Berlin Blog – Monday 21st Feb 2011

Despite Julia’s resolution to never get up while it is still dark we needed to on this occasion. We woke early, 6.00am, and were out of the house by 6.30. We drove to the East Midlands Airport by just after 7.00am and were surprised to find the roads busy all the way. We checked in our hold bag which I had weighed to be 14.5kg just under the 15kg allowance that we had paid for; I was annoyed to note that the check in scales read out at 15.5 but they did not charge us excess baggage on this evidence.
We went through to air-side and found ourselves the British travellers’ breakfast; a bacon sandwich and a mug of tea, neither was great but they served to start our day. I cannot happily accept that tea is served in a paper cup even when the drinker is in a totally secured area and the price charged for the tea would cover the cost of a mug even if there was any reasonable expectation that it could be stolen!
For the first time in my memory we found ourselves on a flight which was not fully booked, I was able to get my hand luggage, 10kg, into an overhead locker and the row of three seats we were in only held us two.
Our arrival in Berlin was smooth, there is very little hold baggage on Ryan Air flights and they insist on a 25 minute turn-round so the luggage appears quickly.
Having grabbed our wheeled bag off the turntable we emerged from the arrivals area and, having paid for a transfer, we were pleased to see a driver with a sign bearing the name Booth and two others. We were placed in a waiting area and two other couples joined us before we were escorted to a minibus and the driver placed us carefully in seats. We were the last in and the first out so it was only about half an hour before we were registering in the Hotel Castor. Over the next few days we were increasingly impressed by the hotel, its staff were all friendly and efficient without being in any way overpowering.
Having unpacked we set off into the nearest shopping area of Berlin, Kurfurstenstrasse, it was easy walking but throughout the stay the temperature never made it into positive numbers and minus five degrees chills the bones.
Julia, a famous reader of maps, was on the hunt for a famous church in the area, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche. We followed the map and the directions but despite thinking we were in about the right area we couldn’t spot the tall spire which was in all the illustrations in our guide books. About this time we recognised that the hexagonal building on our map was right opposite to us and supposedly next door to the church, we then realised that the church was there but surrounded by scaffolding and sheeting. We decided to follow signs for the “Story of Berlin” assuming it to be a cinema presentation which would at least take us out of the cold. We arrived at the “Story of Berlin” to find that it is a museum but it still took us out of the cold and it proved to be a great introduction to the history and development of the city. We also got our first sighting of the Berlin Wall, three preserved panels which were decorated with graffiti and dominated the first gallery of the museum. My recall of the exhibits is sketchy but we were impressed and spent a couple of enjoyable hours while getting some grasp of the city we would tackle over the next two days. We timed our tour of the museum badly as we emerged from it at 4.15 and the tours of the underground nuclear shelter were on the hour so we missed out on that treat.
As we returned towards the hotel we stopped off at the church and upon entering the older part things made more sense than they had from outside.
We learned that the original church on the site was built in the 1890s. It was badly damaged in a bombing raid in 1943. The present building, which consists of a church with an attached foyer and a separate belfry with an attached chapel, was built between 1959 and 1963. The damaged spire of the old church has been retained and its ground floor has been made into a memorial hall. After looking at and reading about the various parts of the memorial exhibition we went into the modern church. All round the church the walls are made of a concrete honeycomb containing 21,292 stained glass inlays and opposite the entrance, is a figure of Christ which is suspended above the altar. It is a very impressive space and with its huge organ playing it must be very deeply moving.
After the church we went into a large and very expensive department store, KaDeWe, on the sixth floor we found a massive food hall where amongst the many bars and specialist stalls we drank a very reasonable, in terms of taste, and less reasonable in price, cup of tea.
We then returned to the hotel and went out to eat close by as there was no restaurant in the hotel other than for breakfast. There was a choice of Spanish, Indian and Italian restaurants in a two block area – we chose the Italian and were very impressed. Julia had a mixed grill while I had salmon pasta with lobster sauce. We shared a dessert and while I had a large beer Julia had an almost equally large red wine. The waiter brought bread with a garlic dip before the mail courses arrived and after he insisted on us drinking flaming Sambuca. After all of this we were please to pass over 35 Euros which included a reasonable tip.
Walking back to the hotel I got the impression that it was not the most select area in town but it felt quite friendly and we were soon back in the hotel bar. While I deposited our coats in the room Julia was chatting with the barman and setting up two beers as a night cap.