Berlin: Day 1 (or maybe 2)

Anna arrived in the morning. Had a cup of coffee while waiting for her at the hotel. After grabbing the gear we might need, we went into town.

Due to an operation on her knee, Anna was still terribly incapable of walking at length and stairs were cumbersome to overtake. Needless to say we took breaks and hoped for the best.

Another surprising development was the imposing piece of hardware that she brought along for the trip -a Nikon D80 with the kind of lens that would put penis envy to shame. Nothing screams ladylike like a dashing young woman arching sideways in order to get a clean shot of a cathedral while being arched in a certain angle. It's a really neat toy and I can't wait for the photos (she erroneously expected Macbooks to come with card readers and she forgot the micro usb cable to connect the monster).

From the average tourist point of view, Berlin can be a seriously sterile place. Loads of semi-interesting feats of architecture and the occasional grim reminder that the (great)grandparents of today's generation screwed up with the whole Hitler thing. Pretty odd to walk out of a subway building and get confronted with a checklist of concentration camps on what be best described as a lost traffic sign. It's like putting up memo stickies on the office buildings reminding the workforce to be embarrassed about Hitler. I think everybody got the point already -if not, will they ever?

The weather sucked. Cold. Rainy. Windy. Next time the two of us go off for the weekend, we'll head for the mediterranian area. We ambled about the Zoo and the adjoining Tiergarten, then headed over to Potzdammer platz, which too had been paved over by an architect blitzkrieg from the 1990s. The Liebknecht monument looked uncomfortably out of place.

We went back to the hotel around 16:00, making a pit stop for some baby clothes on the way (that felt new and uncomfortable for me). Anna's slacking off with a book for a while before dinner. I had to discover the gruesome fact that the WLAN in the hotel isn't installed yet. No telling if I sent that e-mail to Joel, let alone being able to do something about it. Fingers crossed.

Oh well. Stocked up on some drinks, found to my joy that the store sold Kölsch, so I'm going to have to insult the local beer market by just drinking what I like :) We're off to Charlottenburg in the evening for dinner and a club. Ought to be fun.

On the way to Berlin

Mental note: trams in Amsterdam are best avoided when you need to be somewhere. At a reasonable time. After waiting something close to infinity for a ride to Central Station, I just buckled under the stress and jumped into the first taxi I could find. This turned out to be a fortunate choice for a change -I made it into the train to Berlin with hardly a moment to spare.

No reservations were made, but they appeared not to be necessary -the train is almost half deserted at any time. I tried making up for the rough night by sleeping in the seats, but they're not exceptionally comfortable.

I'm still a bit divided by my decision to head over to Berlin, as I am pretty good at doing things for the wrong kinds of reasons. However, it will be great to see Anna again and so far people have been absolutely positive that we'll make do in the city. Hotel booked, close by Tiergarten, which is nice enough. She's arriving tomorrow morning, so I'll probably go pick her up, dump the bags at the hotel and we’ll see where we’ll end up. No doubt somewhere crazy.

I'm probably going in for an early one tonight. Bloody seats here leave me worse for wear than the drinking binge with the people from Us Media left me.