Berlin

Anyone that has been to Berlin knows that it is a fabulous city. Full of history, art, flavor, culture and beauty. We traveled there last weekend and had possibly one of the strangest trips I have ever had. It was not a reflection on Berlin but more on us. I'll tell you about Berlin after telling you about what made our trip so strange. 

We have lived in Germany for three years and Berlin has always been on my radar. I have heard stories about the dining scene and the night life as well as seeing the place that played such an important role in history. It took me a while to convince my husband to go. It's a 5-7 hour drive from where we live and never really fit into our schedule. When we have  long weekends we tend to go someplace we need to fly to and it's just a bit too long for a regular weekend. Now that we are at the end of our time here, I had to see Berlin. I saw that our base was doing a bus trip and I though this would be perfect. One overnight in Berlin and no driving. Two weeks before the trip I got a call that the trip had changed. They were now doing a day and back. No overnight. We still decided to stick with it since this was our only chance to see Berlin. What resulted was two very tired adults (bus from midnight, arrive at 9 am, depart back at 9 pm and arrive back home at 5 am) who folded their long legs into bus seats built for children for two nights in a row. No shower, no clothes change. Nada for 30 hours. To make matters worse, we had horrible tour guides. They were only bus leaders, we were on our own during the day, thank god, but one was bossy and condescending  and the other was new. The bossy one was mean to the bus driver and snotty to the new girl and bossy to everyone else. After our day in Berlin, we all board the bus and the only people missing are the two guides. The bus driver decides to leave them. They call and he goes back for them and rather than apologize, they say they had a "medical" emergency. No further explanation or visible injuries (they ran to the bus). The trip home was extremely uncomfortable as the bus driver was pissed off. 

All that aside, Berlin was amazing. We followed our Rick Steves guide book and saw all the major sights. The weather was perfect. We don't usually do museums or sight seeing trips, we like to wander, loosly follow Rick's guide, enjoy the sights, eat the food, stop for drinks. We sat in the sun for lunch and had aprol spritz and curry wurst. We walked through an African festival in the old east Berlin and stopped for Savanna cider. We wandered down the river and watched the boats go by. After checkpoint Charlie, we stopped at the outdoor beach and had a Mexican beer. One tradition we have when we travel is to try to find the best wine bar in town. We managed to find a good one off of

Gendarmenmarkt. It was a fabulous trip and I can't wait to go back to Berlin one day. Just not on a bus!