Adam was fully healed again, so we were told, and it was time for him to re-visit Berlin with me as he had once promised, many, many moons ago. I found out he had intended this (for his birthday treat) for a long time and had sorted out for Andrew to come with us. Now as I had already told him about what a shambles Ryanair had become, he had at least booked us onto an EasyJet flight, for better or worse.
Annette was the designated driver for us and had sorted out what route to take with Adam, and after an early morning start, we went for Andrew and off we went to Birmingham. It was a pleasant enough journey, and they had all sorts of plans made for the week we had in Berlin, I was just the extra package. Annette dropped us off at the free car park and we only had about a mile to walk to get into the airport and dump all the luggage. I don’t know exactly how far we had to walk but I do remember we appeared to be walking for ever to get into the airport.
Adam logged onto his mobile phone and found where we had to get sorted out and we wandered about, dumped the luggage and went off for some early morning feeding. We all had a breakfast and a wander around and then we moved onwards towards the departure lounge, for a little bit more waiting. As Adam had already booked us onto the flight we had three seats together, so we had no trouble there and eventually we got the take off and away we went, off to Berlin.
It was quite a pleasant flight, from what I can remember, no mad trips to the loo or in flight feeding and we arrived into the sunshine of Berlin as Adam, consulting his phone again, found out where we going to, near the Brandenburg gate in Berlin. I was still pleading poverty stricken, so he got us a couple of week long train/bus passes and away we all went feeling pretty good. As we got off the train Adam was once again planing out our little walk to the hotel – come – sleep pad. It took him at least three plans before we got to the reception and loaded with the keys we set off into the apartment.
Well despite his phone telling us it was “just over there” we spent about twenty minutes getting into the right place and it was a little cracker. There were two bedrooms, bathroom, TV room, kitchen and a hallway. We sorted out the sleeping arrangements and unpacked the bits of stuff we’d brought along for a sunny little holiday. Adam had himself a list of stuff we needed to eat, before going out in top the world for our days adventure and we went to find some place to buy the stuff we needed to survive. Adam had a bit of a row over the price of butter I insisted we got for toast, but what a happy chappie he was as he agreed we needed some butter for the toast.
That all sorted out we went back to unload all our purchases and plan what we was going to do next. I cannot recall what exactly we planned to do but, I know we had a wander around the Brandenburg gate and memorial site, still full of toss pots sitting down for a snack on the memorial lumps. It really annoys me that people sit on a reminder of 1500+ Jewish people slaughtered in WW2, even if they don’t know there are plenty of signs explaining what’s going on.
We had a quick cup of tea and decided to go and get something to eat. Everything appeared fine in the rooms so that was no worry. We new we had come across a few restaurants, just opposite where we we kipping so we went over to have a look. We went straight to the local “Chinese” restaurant and I had my favourite Currywurst and chips, even Adam decided to have a go at this, Andrew had some wired stuff but, it was what he liked and we got some half litres of beer, and all this for less that 12 euros!!
We had a nice little chat with the Chinese lady, bit of my German and a mixture of her English and it all worked out fine. About five or six beers later we had decided to have a walk across to the Soviet WW2 memorial and then head back for a kip. We found our way over to these two T34/85mm tanks and saw a load of peasant kids trying to climb all over them, Krauts just never learn a thing. We even found a bit at the back where you could get to see a list of the dead Russians and had a nice walk around the grounds before heading for our pits.
Not a bad days start to Berlin 2024.