Day train to Berlin

The train ride to Berlin from Prague yesterday was interesting. It’s the first time I’ve taken a train in 20 years, when I rode from Dresden to Nürnberg, when my UK travel agents had booked me into a “non-smoking seat” in a car that, about three rows back, had a smoking section. It was separated from “non-smoking” by a partition with an automatic door. Every time a smoker went to and from the designated area, smoke gushed into the non-smoking part.

That was pre-EU, of course. The entire car was non-smoking this time, which was certainly an improvement; the journey lasted more than four hours, so…

The train was also equipped with very good wi-fi, which (as you know) was a sore spot for me at the hotel. (The buses to/from Terezín also had wi-fi, and USB power ports. They were quite comfortable, very sleek; what I found fascinating was that, with all their mod cons, they were manual transmissions. Huh.) I noticed that some people spent the entire journey with their noses in their devices. Chacun à son goût, I guess.

Mon goût was to look out the window for most of the trip, and wonder if this approximated the route for the Germans in 1938 and 1939, when they commenced their lebensraum initiative.

An interesting thing was that—while we were in the Czech Republic, the automated station announcements were in Czech, then German, then English. When we crossed into Germany, a human made the announcements in German and English. Czech was ditched. Also—the German announcements before we hit the larger stations included information on platforms for onward connections. The English ones just had, “The next station is [whatever]. Implied was, “You’re on your own figuring out where you need to go to catch your next train.”

Wilkommen in Deutschland, eh?

(Also interesting was that the very useful in-car monitors showing you what was coming up next, and next after that and after that again. In Czechia, the “Current” field, next to “Scheduled” showed the revised ETA for the next stop. Since we started out ten minutes late, that field displayed accordingly. In red. Once we moved into Germany, the first—human, not automated—announcement sniffed that we were behind schedule—obviously due to Czech laggardness. But they just skipped the whole “Current” thing altogether. From that point on, it was just blank.)

It was a dull, overcast day, but even so, the scenery was enchanting. We followed a river for much of the way, and you could see how little towns and villages grew along it—it would have been a means of transportation in the days before mechanized vehicles.

And sights like these made me think of the youthful journey of traveler, war hero, writer and bon vivant Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Dresden Hauptbahnhof was a spectacular sight, but I was glad I wasn’t getting off there. That was the scene of a friend being run into with someone’s wheely-bag, getting a blood clot and spending about a week in a decidedly unscenic hospital. Forewarned is fore-armed.

Also, I’ve been to Dresden; I like it fine, but I’m for Berlin on this trip.

Well, when I arrived in Berlin, at a train station the size of Bakersfield, I somehow managed to make my way to the S-Bahn (which was a modern wonder in itself; they’re signed, but that station is a freaking forest of signage), and determine which line I needed, and which direction. I got onto the right train, with my really heavy bag—those Germans, bless them, align the platform perfectly with the floor of the car, and there’s no more of a gap between them than you’d find in the groove of a tram line). In two stops, I was out into the big city.

Confession—I did not pay for that ride. I’ll get the concierge at my hotel to tell me how to get the tickets, and I’ll just buy an extra one and not use it. A girl has to know her limitations, and I was hitting mine at that hauptbahnhof.

Google Maps is not always your friend, I have found, but eventually I made it to the hotel (which was where my friends Dick and Carolyn stayed on that fateful journey). I have to laugh—the Radisson Blu is on Karl Liebknecht-Straße. A business-focused corporate hospitality superpower is on the street named for a Spartacist revolutionary who was murdered, along with Rosa Luxembourg, by the Freikorps in 1919.

I have an “Aquarium View” room. Which is interior facing, but filling a big chunk of the atrium is indeed a big-ass multi-story aquarium. Viz:

I rather think the novelty of looking out on the fish is going to wear off pretty soon, and I wish I’d chosen a street-facing room, so I could look out at the city, but c’est la vie. They turn off the lights at night, so the fish can get whatever shuteye they get. I wonder what they feed them, though?

Since I’d spent much of the day on my butt, I got some pointers from the concierge (who actually seems to know his concierge onions). Apparently maps are outré; everyone has smartphones. I told him my smartphone hadn’t been exceptionally smart getting me here. Besides, I’m a girl who likes redundant systems.

Anyhow, I took a stroll down Unter den Linden to the Brandenberger Tor, past the Adlon Hotel, which is where all the correspondents used to hang out back in the pre-war days.

I was rather taken by this equestrian statue; I guessed it was probably Friedrich II, and indeed it was.

And then back here for a spot of supper and a good soak in another great Euro tub. Now to figure out A Plan for this city.