I went for the bathroom as soon as I woke, up, but Maren was already in there. I solved my most pressing issue in the grassy backyard, got organised, and used the bathroom once it was available. Then we said goodbye and thanks, and I headed for the Hauptbahnhof. I had plenty of time, so I walked there. En route, I again felt the need for a comfort stop, and was looking forward to finding the station. Just then, I found a public toilet, which solved that problem.
At the Hauptbahnhof I bought a filled roll and orange juice just outside the restaurant I was in last evening. My train wasn’t even up on the board yet; there was more than an hour to go, and there were so many trains leaving that the board covered only the next half hour. I was on the 10:22 to Hamburg, but was changing for Berlin at Goettingen. Eventually my train appeared on gleis (track) 22, and I went there, waited with everyone else for the train doors to work when you pressed the button. I was in car 11. I walked past car 11 to car 9 to be sure about the numbering, no car 10. Eventually we were allowed in, I found my seat. It was facing backward, with no window adjacent. An attendant handed out a very comprehensive leaflet, with arrival and departure times for every stop, and the fact that there was free wifi on the train.
I believe that free wifi, along with free drinking water, free toilets and free motorcycle parking are fundamental human rights. Unfortunately, when the train was underway, I found that the wifi was worth about the same as most things given away free, not much. It was there, but not usable. I disabled wifi on the phone and reverted to Vodafone, which was also quite variable.
I felt the train pull out gently. My watch said 10:23. The train was on time, the watch was a minute fast, and I set it back. I like train travel, and had been looking forward to a quiet 6 hours on the train, interrupted only by the train change at Goettingen at 1:54pm. The train was very clean, spacious and smooth. The best way to travel. The hours flew by, and the stop at Goettingen came up. I had envisaged dashing along the platform, finding a big display board, locating the train to Berlin, dashing down the appropriate platform to the train in the available 9 minutes. In reality, I stepped off the train, and saw on a nearby board that the Berlin train left from the same platform. SInce I would again be in car 11, I didn’t need to move. It was like stepping out of a lift, and stepping back in next time the doors opened. I’m not sure now why, when I bought the rail ticket 3 months ago, I was prepared to put up with the hassle of a train change just to arrive 20 minutes earlier. The Berlin train did not have car 10 either.
In the Berlin train, I passed the compartments. Really comfortable form fitting seats in there, but too intimate. OK, I guess, if you all know each other. I showed my ticket to the occupant of my seat, and he duly packed up his belongings and left. This time I was facing forward, with a window!
Under way again, I had that faint dread of arriving that I sometimes have on a plane flying to a strange city. You are comfortable, you can do anything you like, watch movies, read, sleep, eat every few hours. Once you land, you again have to have your wits about you: go through immigration, get your bag, get cash, work out the public transport system, find your hotel. Of course, this was different: same country, same money, everyone speaks English.
Shortly before we arrived in Berlin, an attendant went down the aisle dispensing free chocolates. I’ll certainly travel DB again!
In the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, I downloaded a PDF map of the Berlin train system. The hardest thing was working out how to find the U-bahn (underground) in the Hauptbahnhof. It was hard because it isn’t there, except for U55, which goes for only 2 stops to an S-bahn (surface rail) station at Brandenburger Tor, and doesn’t connect to the rest of the U-bahn system at all. I rode there, and back, and realised that to get to Charlottenburg from here, I needed the S5, or S7 to Potsdam, not the U2 to Ruhleben. The Berlin Hauptbahnhof is a vast space, seemingly as big as an airport terminal, on several levels. Instead of trying to go down to the nonexistent U, I went up to the S lines at the top level, found the S7 platform, and was soon chatting with an American lady from Eureka, California, who wasn’t sure this was the right platform. She was headed for Potsdam. It was.
Ten minutes walk north of Charlottenburg station I found my AirBnB on Kaiser Friedrich Strasse. I may be in the best room of the three. It is the room shown in the AirBnB listing. Shared kitchen, bathroom with a washer and dryer, good.
Later, for dinner I walked back south along the same street, passed a nice looking trattoria, with only one customer, and eventually came across Ziko’s Grill and Bar, which was completely full of people. Eins person, and the waiter found me a table around a corner, hidden from most of the restaurant. The food and beer were good, and live music started up, from somewhere out of my view, 50s and 60s classics. The crowd eventually joined in with “Sweet Caroline”. I could enjoy it only vicariously from my location in Siberia. One table of young people formed a conga line for “Roll Out the Barrel”.
