We’re definitely getting better at moving around the city, at least our part of it. We’ve been on the train (S-Bahn) a few times, now, and it seems as though our local station (the Nordbahnhof, for those of you keeping score at home) has several of the major cross-city lines going through it. We can take any of the trains here and go directly to Friedrichstrasse (museum island, though it’s easier to walk), Unter den Linden (Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag, Holocaust Memorial), Potsdamer Platz (Sony Center, Arkaden shopping mall)…even on to Julius-Leber-Brucke which is in Schoneberg where Jan and Verena and Sonja live. And by the way, that is a MUCH more, shall we say, complete part of town. Here it feels like you have to walk around and kind of search for things to find what you need (like, say, a bank that has people in it?) but there you can find everything—or at least it seems that way.
Yesterday we took a little sight-seeing trip to the center of the city. We still have to do things in small doses; we started at the Sony Center (really not so exciting) and the big shopping mall (ice cream in the shape of a hamburger or spaghetti is really still ice cream for lunch) and then decided to head for more serious environs. We walked along the route of the Wall, between the Tiergarten and the Holocaust memorial, looked at the Brandenburg gate, and strolled over to the Reichstag. Before you assume that we’d had a big day, remember that we didn’t go IN any of these places. As I said, small doses. We’ll have to go back for a more thorough look when we have some visitors to take there.
Throughout this walk the sky was off and on cloudy, wet, sunny, and windy. It dumped once or twice for a minute or two but then the sun was out. As we headed back to go get on the S-Bahn again, we passed the “statue men” who were doing their best to raise money from the tourists. There had been some sort of confusion during the rainshowers over various cups of money and while the clown was no longer shouting at the bronzed guy, he was now a VERY grumpy looking clown statue and the bronze guy had given up and was chatting with the silver guy over in a doorway. Kind of surreal, to say the least.
Anyway from there we went back to our most helpful cousins house, were treated to a lovely lunch, piled a whole bunch of stuff in a taxi van, and came home in time to meet our messenger guy delivering our passports. Now at least we’re registered with the city as living here. By now it was time to eat dinner so we headed off to a small (almost local) pub/restaurant. I’m sorry to say that the beer was disappointing but the food and atmosphere were outstanding and made me look forward to getting more familiar with life in Berlin.
We did get the TV that was loaned to us set up in time to watch the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. The kids discovered today that not only do they show entire events (a LONG bike race, every heat in the swimming races, etc.) but they show them more than once. Why doesn’t American TV understand that it’s more fun this way?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment