Germany

From Frankfurt, we rode the train northwest to Berlin!

Day 8 (part 2): Frankfurt to Berlin

Midway through our ride to Berlin, a couple joined us in our cabin. It turned out they’d originally reserved two of the other seats in the cabin, but at first didn’t want to bother us with their two small terriers and sat in general seating. But then the dogs started getting whiny, so they asked if they could join us so as not to bother other passengers in general seating. We said sure, the dogs settled down, and we had a nice chat with them as we rode the rest of the way into Berlin.

With modern office buildings in the distance, the remnants of a war-damaged large stone cathedral rise behind a sign for the Zoologischer Garten train station and a street performer dressed in a large blue inflatable costume of Disney’s Stitch. — Our first view of Berlin once we left the train station: The beautifully preserved ruins of the original Kaiser Wilhelm church building and a Stitch street performer.

We made it to the Berlin Spandau station, changed trains, got to the Zoologischer Garten station, and then had a walk of just under a mile to our hotel. Got checked in, went out to find dinner, and decided to try a burrito place a short walk away, as we’d been told that Mexican food in Germany is its own thing, almost but not quite like what we’re used to, but not bad. We got there and were amused to realize that the restaurant had a San Francisco Mission district theme, and I was wearing my “I ♥️ SF” shirt that I just got a few days before…obviously this was the right place. (And the burritos weren’t bad, either.)

Me wearing an ‘I (heart) S F’ t-shirt standing in front of a wall decorated with a map of San Francisco centered on the Mission district. — I ♥️ Serendipitous Food (choices)

After that we wandered down the shopping district street we were on, eventually stopping by the Haribo store for gummies, peeked in the Lego store and found an exclusive Germany set, and then stopped to get some gelato…and the place we stopped at had a flavor called SanFransisko (with saffron, honey, and apricot), so obviously that was the flavor to get.

My wife and I on a cobblestone street, each holding small cups of ice cream. — We’re really enjoying how so many eateries have outdoor seating areas.

Back down the street to the hotel, and it’s time for bed!

Day 9: Berlin

We originally had grand plans for the day. We were going to visit the Berlin Wall memorial (or one of the other places where parts of it still stand), see Brandenburger Tor, maybe some of the other big historical things that Berlin has to offer…

…and then decided that, yes, those would be good to see, but we’d just done a few days of history in Frankfurt, and neither of us are huge WWII buffs, and there’s this other big famous thing just a mile away from us that isn’t at all related to war…

…and so we went to Zoo Berlin instead, and spent a very pleasant day slowly strolling the zoo and seeing the animals. We saw nearly everything the zoo had to offer (the aquarium building had a line out the door that didn’t seem to be moving, so we skipped that), and some of them multiple times (as someone in this household really likes hippos, and this zoo has both full-size and pygmy versions, with babies of each size, so they got multiple visits).

Selfie of my wife and I with two large hippos munching on grass cuttings in the background. — Guess what? Hippo butt!

When we finally ran out of zoo, we came back to the hotel, rested for a little bit, changed, and went out again. Yesterday evening as we were passing the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, my wife saw a poster advertising a classical concert for tonight. So tonight we got to see the Berlin Orchestra’s eight-piece Chamber Orchestra with guest performers of a solo violinist, an opera soprano, and and an organist play a selection of pieces, including Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor on a huge, beautiful pipe organ. (However good of a recording of that piece you’ve heard, it doesn’t compare to hearing it played live on a big pipe organ. It’s incredible.) The musicians were really good, and the whole performance was wonderful.

Panoramic view of tall walls made of grids of blue stained glass squares, and a large pipe organ on a platform with multiple rows of staggered sizes of silver pipes. — The inside of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is gorgeous.

After that, we walked back to our hotel and called it a night.

GPS track log map showing our path to, from, and wandering around the Berlin Zoo. — 20,567 steps and 9.37 miles.

Day 10 (part 1): Berlin to…?

Travel day! As such, the morning was all about repacking and making sure we were ready to go. Walked up to the Zoologischer Garten train station (where a cute older lady asked for a photo of me because I was wearing my kilt and she had a friend who is Irish…at least, I’m reasonably sure that’s what she said) and took a local train up to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof. We had about an hour there before catching our next train, so I took a few minutes to wander around and look at the place. It’s huge, and basically a big three-level shopping mall sandwiched between the local train tracks on the top level and the long-distance tracks on the lowest level, with much of it open, so you can look down from the top all the way to the train platforms at the bottom.

