Stuck in Berlin and crook

After arriving late from The UK on Thursday night and booking into the AO Youth Hostel at the Zoologischer Gartens Bahnhof we decided a quiet hotel would be better.
We moved to the Atrium Hotel on Motzstrasse, which is in a quiet little residential area with a small group of supermarkets and cafes nearby.
It is an almost idyllic spot (as far as that can be in a big European city). The nearest U bahn is Güntzelstrasse (<- look, a word mit umlaut off a German keyboard! :-).
Anyway, on Friday we all went to the zoo, and a big one it was too. We spent all day there.

Saturday we went to the Technical museum and Spectrum (Spectrum is like the SA Science Investigator Centre). The kids spent about 3 hours there and then we went to the museum proper. By this time Rhiannon was beginning to show symptoms of an approaching cold. I was too.

Saturday night we went to a German restaurant, with no menu. Rhiannon and I had the duck with red cabbage and -dumplings- (!). The duck was nice, but I really liked the red cabbage.

Sam had the sniffles for a few days previously but he got over it. Rhiannon and I got his cold in turn and it has hit us reasonably hard, Rhee especially. I could only do about 4 hours activity in a day. So Sunday I had to chase around after an Apotheke, which are generally closed (as is everything) on Sundays. The closed ones usually have a sign in their windows where to find an open one. So on to the UBahn again and a chase around Berlin. I finally found an open one.

Pity I hadn't got to the chapter on health yet in my German lessons :-( but I learnt a new word, "erkalten". After a bit of a rest I took everyones clothes to the laundromat and did the washing.

While there I found out that, sadly, Sabine can't put us up in Frankfurt so the plans have changed somewhat. Speaking to Heike we will go through the old east Germany when (if!) we leave Berlin and meet them at Zeigehain on the weekend. On the way back from the laundromat I bought some Chinese takeaway for tea, which we had in the hotel room.

This is an area which I have trouble with still because I although the same words are used the German pronunciation of the words is quite different and, try as I might, I can't say them the German way. Also Sunday night we watched a show on TV called(if I remember correctly) "Die Comedie Falle", The Commedy Trap. It was a little like a German Candid Camera. While it would have been much more funny if we could have understood the dialogue better, it was still pretty humourous. (There was one particular bit where an unsuspecting babysitter was convinced the house was haunted).

Monday we all just stayed in. It has been drizzling here since Saturday anyway. We went out for a bit of lunch and a little walk in the afternoon and then went to an Italian restaurant for tea.

Rhee says she is feeling better (I am still fairly snuffed up). So, if Rhee feels up to it we will go for a look around Berlin proper this afternoon, with a view to leaving for Dresden or similar on Wednesday sometime.

Berlin

First night here we flew in late from Luton and could only get a youth hostel near the Zoological gardens railway station.
That took us about 2 hours till we were settled in(about 0030).
While the two people we were sharing with were OK (a Portugese lady and an English bloke, who didn't turn up till 02:00!).
The place was just too noisy and smoky. There were a crowd of Dutch high schoolers there so the next day (Friday) we moved to a little hotel which is much nicer.
Spent Friday at the Zoo and today at the Technical museum,but nobody is feeling too good at the moment due to sniffles.

11/8/04 Berlin (Train ride out) and Gifhorn

There is an automatic ticket dispenser at the station which I study for a long time and watch others use. I _think_ I could get it right but to get to Gifhorn there is a change of trains required. In the end I am not quite confident enough, so I decide to get some human help. The lady at the information desk can speak a little English and she prints out a piece of paper with the exact two trains I need. With this firmly in hand, I proceed to the ticket office, where I am in the line for more than half an hour! It’s not really the ticket sellers fault, there are only three of them, and one of those is tied up by a young girl who really doesn’t seem to know what she wants. A lady in the line behind me is getting pretty irate, I don’t need to know what she is saying to tell that. Finally there is only a young lad in front of me and he walks up to the next free ticket lady, who promptly sends him back into the line. As he gets to me I ask whats wrong and he says that ticket seller only speaks German and won’t serve non German speakers. With a bit of trepidation I approach her and show her my piece of paper with the two trains listed and she seemed pretty OK with that. I tried to get first class, but “no first class to Gifhorn” apparently.
By 1955 I have left the Zoological Gardens station on the fast ICE (Intercity Express). 15 minutes later we are in the countryside. It’s been a fairly long day and I notice for the first time that the back of my shirt is streaked with salt. I hadn’t noticed this in the humidity of the day. The LED display shows the train is doing 220kph but there are no objects near the tracks so it doesn’t look fast at all.
I get to Wolfsburg at 2100 and it is a deserted place. I catch a local train to Gifhorn and the last few km take nearly as long as the rest of the trip. Ralf arrives to pick me up and we go back to his house.
As part of the amusement Ralf suggests we go out and see if we can see the predicted meteor shower (the Perseids). Ralf assures me that there is a deserted road which he often goes roller blading on. We nearly get run over three times! We also don’t see very much in the way of meteors either. I later hear from Sabine that a group she was part of saw them, but the sky in Germany is badly light polluted.

