Saturday, January 2, 2010

Berlin

This post is going to be picture-free, because I'm not actually in Berlin right now. 


Berlin was yesterday. Catching the train from Heidelberg to Berlin was a little more painful than it should have been. In order to get from Heidelberg to Berlin, I needed to change at Mannheim, which would then take me straight to Berlin at a speed of 200 km/h on an ICE train. Lovely, in theory. Bad weather meant that my second train was stopped indefinitely at Frankfurt, which is not near Berlin. Another hour later and another train, I was finally on my way to Berlin. 


In short, Deutsche Bahn are great, but no-one, not even Germans, can overcome nature. 

Short stay in Berlin with Liam and Julia, where we joined them in having a traditional German dinner. We managed to do a little bit of sight-seeing, including Checkpoint Charlie, some part of the Wall and Brandenburger Tor. I also managed to work out the Berlin rail system, which uses a combination of S-Bahn and U-Bahn trains to move everyone around the city. And the snow! There is more than enough snow to make a snowman. I like the stuff...



While the trains in Berlin are quite efficient, they are also prone to CityRail-like impersonations, with delays and inconsistent arrival times. Again, German rail is good, but it's not completely foolproof. 


More about Berlin later. Prague for now.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought ze germans were meant to be efficient?

How awesome is snow? Yay for snow :)

Stay safe in Prague dear.

<3

Johnny

Claudia said...

Any rail system is better than ours althie... you're going to hate coming back to city rail... i can see it happening!

Anonymous said...

I've been thru Checkpoint Charlie twice when it was still operational. It was the point that people in West Berlin could go thru to East Berlin. A big part of history!
I hope your trip continues to be full of new things and pleasures.
jerri