First Day Out In Berlin

After another long travel day (which went from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.) we got to Berlin, the capital of Germany, yesterday, but didn’t do anything after checking into the hotel because it it was so late.  Today we headed out to Alexanderplatz, a large sqaure in the Mitte (city center) district of Berlin, where we tried some German schnitzel and went to the Berliner dom, an impressive Baroque style cathedral near Museum Island.  Not an especially exciting first day in Berlin, but it was nice and relaxing We’re staying at the Best Western Hotel City Ost, in a suburb of east Berlin called Friedrichshain.  When I made the booking I was unsure about staying in a suburb instead of city center, but there was a huge price difference (our room is only €36 per night) and we figured we could use the subway system to get around easily.  As it turns out, this suburb is actually not that far from city center, and there’s an S-bahn station right outside the hotel so getting around isn’t a problem.  It’s actually worked out well because the Best Western is nicer than the Ibis hotels we’ve been staying at, and there’s a number of restaurants and shops around so we have everything we need!

The metro system in Berlin is perhaps the most difficult to understand out of all the metro systems we have used so far. They use a mixture of S-Bahn and U-Bahn, which connect together at some stations and not at others.  There can be several lines which use the same number but go to different destinations (we saw like 3 different S70 trains), so you have to read the sign on the front of the train or at the station (which can be difficult at larger station where several trains come through because they don’t post which train is coming until the last minute). I don’t know why they don’t give each line a different number and stop, it would be so much easier to understand! 

Fortunately for us, there is only one line which connects our hotel to Alexanderplatz, where we can transfer to other lines for different destinations.  For our first day, we decided to keep it simple and just go to Alexanderplatz and explore the area.  When we got off the S-Bahn, we wandered over to the Rathaus (town hall), and had a look around inside before heading across the street to get some lunch.  We decided to try a place called Rathaus café, and ordered the Schnitzel, curry wurst, and blond beer mixed with sprite, which was quite interesting!  The schnitzel wasn’t as good as the one I had at Saran Essbar, but it was ok and again we were happy that the bill for two dishes with two drinks came out to less than what two entrees cost in Paris.

The Berlin dom was a nice way to start our sightseeing in Berlin – for a 5 euro entrance fee you can access the interior of the cathedral, the crypt, and climb 270 steps to the top of the dome for a nice view of the city.  We found the crypt (which has more than 80 sarcophagi of Prussian royals) to be one of the nicest we’ve seen, with labels for each of the sarcophagi to tell you who it contains.  It was strange to see so many childrens-sized tombs, but I guess they just had different life expectancies back then.  After a rather somber time in the dimly lit crypt, it was refreshing to climb to the top of the dome and see Berlin from a bird’s eye view!