September 25, 2015

 

 

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin

Up and at ‘em for a new adventure this morning.  We have a 5:00 AM wakeup with a quickie breakfast finishing up whatever is left in the house and out the door at 6:30.  We are using Uber for the first time and it is pretty slick.  They use all cabs here which is fine with us since we don’t have to wonder if there will be an Uber driver out and about at this hour.

We’re in plenty of time for our 8:50 flight to Krakow, Poland.  We have arranged a pick-up through our B&B in Krakow and a fellow is there with a nice Citroen for our half hour drive into the Old Town area.  We’re staying at Tango House which has the unusual distinction of being recommended by Rick Steves as well as being highly rated on Tripadvisor.  The building is ancient and the story is that it has a history as a Roman Bathhouse.  Our rooms aren’t ready (expected, it’s only 11:00 AM) but we drop the luggage and get lunch recommendations.

We start with a stroll around the Old Town Square.  The buildings are uniquely historic and the square is packed with easy-up vendors and food stands.  There are pierogis, pork knuckles, little cheese pies and pastries of all sorts.  All the outdoor tables are filled which requires us to find a sit-down restaurant for lunch.  We look at both of the places our hosts told us about and just pick one.  It seems like a lot of food to be eating at lunch but for 27 Zlotis (about 6 bucks) the prices seem fair.

John and Pat both have Buckwheat dishes, Pat’s topped with goulasch and John’s topped with chicken and mushrooms and both are served with red cabbage, cold green cabbage, horseradish and a cheese sauce.  Mary has the goulasch in a bread bowl (she borrows some horseradish from Pat) and we are all overstuffed when we leave.

We shouldn’t have mentioned the sunshine yesterday because it has now jinxed today.  The rain is starting to come down and it looks like it will continue for at least 36 hours.  These soakers are getting a little sickening.  Why doesn’t it just storm and get it over with.  We do wander a bit and visit the Benedictine Basilica.  It’s a real working church with a line for confession. We stay out as long as we can and now it is time to get checked in to our rooms anyway.  The two skinny young girls working the desk haul the biggest of our suitcases up the 56 steps to our rooms.  We’re glad to see them puffing instead of us. There are murals painted on the stairway ceiling, apparently from the Roman bath days.

The rain is discouraging which forces us to our rooms for a couple hours.  After a rest-up we decide to tackle it again despite the continuing wet weather.  We mill around the square and the place is busy with umbrellas, ponchos and just plain wet people.  It is Friday night in Krakow which has become a party destination for western Europeans who can get here with cheap airfare and find 1-euro beers and 5-euro meals. There were a dozen ladies on our plane this morning, all probably somewhere in their 50’s who were coifed and ready for a getaway.  Mary thought it might be a group facelift.  Catty.  Those who made their way here for the fun aren’t going to sit in their rooms, but sooner or later they will find a bar with cheap vodka shots and beers.

There are a couple major stages on opposite sides of the square. It sounds like a cliché but one has a polka band with lots of people bouncing up and down in the rain.  It just feels right like a ukulele feels right in Hawaii or a mariachi band is great in Mexico.  With rain gear and umbrellas it would seem we could be full participants in the fun but the cold and damp works its way into these old bones and it wears us down.

We don’t have a destination in mind for dinner tonight and at this stage we’re not going to be choosy.  We opt for warm and dry.  The restaurants are busy as expected but we snare a table right off the square at Apertif.  Pat has the usual rum & coke while John & Mary splurge with a $25 bottle of wine. John tries to order a $29 French St. Emilian red but our server insists that the cheaper wine is the better wine.  The first taste would indicate otherwise but maybe it needs to breathe.  The server obviously knows where the profits lie.  After further discussions with our server (“of course yes but…) John has the veal knuckle with gnocchi, Pat has a pasta with kielbasa and Mary has baked salmon with a vegetable risotto. All of them pretty darn good but dinners are getting quite expensive here—almost $10 apiece.

