Berlin, Day 1

Guten Tag meine Damen und Herren!

I arrived safely in Berlin earlier this morning. Had a two hour flight from Nashville to Newark, then an over 4 hour layover before a nice, very lengthy-feeling 8 hour flight to Berlin. I was impressed with the plane to Berlin. Everyone had their own individual TV monitors to watch on-demand TV shows or play games. I kept myself entertained by watching four episodes of The Simpsons, two episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and three episodes of (and don’t laugh, I’m getting into this show) Legend of the Seeker, though those were on my laptop. Speaking of that, the plane had AC power so you could use your laptop without draining the battery. Nice. Also played some bowling (bad physics and horrible ball control) and mini-golf (I ended up 24 strokes over par after 9 holes; yes, it was that insane). So I managed to keep myself entertained. I did try to sleep, but as usual, I wasn’t able to. I managed maybe 45 minutes, tops.

Okay, you not here to read about that, so on to Berlin!

We arrived at the airport, breezed through customs, got on a bus, then got on a subway, then had to walk two more blocks to get to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel, just hoping they’d store our suitcases and carry-on luggage (and posters, which safely made the trip). The guy behind the counter said that he could check us in immediately instead (we were a good four hours early for check-in). So we got to see our room.

Interesting thing about the hotel: you need your room card key for everything. Using the elevator, getting in the room, turning on the lights in your room? Need the card key. Also, the heating lamp in the bathroom makes the entire room turn bright red. Pretty cool looking.

So after that, it was out and about in Berlin. Here’s what we did:
- Lunch at Einstein Kaffeehouse, where I had goulash

- Walked down Unter den Linden and saw the Brandenburg Gate

- Went to see the Reichstag, and saw one of the remaining pieces of the Berlin Wall

- Walked up through Tiergarten and saw the Siegessaute statue, then walked back through Tiergarten

- Stopped at the Holocaust Memorial

- Went back to the hotel for a little rest

- Walked to Alexanderplatz and had dinner at Schlogl’s, where I had schnitzel with fried potatoes

- Went up the Berliner Fernsehturm tower to see the entire city at dusk

One interesting thing about Berlin. It's 10PM outside, and it's still light out. The sun hasn't gone completely down yet. I just thought that was cool.

That was a long blog post. The rest shouldn’t be that long. I should just be telling you all what we did. Anyway, another day in Berlin tomorrow!

(This post was actually posted at 11:39PM Berlin time.)