Thursday, September 15, 2011
London, England to Berlin, Germany
The alarms rang, we were up at 2:30, washed up and dressed, bags already packed, Jan changed the bed, and we were in the cab by five minutes to three in the morning, bound for London Gatwick. We arrived, 55 minutes later, got to the checkin couter five minutes before it opened, and were checked in, through security, and still had two hours to go before flight time at 6:20am. Very efficient, but what do we do now? Well, we wait. And we did, sure enough the time passed and we were in the departure lounge before we knew it. Now we were in unknown territory. We've flown enough to know that if you get this far, normally, your problems are over, they will help you to your seat if necessary. But we were flying EasyJet, and they don't assign seats. Its every dog for himself at the gate from the departure lounge to the boarding ramp, and the hindmost will get the worst seat and may not be able to store his/her bags in the overhead rack. We were told, on good authority, that when the flight was called for boarding the scene was like a jailbreak, with the scampering and pushing that you might expect but not want. But, as usual, it wasn't quite as bad as we feared. We were early into the lounge, so were to the door early and down the ramp in the first group. And we went half way down the plane to the emergency exit rows, for the legroom, while the scrum played itself out within the first six rows. But we wanted comfort, not to be the first off.
After that it was easy, about an hour and a half to Berlin Schoenfeld airport, through passport control, and onto the train from the airport to Berlin Ostbanhof, about 20 minutes, to Berlin's eastern train station. On the train, chatted with a charming young German couple who had just spent a rain-soaked week camping in Scotland near Edinburgh. Never again, they said, and were very happy to be home to the sunny skies of today. Off the train and down the elevator to the main floor and exit to ... Berlin.
First impressions were 'where is the city?', as we have seen more hustle and bustle and size in regional train stations like Lucca in Italy. But we were ready, as I had the GPS charged and we turned it on and used it to navigate the 400 meters to our hotel. It worked very well in pedestrian mode, as there were no tall buildings to confuse it and the directions it gave us were very clear.
We checked in to our hotel, dropped the bags, and ... dropped ourselves also, into bed. We were exhaused, with the day and the travel and still not over the jet lag of the time change from Vancouver to London. So we slept until about 5:30pm, then roused ourselves out to go explore. We walked the 20 minutes from the hotel toward the giant TV tower spire that dominates the skyline, below which is AlexanderPlatz, which is a giant mall/square/social center of Berlin. We weren't looking to party, we were still tired but happy to be out, but the young people of Berlin were out in force. The edgy sector of the 18 to 30 year olds were everywhere, rings in noses and ears, bolts through tongues, ears, noses, studs in the skin, and acres of tattoos. And dressed in high fashion, jeans artfully torn, stained, and faded, shirts ditto, army boots laced right up or high-top sneakers. And hair piled and spikey, or shaved bald. And that was just the girls. The guys were the same and more so. God I sound old and stereotyped. But I don't condemn, I only observe and comment in a clinical way, a dispassionate observer. Truthfully, with all of that regalia that marked the battalions and regiments of their social classes, the people themselves were smiling and happy and totally friendly.
We found dinner, donair and salad, walked about some more, and were home and in bed by about 9:30pm. A good day. Tired.