After we warm up over dinner we think we are brave enough for more time out but it doesn’t last long.  There is nothing happening on the big stage and our only entertainment is watching at the meat stands for a while.  Better than many other forms of entertainment we have tried.  Back to the room to read 6 pages before falling asleep.  Not much hope for tomorrow either.

What did we learn today? Eating Polish food while activity is being restricted by the weather reverses a lot of diet and exercise.

September 24, 2015

 

 

Berlin Relaxed

Same story for breakfast this morning.  We will miss our kitchen as we move along, but considering the huge breakfast layouts we have had in the past there won’t be a big problem.  We’re going to split up today as Pat is going to go back to some of the WWII sites from yesterday and John and Mary are doing another geography tour of Berlin.  We’ll see if Pat contributes her report later but probably not.

We (John & Mary) go up the River Spree to visit the sites to our immediate north.  We come to a dead end at a massive construction site that is going to be the new home of the Berlin Orchestra as well as a music school.  Of course it has a huge dome.

Doing a spin move we rotate a couple blocks to Humboldt University.  We mentioned this earlier as the place where students burned 20,000 books one night in 1933 as a show of solidarity with the Nazi party.  There are students milling about but none are waving gasoline cans or lighters.  We spend some time meandering through the campus and out onto Museum Island.

This is an area between the canal by our apartment and the River that does form sort of an island.  There are rows of massive buildings with museums of various categories and eras, each more impressive than the last.  This is also the site of the Berlin Cathedral that started Catholic but wound up something altogether different—we just don’t know what.  It seems to non-denominational but it is more tourist site than church.

The area is also the neighborhood of Freiderich’s great architectural works.  The new construction including the new music hall will all be designed to fit into the style of the centuries old buildings where Freiderich still keeps his eye on the neighborhood from his perch on his bronze horse in the middle of Under bin Linden. Construction cranes are everywhere in Berlin.  As an oil-consuming, not oil producing country the German economy has certainly fared well with the recent downturn in oil prices (as opposed to Norway and Russia).  Things are hopping.

We have a new plan for our assault on dinner tonight at Zum Nussbaum.  We’re going early to beat the crowd which means just a bite of lunch to hold us over.  Just north of Alexanderplatz we grab a sidewalk table and Mary picks out a giant pretzel that is coated with Parmesan and pumpkin seeds.  It looks great but can’t live up to the appearance.  It will get us to dinner.

The rest of the afternoon is spent exploring Alexanderplatz.  The subway, the gourmet food store, the almost-ready Oktoberfest village preparing for tomorrow and various shops all make the agenda.  We have worked our way back past the Berlin City Hall into the Nickolai area and to the river.  The sun has been out all day (gasp) and it is a perfect afternoon to sit by the river at an outdoor café and sip a beer in the rare sunshine.  The tour boats on the river are packed today and all the attitudes including ours have improved.

We gather back at the apartment about 4:30 and have to have a hurried traditional cocktail before implementing our new strategy to show up early at Zum Nussbaum.  The joint is wide open and since the weather is still welcoming we take an outside table.  Our rather brusk server throws three menus on the table, we order three beers and then she disappears for 15 minutes.  We ask about our beers and she looks at us like we have three heads.  “Yah!” she says and continues with the stare with pen and pencil ready for our food order.  OK, so we order the food and after a bit she does reappear with beers.  I guess we’ve made up.

John has the pork schnitzel with a fried egg on top, salad and fried potatoes, Pat has a goulasch soup and meatball mit brod and Mary has the meatball with potato salad.  Everything was delicious so maybe the wait was worthwhile.  We almost get a smile from our server, almost.  She is waiting on about a dozen tables so there is no time to chit-chat and that seems to be the norm.  We need to lower our expectations and get over it.

It is an early wake-up in the morning so now that we have accomplished Zum Nussbaum our work in Berlin is finished.  We are packed and ready for the next phase as we set the alarms and hit the bed.

