Berlin: A Lightning Tour

 

The long promised visit to Berlin was briefly realised this week. It came as the first choice of overnight stop over at the end of a holiday to Gdynia in Poland and that, since we wanted to drive there, was a two day journey in both directions. We chose to visit two cities that we were previously interested in going to but thought that we would take a brief look at both on this trip with a view to making one or both of them a future ‘City Break’ long weekend at some time in the future.

 

On the outward journey we had stayed two nights in Dresden and fallen in love with it instantly promising to make a return flight sometime before we both popped our clogs. With Dresden, we though it would take more planning than we had on this occasion and that we would book to go to the Opera on our next and longer visit when we could take in more than the old city centre that we had concentrated on this year, though we are not done with it yet by a long way.

 

 

Unfortunately due to pressure of work the two night stay that we had initially booked in Berlin, had to be cut short by a day, so that meant a very quick peak at a most extraordinary city that has featured in so many books and films that it does not need any explanation from me. We had not long ago been to the cinema to see the award winning movie, Bridge of Spies that had well reminded us of that cold war period.

 

 

So our stay had to be planned and potted into the maximum that we could squeeze into such a short period, choosing the Mövenpick Hotel Am Postdamer Platz that was well positioned for our lightning tour. We chose first to go to Check Point Charlie and walked there from our base just ten minutes away. It is very weird to see such an important point in fairly modern history not just being transformed because THE WALL, that dreadful wall, has been removed, although that is naturally most of the point. Yet it was uncomfortable, at least to me, to find it a place that seemed on looking around at the young tourists and children in flip flops, shorts and baseball caps, appear to have so little importance to them, just a sort of novelty spot. Steve and I on the other hand were simultaneously moved and confused that a place that once raised heartbeats to bursting point when it was to be crossed, and was now somewhere to ask the people there, just playing the part of guards, to pose for photos in a kind of ‘Kiss Me Quick’ scenario as though it were on Brighton Pier. Some of us are more haunted by the ghosts of history than others evidently.

 

 

From there we walked to the spectacular Brandenburg Gate and took several laps around the block to get as many view points as possible and we took loads of photos like the rest of the tourists milling around there on foot and on bicycles. We had just walked back through for the second time when a huge booming voice fell from above like the voice of God, disturbing, since what the voice bellowed was my husbands common nick name “BELTIE”! It caused us both to stop in our tracks looking up and around in all directions and finally spotting a friend of ours hanging out of an upper floor window of the Adlon Kempinski Hotel, right next door to the iconic tourist attraction. It was a friend and fellow triathlete of roughly as many years as ourselves in the sport. Here was the second reason we were at that spot, since we had arranged to have dinner with our friends from the USA, Steve and Rachel Jones and their two teenage children. Mind bogglingly, we realised by chance from a Facebook post that they were also visiting Dresden and Berlin at exactly the same time as us, they having been on a cycling holiday. A little FB private messaging had resulted in us planning to get to the same point on one day only, the last holiday night for both parties. The last time we had bumped into them unplanned, had been two years ago whilst triathloning in Edmonton in Canada. We hope that the next time will be in Rotterdam in 2017 then it will be for a triathlon again and I intend to start planning for that very soon.

 

 

Yesterday’s Daf’s Diary input was about the next morning and the visit to the 1936 Olympic Stadium; I should apologise for the back-to-front-ness but hey, it’s my diary. 

Note to Berlin; I’ll be back.