Valentine's Day: London-Berlin

A characteristic of cheap airfares booked online is that they often depart at inconvenient times and from unfashionable airports. In contrast, our flights to Berlin were from Heathrow, convenient for us, and didn't depart until 7:10pm. This meant we were able to take a relaxed view to starting the day. Having decided so recently to come to Berlin, some of the day was spent on the internet planning what we might do. This was aided by having ordered the Lonely Planet Germany some months ago, and their German phrase book, as we'd always planned to visit this country. (Just not so soon...) Helpful links were also forwarded by housemate Hayley, a skilled academic researcher who surfs professionally!

We left for the airport about 3:20pm (planned departure: 3:00pm). Heathrow was crowded and stifling hot, but things were running to time other than at Burger King. We realised as we took off that while we've done a fair bit of travel over the last year, it's all been by train and rental car, Eurostar and Channel Tunnel. Fun to be flying again. Now we knew that our hotel in Berlin was next to an U-Bahn station, and we had the hotel address and phone number. What we didn't know was which U-Bahn station. On the way, Bronwyn found a map of Berlin in the Lonely Planet, and we found the street. At least we knew the general area.

Arriving in Deutschland was an EU-style casual affair. They did stamp our passports, but it is an indication of the relaxed level of security that we covered only 50m of floor from the plane through passport control to luggage collection and out. (Also a sign of excellent design, actually.) Followed bus signs to an exit where a bright orange machine sold us a couple of bus tickets for €2.20 each. No Deutschmarks these days, just leftover coins from our last foray into Paris. The X9 bus took us to the Zoologisches Garten U-Bahnof in about 15 minutes, and from there another 15 saw us sliding into Bülowstrasse station. Just before we stopped, saw Hotel Aldea in enormous letters out the window — found.

Checked in, initially in German to which he responded in English. I may have been convincing though because he then went on in Deutsch. Yes, here is your key, room 711 — I'm with you. Then, something that was either about the local bus routes, or was how to get in the front door after midnight. Uh... then huh? Back to English: breakfast is served in the restaurant from 6:30am to 10am. Danke. The lift, the room (much nicer than we were expecting), BBC on cable TV after 20 German channels, plan tomorrow, to bed, to sleep, perchance to dream in Deutsch? ah... das ist der Rüb.