What did we learn today?  Berlin is really big.  It is the second largest city in Europe (after London) and larger that Paris, Rome etc.  Still too big for us to get our hands around but we got just a taste of the culture and a hint of the free-wheeling (see the movie Cabaret) attitude.

September 23, 2015

 

 

Berlin in History

After our get acquainted tour yesterday our plan is to revisit the most interesting sights by foot today.  For that we need some energy.  We have brown bread, cheeses, meat, vegetables, fruit, yogurt and muesli in various amounts to build up to a big day.  No need to be cautious.

We go west from the apartment through a lovely area of shops and restaurants.  The streets are packed and the economy seems to be just fine.  We go left on Friedrichstrasse down to Checkpoint Charlie.  There is a great memorial wall with tons of cold war history.  Most of the incidents that kept everyone on edge from the late 40’s through early 60’s are detailed with descriptions in English and photos as well as physical memorabilia.  They have done a good job with it all except for the hokey guard shack with over-the top German actors portraying American GIs. It seems a little silly for the context.

We move back to the West again to the Nazi War Crimes and Torture museum.  Again there is a memorial wall running parallel to an actual section of the Berlin wall.  This display details the accounts of individuals and groups who were persecuted from the beginning of the rise to power of the Nazis in the early 30’s through the war years.  The seeds of the movement were flourishing during the depression with rampant unemployment and widespread poverty.  Everyone wanted someone to blame and the Nazi’s provided the culprits.  The insane, the crippled, gypsies, negroes, foreigners and homosexuals all contributed to the dire straits of the average German while the Jews held all the money and were the chief manipulators responsible for the economic woes of the country.  The downtrodden German workers now found out that someone else was responsible for all of their problems and were happy to join the “gang” that was going to right their wrongs.

In addition to the extensive wall there is a full-fledged museum that is free.  We need lunch so pass on the building to find a sandwich.  Pat will revisit tomorrow.  We now go north past the German Parliament to Potsdamerplatz which is another Berlin “Downtown.”  This is the home of the spectacular Sony center and the Ritz-Carlton that was the first luxury hotel built after the war.  When we were looking for apartments the price rose based on proximity to Potsdamerplatz so we assumed this was the actual center and maybe it is.  It is sandwiches all around plus one pretzel and one coke-light at a sidewalk café/bakery.  Not as good as yesterday but not bad.

We take a walk through the Sony Center, a massive retail and entertainment complex, and ooh and aah all the way through.  Pat finds a gelato for dessert.  Pieces of the original buildings have been preserved behind a wall of glass on the first floor of the Center as a nod to the local historic preservation groups. Moving to the Ritz, the lobby, bar and dining rooms are wonderfully retro which is more preservation than remodel.

We keep moving north to the memorial for murdered Jews.  There are 228 pillars of various heights aligned like headstones in a cemetery to commemorate the dead.  A nice visual tribute.  We can hear music from a couple more blocks north and find a rock concert/awareness event taking place at the Brandenburg Gate, another cold war border crossing.  The music is really good with what seems to be an American band and the folks in the crowd are trying to get into spirit (as much as Germans can).  No offense.  The cause has something to do with hospital workers which explains the number of medical types rocking out in the audience.

Time to turn back to the east down Under den Linden through embassy row.  The U.S. Embassy is right next to the Brandenburg Gate with the French across the street and others along the way.  The Russians, of course have a monster building that is about 2 blocks long.  There is some sort of activity with a line-up of black limos in front of one of the hotels and rows of police in cars and on motorcycles.  Someone pops out of the hotel and a few cars go speeding off down the street surrounded by a police escort.  We hang out for a while to catch the next act but there isn’t one, at least not for now.

Continuing east towards the apartment we pass through the Gendarmenmarkt, a broad plaza with a huge French church on one side and a huge German church on the other, both built to equal dimensions.  A few hundred years ago the Germans invited 200,000 Huguenots, who were persecuted Protestants in France, to relocate to Berlin and built this church especially for them.  It’s impossible to ignore the similarity of that situation to today’s Syrian refugee crisis where Germany has once again stepped up to welcome the dispossessed.

