I grab a quick breakfast and take a tram to the station to catch my train to Berlin. My ticket is valid for any train I want to take for the next two months. No wonder it was expensive. I'm planning to take the 9am train, which will get me to Berlin at 3.20pm.
Gah. I've missed it. Now I'll only get into Berlin after 5pm.
No, hang on, I've missed the direct but I can take another route changing at Hilversum.
I hop on. Love it. Super-smooth, super-silent train. Busy snapping away at the passing sights.
A large factory-like building that I found interesting because it was multi-coloured. Moving shot from the train so a little blurry.
Great. I miss my stop at Hilversum. Shoulda looked at the rail map to have an idea where it was with respect to Amsterdam.
Forced to spend an hour and a half at Amersfoort (?) waiting for the next train to Berlin. I briefly consider taking an Intercity to Enschede, which seems to be on the border of Holland and Germany, and then trying to change again there to a Berlin-bound, but dismiss the thought. Too complicated and who knows if that's even the best route to Berlin!
Finally underway at 1137 on the Hispeed. Effectively the 11am from Amsterdam. ETA Berlin 1720 hrs. Gotta love these take-whatever-train-you-want tickets.
I've just realised it's been more than four days since I last charged my phone and it still shows two bars of juice remaining. It just goes on and on and on and...
1315 hrs: Aaaand we're in Germany. Bad Bendheim to be precise, wherever that is. The train conductor can now drop the Dutch from his announcements. As usual, nary an immigration officer in sight. I grab a quick meal at the dining car.
1430 hrs: At Bad Oeynhausen and I finally see some hills. Low ones not very far away but hills nonetheless. Holland is definitively, officially behind us.
1515 hrs: And we have a visit by the police to the dining car just before hitting Hannover. The four foreign-looking blokes present have their passports demanded and a quick call to HQ is made to check our antecedents. Of course, no such formalities for the people in the first class car next door.
1700 hrs: We enter Berlin. First impressions: a bleak, dreary, even depressing city. Square, squat, functional buildings, none very tall. After Amsterdam's beauty and even the cottages dotting the German countryside, this is strange to come upon.
I alight at the Hauptbahnhof (central station), which is all shiny glass and metal. People are definitely less sociable here than in Amsterdam, but that's a high bar to beat. When asked "Sprechen Sie Englisch?", the standard response seems to be, "A little", though they all speak it well enough!
Berlin Hauptbahnhof (central station)
It feels less cold than Amsterdam, for which I'm quite grateful.
I get to the hostel and that's squat and square too but quite welcoming inside. If I ever return to Berlin, as I hope I shall, and decide to go backpacker-style again, I'm definitely staying in the same hostel. Very nice experience, mostly because of two very helpful guys at reception called Paul and Marc. If you ever go to the Berlin Jugendherberge (Youth Hostel), please pass along my greetings.
The Berlin Jugendherberge (Youth Hostel)
A LOT of kids in the hostel. Very different from Amsterdam. I guess that it must be a large group travelling together, or perhaps it's just school holidays.
I go out for a walk and see Berlin with a completely different set of eyes. Vast, vast spaces. Truly grand. Feels even better at night than in the light. Makes one want to run, ride a trick bike, skateboard, whatever.
Potsdamerplatz, a sort-of city centre for Berlin. I think that's the Commerzbank building. This is the junction that is supposed to have had the first traffic light in the world.
Decide to get dinner at a place with more than a hundred beers but disappointingly, not all of them are from Germany, let alone from in and around Berlin. I even find Tiger on the list. (I later find out that there aren't that many Berlin-specific beers; Munich and the Bavaria region are more the beer capital of Germany.) I choose a Markischer Landmann Dunkel followed by a Berliner Kindl Dunkel. My main is billed as arriving accompanied by salty potatoes and red beans. The beans turn out to be beetroot in reality. Lost in translation.
It's a little cooler after dinner than it was when I walked out of the hostel but still quite bearable. I'm practically skipping along back to the hostel. It's been a very relaxed day. Which is another way of saying that I didn't do much, having wasted most of the day on trains!
More pictures here (no captions, free to access) or here (with captions but requires Facebook log-in).
This post is the third in a series. The full series:
Comments