Sunday in Berlin

Time flies when you're having a good time. So it's already Sunday, it hardly feels like we've been here more than a few days. But it's been six. Each day has been jam packed with walking and many new sights. Today was a perfect day for walking and we did a walk along the canal here in Kreuzeberg to the Deutsches Technikmuseum complete with a DC-3 on the roof. After much more walking including a stop at Heilig-Kreuz-Kirche, a neo Gothic evangelical church. we spent quite a bit of time at the Hallesches Tor Cemetery. Forty minutes later, we had investigated many of the grave markers including Mendelssohn's. That wasn't the easiest task but we managed it.

By that point we were definitely hungry and stopped at Mustafa's Gemuse Kebab for a yummy vegetarian kebab as opposed to the Burger King we passed a bit later.

Berliners were out in force taking advantage of what may be the last warm day of the year. At 74 degrees, everyone was happy. Next week the thermometer will drop to the low sixties by Friday.

More photos later. But in the meantime, be certain to check out the flickr photos from yesterday's Penny Parade, dedicated to fun without the conspicuous consumption.

Tuesday in Berlin

Today is Wednesday 23 September 2009. Yesterday was our arrival day. Our travel connections were very easy. That was a good thing because we had been up for quite some time. Sleep on the flight from Portland to Amsterdam was not the best although we obviously had rested. So much so that when we arrived at Tegel Airport here in Berlin from Amsterdam we decided to brave the public transit system immediately. We took the bus to Hauptbahnhof train station where we got the M41 bus that dropped us in the Kreuzeberg area near Dieffenbachstrasse, the street where we live. I was obviously a bit tired since many photo opportunities presented themselves and I didn't take advantage of them.

Meet Olga and Nadja...
Nadja and Olga are the women who we are exchanging with this time. Here's a shot of them when they visited us last week in Portland. Their home is quite lovely and is in the eclectic Kreuzeberg section of Berlin. On the Flickr link (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lavallelinn/sets/72157622437023946/), I've included a number of photos of their home and our walk around Kreuzeberg yesterday afternoon. I did capture this one to show us what time it was while we were out and about. Kreuzeberg has quite a Turkish population including a bazaar that we wandered into.

Sitting in Amsterdam Airport

Portland to Amsterdam -- once we were in the air, our flight was fairly typical of transcontinental trips. The actual departure was a bit different though. The flight attendants had secured the doors. We watched the inflight safety film -- how to secure your seat belt, the emergency exits, no smoking, the oxygen masks, the life vests, That was when the captain announced that the plane would be returning to the gate. It turns out that the plane had taken off without one of the passengers. Returning to the gate and having said passenger board the plane would take less time than removing said passenger’s luggage. One of the flight attendants suggested all of us who were seated give said passenger a round of applause since planes seldom return to the gate to have errant passengers board. So who might this character who boarded be? Our guess was that he was an airline employee. He was wearing a badge of some sort. And who else would be allowed to go through the boarding area and then exit out to then miss the plane -- certainly not one of us from the general public.

Yikes, it really is Tuesday morning. Not Monday night like this post says.

PDX Departure

We're sharing a gardenburger and an ale at PDX. We board in a half hour. Bill says fasten your seat belts.

Trip Planning -- Cat Version

Check out the table. Is there enough body language on Hobbes' part to alert you that he is not happy with us leaving on 21 September for Berlin? Or maybe it's the Florence portion of the trip or the three nights in Venice that he's upset about. In any case, he has staked out his territory on the Berlin map. There are four options to get from Tegel to Nadja and Olga's home in the Kreuzeberg section of Berlin. Option 1 is a taxi and will probably be what we take. Or we'll do the TXL to the M41. We'll see. Look for more posts as the days progress. We return on 16 October to Hobbes, his orange cat brother Calvin, and the prince of princes Django, the chihuahua who owns our hearts.