You would have thought by now that getting at short trip to Berlin would be easy. Not so. Booking a cheap flight with Ryanair proved easy enough, even after paying their rip off £10 each for paying with a credit card and taking a suitcase, still got change from £40.
Transport to East Midlands airport was awkward to say the least. If you do not take your car it might as well be on Mars. National Express are determined to put anyone off travelling from local airports as all there links from Wolverhampton to EMA, Stansted or Luton all take over 5 hours and usually involve changing coaches to boot. I would have thought they could have done it quicker when Dick Turpin was alive, so much for progress.
Having abandoned the idea of the coach the next option is the railway. Not too bad but, still a maze of tarriffs and prices to sort through and then they either go to Derby or Nottingham. Rather more use is the link they provide to a bus company that does a shuttle service to either station all through the day and night.
As it happens this service is as good as a chocolate fireguard as the trains stop running at 23:45 hours from both options. Although there is a tempting 00:40 hours journey involving 3 changes that will get you to Wolverhampton at roughly 06:00 hours.
So transport aside, there is now the problem of the overpriced Euro. Managed to catch a deal at £1 = €1.59 at CO-OP travel as competative as the online deals without the hidden charges. This deal did mean the cost of the hotel and 7 day ticket would now be more reasonable but, I was still aware of how expensive I believe the cost of living has become in Berlin now.
This trip is with my good friend Oliver Jordan, who got me hooked on the Berlin tour when we did our first solo venture way back when. Yes Andrew, 5 pints and the rest of you it is all his fault. The memories of our wonderful first week are still fresh in my mind, if this trip is half as amusing it will be yet another roaring success.
Like me, Oliver prefers the budget option over the 5 pints extravganza and so we looked at going back to Rotdorn. There prices have altered little since we first went it is only the exchange rate that has in the past made them appear expensive. This year they compared favourably to the other hotels I could find and so it was a simple matter to book back into our favourite hotel.
Checking the berlin transport map shows that the S9 no longer runs directly to Heer Strasse and so we will either have to change at Ostkreuz or Westkreuz. They do seem determined to stop me getting there. This time though I have had the foresight to check if there were any problems on the S-bahn from the airport and as far as we know it will be a clear run. Oliver had gone so far as to check the English version of BVG route planner to find train times and platforms. This was quite useful as we knew if we had time for a beer before the next train.