Vertical panoramic shot of the inside of the Berlin train station, from the metal-girded glass arched ceiling at the top, two levels connected by stairs and escalators, and a lowest level with a train and empty tracks next to platforms, all with crowds of people. — Taken from a middle level, looking all the way from the glass ceiling to the long-distance train platforms at the bottom.

After a few minutes of exploring (and buying a couple pastries), I went back down to the platform, and not long after that, we were on board and settled into our seats, watching Berlin pass by outside our windows on our way to….

In Part one, we spent two days exploring San Francisco before jetting off for…somewhere else. That somewhere else was Frankfurt, Germany!

Day 4 (part 2) and 5: San Francisco to Frankfurt

Getting off the ground took a long time, as the San Francisco airport is down to two runways due to construction. We were scheduled to take off at 4:30 p.m., didn’t board until almost 5, and we actually took off at…(it’s 5:52 as I write this, and the pilot just told us we’re 12th in line, so…getting there, but a bit longer yet)…6:30?

Since we knew this was going to be a long flight (about 10 hours), we sprung for Premium Economy class. We’re finding it a nice upgrade – a little more space and legroom and some extra amenities, just enough to make a long flight noticeably more comfortable. Since we brought our own entertainment (iPads loaded with books, movies, and TV shows), I just set the seat back monitor in front of me to track the plane as it flew. Our route was a nonstop straight shot northeast out of San Francisco, continuing on over Canada, Greenland, Iceland, a bit of Scotland, and the Netherlands before descending into Germany.

Airline seat back display showing a globe with our flight path from San Francisco to Frankfurt. — Up and over, nice straight shot.

The flight itself was fine, with nice smooth takeoff, flight, and landing, and friendly staff. Even a fun little set of welcome goodies, including earbuds, toothbrush and toothpaste, sleep mask, socks, and a little case to hold them all. I, unfortunately, do not sleep well (or at all) on airplanes, but I dozed and zoned out as I could and otherwise watched the first Resident Evil movie and a couple Max Headroom episodes and finished one Discworld novel (Reaper Man) and started the next (Witches Abroad).

Panoramic shot of San Francisco as seen from above out the window of our airplane, with a fog bank stretching over the bay but with a bridge and the city visible. — Saying goodbye to San Francisco (and Karl the Fog).

We landed in Frankfurt, taxied forever, and then, accompanied by pained groans from many of the passengers (including us), pulled up next to a couple sets of stairs and a few buses. Everyone got packed onto the buses like proverbial sardines, and they drove us to a gate (and while it felt like they drove the long way around, I expect that’s probably not actually the case). But once we got to the airport, the rest — including customs and the new biometric scanning system — went nice and smooth. They even stamped our passports; we weren’t sure if that was still a thing that happened or not, so we were excited to hear the ker-CHUNK of the stamp.

From there, it was a quick swing through baggage to get our backpacks, around the corner to the train station, four stops to the Frankfurt Main Hauptbahnhof, and two and a half blocks to our hotel.

Selfie of my wife and I standing in the Frankfurt train station, with a sign visible behind us that says, “Herzlich willkommen in Frankfurt am Main Hbf”. — Gotta get that “welcome to Frankfurt” sign in there or y’all wouln’t beleive us. ;)

We were pretty well exhausted after going for over 24 hours, but with the time change, it was just four in the afternoon. We got settled into the hotel, and then wandered out to find food and a grocery for some simple hotel breakfast supplies. Food ended up being (very good) cheese fries from a little place that only does fries, as it was simple and we were too tired decide on anything else. We found a supermarket, but only after missing a turn and discovering that our nice quiet hotel is about two blocks off of a red light district…that was an amusing realization.

Back to the hotel, a small load of sink laundry, and then pushed ourselves to stay awake until 8 p.m. to (hopefully) knock our jet lag around and onto local time.

Day 6: Frankfurt

The battle with jet lag isn’t over yet, but we’re making good progress. While neither of us had our best night’s sleep, we stubbornly refused to completely awaken when we started to, and took the morning nice and slow, not leaving the hotel until around 10 a.m.