From here it is easy skating back to the apartment. We’re running late but don’t care after our late lunch.  Time for a 45 minute sit-down before gathering again.

The plan is for a quick cocktail and then another pass at Zum Nussbaum where we couldn’t get in last night.  Same thing tonight.  It is a small place so it is not unusual that it would be full and since they don’t take reservations you have to just keep trying. It better be good if we ever get in.  Never unprepared we have yet another plan “B.”  It is Mutter Hoppe about another block through the Nickolai area.  We do luck into a table there as one table empties as we are standing inside looking around.  Our server gets us menus and then disappears for about 15 minutes.  When she finally comes back we are ready to order beers and dinners right now.  She is wise enough to run and get the beers right away so now we are no longer looking at our watches.

John has a perfect Sauerbraten with great sauce, 2 baseball sized dumplings and red cabbage with apples that has obviously been simmering all day.  Mary and Pat both have a chicken dish with a cheesy creamy sauce and a pile of nutmeg spiced spinach with mashed potatoes.  The food is perfect and we survive the service.  The Plan B’s are working out for us.

There is a ¾ moon over the River Spree tonight as we make our way home.  We (almost) never have a bad day on our trips.

What did we learn today? People will buy into anything as long as you pander to their most basic instincts.

September 22, 2015

 

 

 

Berlin First Taste

Bonn was the capital of West Germany during the cold war years and East Berlin was the capital of East Germany.  West Berlin was shared by the Brits, French and Americans but was completely landlocked within East Germany.  The Russians controlled all of East Berlin.  After the fall of the wall the two Germanies were reunited with Berlin becoming the new capital of the restored country.

Our stop on Tauentzienstrasse makes it seem like we are “downtown” but as we are finding there are a lot of “downtowns.”  Pat has a full memory card in her camera and there is an electronic store across the street.  The person in the camera department is a pretty good English speaker (which we always find amazing) and wonders how old the camera is.  He is skeptical when Pat tells him two years because there is a 256K memory card inside—prehistoric.  Anyway she gets loaded up with something from this millennium and a couple new batteries to make it all work.

We take a fun stroll through this bustling area and wind up in an open plaza with lots of food stands.  Pat has heard about the ubiquitous “Curry Wurst”—there are stands everywhere—and she and John go for it.  Or at least John does while Pat bails out and has a Brat.  Coward.  It is an acquired taste and John is happy to check it off the list.

Mary has prowled all the food stands finding nothing of interest, meaning that she hasn’t found a pretzel stand.  We continue to mill around and eventually go back to a bakery/sandwich shop we saw earlier where Mary finds a fresh baked pretzel, Pat finds a pastry and John gets a real sandwich.  All are delicious and we remember the name of the place for future reference—Kamp’s.

We catch the next bus for the hop-on portion of the trip.  It takes us past several of the cold war sites of interest which we will revisit tomorrow and we eventually wind up back at Alexanderplatz.  There is a Radisson Park Inn, the same brand as in Tallinn, with a 40^th floor observation deck for a few euros.  We go up and get a couple beers to take in the sights and are starting to piece together some understanding of the geography.

It is late afternoon as we stroll the long way around Alexanderplatz which is a huge area of shopping, festivals, and general hanging out.  They are setting up for the local version of Oktoberfest which begins on Friday, the day we leave. The Oktoberfest Village takes up a pretty large area but a small fraction of the Platz—why oh why can’t our city fathers and mothers (Minneapolis!!) understand the value of public celebrations where good behavior eliminates bad behavior.  Yes, we are talking about Nicollet Mall. They need to get out more.