Thus endeth another long day.

11/8/2004 Berlin "The Wall"

I discover the Berlin Wall.

Or, at least a tiny bit left over at "Check Point Charlie"

11/8/2004 Berlin, The Technical Museum

I catch an underground tram (U6). Once again, only a two minute wait for the train. Somewhere I saw a sign that states a maximum waiting time of 5 minutes, I can well believe it. It is a bit warm and muggy down in the tunnels but as the train moves the breeze blasts through and is quite pleasant. A door or vent must be open. Next stop the Berlin technical museum. After I get off the train (at the wrong station) a nice chap offers to tell me the way. He has got cropped hair, orange glasses and a singlet and his directions lead me the long way round, but I eventually get there.
The Berlin Technical Museum is undergoing extensions so the upper galleries with the aircraft are not open yet. Still, there is a good selection of boats and trains and some other very interesting stuff. Including, in an out of the way cul de sac, an original example of an Enigma machine. In the train shed I also find an early example of a German ground level transfomer used in their distribution system. It makes a lot of sense to me now. Nearby the technical museum is a collection of old cars, but they are packed into a long narrow storage building and not shown off to their best. I also slip into the German equivalent of the Australian “Science Investigator Centre” (I have a complementary ticket from the tech museum. It has very similar displays to the one in Australia. I wander out to a little café/hotel type arrangement at the front of the technical museum and have a nice “Berliner Kartoffelcremesuppe”. I am pretty safe with that one because I like spuds. The waitress speaks English but I persist in using Germalian and seem to get by. I wonder what I really said. I have some more time to kill so I go to Checkpoint Charlie. This is also an interesting place to visit, but it is a real tourist trap and has a very artificial and rundown feel.
Finally, back to Freiderichstrasse to get my luggage (it was in a locker there) and try to get a ticket to Gifhorn.

11/8/2004 Berlin, The Pergammon Museum

The Ishtar Gate.

Famous in First Year High School History Texts!

I got chatted by the security people for this one (Whoops)

11/8/04 Berlin (What to do next? Museums and such.)

I head to the newsagents and get a copy of a Berlin Guide. The most likely thing is the “Museum Island” which is just down the road a little way, so of I head. As I approach I can see the dome of the Bode, but it is closed. A pity, so I keep going till I come to the Pergammon. As I walk past one of the museum wings and up into the forecourt I get the impression that it is a dirty and grubby place. I have very vague memories of dirty public buildings like this in some of the Australian capital cities when I was a very young child. A minute or two passes before the penny finally drops. There are many chips and pockmarks on the walls, the black is the result of fires and it is all un attended war damage! Anyway I buy my ticket and go into the museum. Well, this is unlike any other museum I have ever been in. The first impressions are that there are no human sized objects, no pots or tools or other relics of a human past. No, the museum is full of buildings! Nothing done by half measures here. If a previous culture was worthy, it seems its monuments were taken in their entirety. None of this namby pamby stuff like Elgin did with the Greek Marbles, taking only the interesting bits. The equivalent German collectors just took the whole building! While uncomfortable with the values that lead to this, the collection is an extraordinary impressive one. Not only that, it brings back first year history lessons with Mrs Kemp. As I enter one of the museum wings there is the Ishtar Gate. I remember the pictures of the blue walls in my history books and there they are, larger than life. Overall, the Pergammon is a really interesting visit, almost as much for what it says about 19th century mores, than the abilities of these older day peoples.
Leaving the museum precinct I wander back up the river towards the Reichstag. Of course now I am prepared for the little hints I see around me. There are very few old buildings to be seen and when I finally do get to the Reichstag, I am fully prepared to see the patches on what must have been an almost shattered building. Memories of the grainy black and white pictures of Russian troops with their flags are strong. Almost 60 years ago to the day. Anyway, the lines to gain entrance to the building stretch out for many tens of metres, down the steps and out onto the grassed area. Because I only plan to stay in Berlin for this one day I decide to give the inside of the building a miss and head back for the railway station.