Once we did get going, we had our first full day exploring Frankfurt. We had only a rough plan, so started off on a more or less random direction and ended up next to the Städel museum, at which point going in seemed like the only choice that made sense. Right off the bat, they had a really neat exhibition of prints by (and related to) Pieter Bruegel the Elder; most of the rest of the museum was its own (very impressive) collection. Another current exhibition by Elmgreen & Dragset, in addition to its own installations, includes lifelike sculptures placed throughout the museum, often in humorous juxtaposition with the museum’s regular collection. We had a lot of fun stumbling across these additions.

Me, in my T-shirt, black kilt, and Converse shoes, taking a photo of an unpainted white sculpture of a male figure in sweater, jeans, and sneakers, looking pensively at art hung on the wall of the museum. — What’s he looking at, anyway? Photo by my wife.

From there we wandered over into the Altstadt (old city), had our first sausage meal, and then visited the Frankfurt Cathedral (Frankfurt Dom/Kaiserdom Sankt Bartholomäus), including climbing all 328 steps up (and then down again) to the top of the tower to see the views of the city. Once done with that, we wandered the Altstadt some more and picked a couple more museums that might be on the list for tomorrow, ventured a bit into one of the main shopping areas nearby, and poked our heads into a couple more churches.

The tower of Frankfurt’s old cathedral as seen from the ground, looking up at where we climbed. — We climbed that! Sure felt that in our legs later on, too….

By this point we were starting to fizzle, so we went by a place we’d spotted earlier to get currywurst (my first time in 35 years, and just as good as I remember), stopped by a grocery for drinks to hydrate with, and came back to the hotel. As we were getting ready for bed a thunderstorm rolled over the city, and we got to watch the rain and see the clouds light up with lightening for a little bit.

GPS track log map showing this day’s wandering around Frankfurt. — Our day’s wanderings.

Day 7: Frankfurt

Our plan for the day was to get an earlier start and hit two museums. Then a jet lag induced lack of good sleep took effect, and we got neither.

We did get out and about, but not quite so early as planned, and then headed for our first planned stop, the Historiches Museum Frankfurt (history museum). This was neat, and in a gorgeous building that had been recently remodeled, but had lots of info about and peeks at the old building incorporated into it. However, it quickly became apparent that we did not have the stamina to make it through the full museum, so we went off to lunch.

A little later, happily stuffed with schnitzel, we peeked at the Museum of Modern Electronic Music (MOMEM), but didn’t quite feel drawn in. Instead, we decided to walk back to the river and stroll along in the shade of a tree-lined cobblestone path, enjoying the views of the city and looking at some of the other museums we could have gone to if we were here longer or had more energy.

Panoramic view of Frankfurt’s Altstadt as seen from the opposite bank of the Main, from the historical museum to the cathedral. — The historical museum is the building to the left with the four-story tower capped by black turrets; we climbed to the top of that tower as part of our museum tour. The cathedral tower we climbed yesterday is to the right.

After that, it was back to our hotel, figuring that we were better off declaring ourselves done for the day. A couple hours’ rest gave us enough energy to grab dinner from the corner pizzeria…and that perked us up enough that we decided to walk down to the train station (just a couple blocks further down the street) to scope it out and make sure we knew where to go for the next part of our trip.

We grabbed gelato on the way back, sitting at one of the many outdoor seating areas, people watching as we ate, and then came back to the hotel. And that wrapped up another day in Frankfurt.

Another GPS map track log showing our route around Frankfurt. — Our second day of wandering around Frankfurt’s Altstadt.

Day 8 (part 1): Frankfurt to…?

It’s a travel day!

Slept as late and as well as we could (still not adjusted, but getting there), packed ourselves up and out, and walked down to the Frankfurt train station (Hauptbahnhof). Since we’d scouted that out yesterday, we were able to get some food and go directly to our platform. A while later, our train showed up, and we found our seats. We’d reserved first class seats, and it seems we got lucky, as the other four seats in this cabin are unoccupied, so we have a cabin to ourselves for this part of the trip.

My wife and I sitting on either side of a narrow table in a train cabin, with a train platform visible through the window behind us. — About to leave Frankfurt.

And with that, we say goodbye to Frankfurt and hello to…?

Vacation Log Part 3: Berlin