We allocate 40 minutes to R&R before meeting again at 6:30 for an apartment cocktail and then going to dinner.  There is a much ballyhood historic German pub (Zum Nussbaum) in the Nickolai district right across the River Spree from us.  Every table is taken when we arrive which means we go to our second choice, Georgbrau in the next block.  John has the big time Schweinhaxe (pork hock) with kraut and fried potatoes while the ladies enjoy the Bratwurst plate with kraut and a different kind of potato.  Plenty of beer to go around.

We are early to bed these days so no hanging out late.  The beds are perfect for a little reading before lights out.

What did we learn today? Whatever you break you have to fix which is why Berlin continues to reinvent itself 70 years after the end of WWII.

t

 

September 21, 2015

 

 

Wasting a day again

Finally the 6 night string of one nighters is over.  We’re off to Berlin today for a four night stay which will seem like heaven. The flight connection will be a little tight so we plan to be at the gangway at 7:30 for an 8:00 docking. The Anastasia rolls into Helsinki right on time and we are behind only 3 other people to disembark.  If we spoke Russian we would know that the first class passengers were assembling in another hallway.

We glumly watch as about 75 people get off before us and we know that the passport control line will be way backed up, and we’re right.  The lines are long but we keep moving steadily.  We get through at 8:30 and have booked a driver to get us to the airport for a 10:55 flight to Riga, Latvia and then on to Berlin.  At 4:00 AM this morning it occurred to John in one of those wake up thoughts that we told the car company that we would be arriving on the Princess Maria, not the Anastasia.  So a hurried text to the company at 6:45 and hope for the best.

No problem.  The driver was there with a little sign and we reach the airport at 9:05, almost 2 hours before flight time.  We’re on Air Baltic and have a 3 across on a 737 to Riga and then 2 and 1 in a Dash-8 to Berlin with an hour layover in Riga.  Pat isn’t feeling well on the second leg so Mary and John pair up while Pat has a recuperative nap.

We gain an hour on the way to Berlin so arrive at 3:00 local time. Today we have been on a ship, two airport buses, a cab and two flights, and have been crammed and stalled and ignored and generally pushed around.  The plan was to get an air bus to Alexanderplatz and then walk 20 minutes to the apartment but there is no way we are going through any more punishment.  We catch a cab for door to door service and it is the best 26-euro investment of the trip so far.

We had called our VRBO renter, Ina, when we landed and she is waiting outside for us at the apartment.    It is a lovely 2-bed, 2-bath in the Mitte section of what used to be East Berlin near Alexanderplatz.  High ceilings, spacious bathrooms, a full kitchen and best of all a washer/dryer.  Mary begins the laundry service immediately sorting out two weeks of packed and repacked and repacked clothes to get load number one in the washer.  John gets all the computer connections established and Pat begins work on getting the lay of the land.

Once organized we go along a canal and under a major street to get to the neighborhood supermarket. Our mission is to load up with breakfast and beverages and all is accomplished.  Mary turns the washer into a dryer (there is a learning curve with our euro washer/dryer combo) and moves to the next phase before thinking about dinner.  The laundry equipment is pretty small so we can envision about 5 three-hour loads in our future.

Dinner is next door at the “Rotisserie Weinbar” primarily because of ease of access.  There are some big groups coming in with reservations and we are relegated to a raised counter in front of the kitchen.  Mary and Pat split a roast chicken and John has the ribs with gratineed potatoes.  Our server is very attentive and personable when around but she gets absolutely slammed and we don’t see her as often as we should by our standards.  The food was good but there was no follow through, a salad was missed, the wine order was a mistake and there was no one to fix it.  Our server was a victim of the system tonight. 

Home to bed after a day that was only devoted to getting from one place to another.  Not fun but this will happen again in the next 8 weeks.

What did we learn today?  We reinforced our belief that the American system of restaurant service is far and away the best in the world for the owner, the staff and the customers.  If anyone falls into the “greedy owners should just pay the servers a living wage so we don’t have to tip” camp, please see us after class so we can explain how and why it works for everyone.