Day One: The Little Differences

When I arrived in Berlin, I didn’t really know what to expect, I was just very excited to experience a new foreign adventure. Our flight was uneventful although poor Peter was about ready to keel over. Because he had to attend the visitation services for an uncle in County Mayo the night before we left, he was operating on less than 2 hours of sleep. I’d been too excited to sleep well but at least I was operating on more like 5 hours of sleep. The result was that we were both tired and more than a little cranky.

We took the Airport Express train from Schönefeld Airport to Zoo Station. The train arrived right on time, as German trains are wont to do, and we piled on. It was a nice, clean, modern double-decker train with very flexible seating arrangements. The train moved at a good clip and only stopped at the major stations. From the train, we could see a lot of graffiti and a couple of landmarks, like the TV tower and the glass dome of the Reichstag.

At our stop, we struggled out to the street with our bags. I made the executive decision that since we were both so wrecked, we should take a cab to the hotel. I knew the hotel was close, but I had a nightmare vision of leading us the wrong way and then one or both of us having a meltdown. Peter told me, as we slid into the cab, that I would do the talking.

I told the cabbie the address of the hotel and he shook his head and said “No! That’s too close.” I explained to him that we had heavy luggage but he didn’t care. For a minute, I thought he was really going to refuse to take us. Instead, he just ranted about it bitterly and then topped it off with a vehement “Scheiβe!” The cab ride took about 5 minutes, cost 4 euro and resulted in more ear-bending about how he’d waited at the station for an hour for a fare that wasn’t worth it.

Not exactly the Welcome Wagon, but at least we were at the hotel. We got checked in and then crammed into a closet-sized elevator to get to our third-floor room. Or, should I say, our third-floor suite. And what a sweet suite it was. We had two rooms with 15-foot high ceilings, very tall windows, and hardwood floors. One of the rooms had access to a little loft seating area and grand glass doors out onto a small balcony. This was definitely a case of lucky-draw, since I booked the hotel on the Internet and we were paying a special Internet rate. (a mind-boggling 55 euro a night, inclusive of tax and breakfast.)

My general philosophy on hotel rooms is that we’re not going to be spending much time in them, so size doesn’t matter but cost and location do. I loved the location of the hotel and the nice suite was just a bonus. It also took the sting out of the crappy taxi ride.

After a delicious lunch of beer and bratwurst at a tavern near the hotel, we stopped into the KaDeWa, which is basically the German answer to Harrod’s or Macy’s, to pick up some electricity adapters. Peter went back to the hotel for a nap and I did some exploring.

First exploration stop? The Victory monument in the Tiergarten Park, of course. I didn’t realize that you could go inside the monument, so I happily paid my € 2.20 to climb the 300 spiral steps to the upper observation deck. From the deck, I could look out at a dwarfed Brandenburg Gate and the glittery dome of the Reichstag. My next stop was the Gate and then Potsdamer Platz.

My overwhelming impression, that first day, was of how different and foreign everything was . It’s like in Pulp Fiction, where Vincent tells Jules that the funny thing about Europe is the little differences. “I mean they got the same sh** over there that they got here, but it's just – just there it's a little different .” On that first day, all I could see were the little differences.

Take something as simple as toilet handles. Instead of having small push buttons or silver levers, the toilets have large white panels that you push. In the U-Bahn and S-Bahn stations, instead of having crappy little fast food outlets, they have food kiosks where you can get all manner of freshly baked breads and pastries.

The streets are nearly devoid of litter, but there are sections where every square inch of a building façade is covered with graffiti. People seem to bring their dogs everywhere with them, especially on the trains. And not just little lap dogs – any kind of dog. (I saw a woman get on the train with a Harlequin Great Dane and a boxer – we’re talking at least a combined 180 pounds of dog right there.)

This was my first time visiting a country where English isn’t a major language. Even though English is not the official language of Holland, everyone speaks it and except for signage, it is the default language in shops and restaurants. This is not the case in Germany, where we soon learned that saying “Ich spreche kein Deutsche” or “Ich spreche nur biβchen Deutsche” would inevitably result in sympathetic smiles and nods, followed by friendly questions asking where we were from. Auf Deutsche, naturlich.

In the evening, we met our friends near the Unter Den Linden station (right in front of the gigantic Russian Embassy, actually) and went to dinner at a cool restaurant/book shop near the Brandenburg Gate. I had a delicious potato stew for a starter and disappointing spaetzel. (Disappointing only because my mother makes a mean pot of spaetzel and these were nowhere near as good as hers.) A nice dunkel bier rounded out the meal. We had a nice night and the dinner, although expensive by German standards, was actually fairly reasonable by Dublin standards.