace park and went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. There is also a museum a downstairs and contains stories and letters from the Jews who were murdered during the dark times. I have no expression to describe it. Half way through the museum downstairs, I was emotionally unable to read through everything and felt dreadful.
Add photo, poem
We grabbed a quick lunch at Noodle Plus, a Chinese place close by. Short on day light we moved to the Museum Island, Yes! a land full of museums. Sadly, we were late and could not check out the Berliner Dom and the Pergamon Museum. We did check out the Altes Museum. I believe one needs a whole day or rather more just to see all the museums on the museum island.
Finally, we explored Alexander Platz and ignored the very expensive Berliner Fernsehturm.
Tomorrow we had to leave for Prague, so we (rather one of my friend) exchanged money without asking the exchange rate from a shop that may have not given us a good rate.
I will call the trip to Berlin a successful one as we saw more things than we expected but I would love to visit again and check out the other things.
See you soon Berlin!