11/8/04 Berlin (Train ride in)

Cathy is staying for one more day in Strassbourg to be formally converted to the S10 and then she will meet Swaantje to go to Italy. My plan is to go into Berlin for a look then somehow get back to Ralf’s place.
I get a tram to the main rail line and then catch the Spandau train for Friederichstrasse. In both cases the wait for the tram and train was only about one minute! I am a bit hot and sweaty from lugging my backpack and case and having to go a bit quick to catch my rides. The ride into Berlin starts going through what I think of now as “normal” German countryside. There are moderately numerous houses to the north and rural countryside to the south. The suburbs begin to become obvious between Birkenstien and Mahlsdorf and the area becoe more light industrial. It is still warm and stuffy in the train and cooler when the doors open. At Wuhletal there seems to be a major interchange and a lot of people rush across the platform to get on the train. We aren’t in Berlin proper yet but it is standing room only. As we get closer to our destination the stations grow in size until there become multitrack, curved glass cathedrals until, at 0935 I get off at Friedrichstrasse

9/8/04 and 10/8/04 Strausberg (Berlin)

Swaantje has lent Cathy her (somewhat) clapped out old campervan called “Bussy”. In it Cathy and I go to the Strausberg airfield to spend some time at the Stemme factory. An interesting trip that one, two right hand drivers in a left hand drive world. But we finally get there without crashing. Once again Strausberg is most interesting as it was part of the old GDR and some evidence exists if you look hard enough. There are the remains of an emergency services call system. I don’t know what it is called but in some places you will see a box with a push button from a time when private phones were not so common. At least that’s what Harmut from the factory told me they were.
Anyway, we spent two days at the Stemme factory learning the ins and outs of the S10. All the employees of the factory go to the local government offices for lunch, so that is where we went too. I have pretty much got the hang of a lot of the dishes common in Germany and can usually battle through buying stuff as well. Another discovery was the drink supplied by the factory for the employees, a cold tea based drink. The one I preferred was a very sour lemon flavoured tea.
On the airport itself is an advertising blimp which I see later flying around Berlin, but it leaves in the morning and comes back in the evening. When I first saw it, it had come back for the night. Suddenly about twenty to thirty blokes appear as if from no where and go out on to the field to catch the spider lines. Just like in the old films from the 30’s. It then manoeuvres until they attach it to the docking mast. One brave individual climbs up a ladder on the mast to make the connection secure. After the event I realize where the bloke all came from. There is a little encampment of cars and transportable buildings which they must have stayed in all day. Odd sort of job that one. It must be exceedingly boring unless they have some other tasks while the blimp is away.Apart from my night in Frankfurt, my time in Strausberg was also the only other time I stayed in a hotel in Germany. In this case, the “Hotel Annablick”. Far better accommodation than Cathy’s in “Bussy”.

Cathy needs a recharge for her phone card so we go to the local shopping centre. Apart from the normal toy shops, hardware and the rest, one of the shops sells different forms of alcohol (and some cooking oils). But there are no branded bottles. You buy or bring your own bottle and decant whatever you want out of many glass bottles on display on the walls and shelves of the shop. Each bottle is of about 15 liters or so. They are simply labeled as “brandy”, “schnapps” or whatever. For tea we go to the Chinese restaurant at the shopping centre. Hmm, ordering Chinese food from German speakers. The words are written the same, but our Australian pronunciations throw them completely.The last night in Strausberg I go for a walk to check out the nearest tram station to catch tomorrow. The station, a well built cavernous brick structure, is on the populated side of the rail lines. The other side of the lines is a wooded area which I walk into. Within a few metres it seems I am in a totally enclosed forest. I couldn’t imagine this as a few hundred metres from the hotel and a few 10’s of kilometers from the centre of Berlin.