Berlin Cont......

I may have blogged some of this before, but I don’t have wifi right now, so if I repeat myself…..forgive me.

We are traveling back to Frankfurt by train today.  BERLIN WAS AWESOME!  We were hoping to spend the day in Dresden on our way back to Frankfurt, but the trains are not running on schedule because of the flooding, and multiple stops are canceled.  So after all things considered, we are just going to skip Dresden and head back to David and Eva’s.

Monday in Berlin – after arriving we headed out to find the Hard Rock Café.  It should have been simple.  Did you catch the should?  There are no landmarks here like the mountains we have in Utah, which makes keeping your compass quite difficult.  We realized we headed the wrong way down the big street kurfürstendamm.  This is the equivalent of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago.  It is a lovely street full of every kind of store, shop, street vendor etc.  Our hotel is just off of this main road on a side road.  The main street that runs on the other side, Kastrassa, is the other shopping street. 

We found the Hard Rock Café and picked up our Berlin City Passes.  This was the greatest thing that we could have planned for.  After doing much research, I decided to purchase these ahead of time and eventually found a great deal on them.  Our passes gave us unlimited access to the public transportation, unlimited entrance into the museums and access to the main attractions. 

We eventually found our hotel and I was relieved to see that it looked very much like the hotels we are used too…….AND had air conditioning.  Something we would learn was rare for Berlin.  We approached the desk and the cute girl there was very nice to help us.  We were earlier than we thought so we had not arranged for an early check in.  I also didn’t have David’s Hilton number with me when I made the reservation so I asked if we could at least leave our bags for a few hours and get the check in process started.  She looked up his Hilton number and then said, “Ooooh, Mr. Moollan this changes everything, you have silver status!”  Then she typed away at her computer and made a few phone calls.  She apologized because she could not get us into a room straight away; but assured us that a “perfect” room would be ready when we returned.  They tagged our bags and locked them up.  Off we went to meet the kids. 

We stopped in a SCHWARTZ café on the way to the station.  It was recommended by the concierge at the hotel.  We met our favorite waiter in the whole city there; “Indego” took very good care of us.  We figured out his work schedule and stopped back by several times to grab a bite to eat.  It was delicious food and reasonably priced.  After eating, we found the train station, Savingyplatz.  It was closer than the one we originally got off on when we arrived.

When we arrived at the station, I knew we needed to validate our passes, but couldn’t figure out where.  Eventually we found someone who could explain it to us, and we had been trying to do it in the wrong machine.  The validation machine isn’t by the ticket kiosk.  Hmmmm  Does that really make sense?  Anyhow we figured it out and were on our way.