Ultimate Europe Trip 2016 Day 6: Are You Not Into Trains!?
After hitting the publish button on Day 5 of the #UltimateEuropeTrip2016 post, I put away the laptop, packed up everything I could, and Jenn and I went to sleep. We knew that today would be a big travel day, and as such we wanted to get as much rest as possible. Sadly we are still waking up at some point during the night, usually watching Netflix before falling back asleep.
A little before 7AM we awoke to an angry iPhone alarm and slowly, and groggily got ready for the day. We made our way down to the hotels breakfast at around 7:30 and unlike the last couple of days which had been packed, today the restaurant was almost completely empty. We were seated and our order was taken right away. Jenn had the scrambled egg and pancakes and I had a poached egg with avocado and toast. We tried to fill up as much as possible as we knew we would be on a train for most of the day.
From breakfast we made our way back up to our room, did last minute packing, and went back downstairs to check-out. One of the many perks of staying at the Art'otel was that its literally across the street from the train station. We grabbed our bags, crossed the street and entered the train station. Ten minutes later we were standing on platform 10B and waiting for our train to arrive.
We planned it perfectly and only a couple of minutes later the train arrived and we hopped on board the first class cabin. Jenn and I said we would pack light for this trip and to be honest we both failed. I struggled to get both bags up on the train. Luckily once aboard we went to our compartment of six first class seats, I hoisted the bags above our chairs and didn't have to think about them for the next six hours.
Every train we take on this trip will be slightly different. The train we boarded this morning from Amsterdam had around a dozen first class compartments each with six seats and a door. When we first boarded the train in Amsterdam there was five of us. Around forty five minutes later it was just Jenn and I and it remained that way for the next four hours. It wasn't until Hanover, Germany that we gained two more in our compartment.
The train ride itself was great, albeit just a tad bit too long. At least for me. For nearly five of the six hours Jenn was asleep. For some reason Jenn just loves sleeping on trains. You only need to look back to our train ride to Reims a couple of weeks ago. That was only a 45 minute train ride and she still passed out. Luckily she really needed the sleep and it gave me a chance to read my book (Golden Son by Pierce Brown) and take in the beautiful German countryside.
We arrived in Berlin a little after 3PM and made our way to a taxi and onto our hotel, the Pullman Berlin Schweizerhof. Although not as close as the Art'otel was to the train station, the Pullman was only a short ten minute taxi ride from the gorgeous Berlin train station. We quickly got checked in, did a room tour and immediately went back out to explore the city.
To be honest as I'm writing this I'm not sure how we had the energy to go back out into Berlin after the long day of travel, but we did. We walked a half mile to the underground station and made our way to the one stop we had planned for today, Gendarmenmarkt. It's supposed to be one of the nicest squares in Berlin and because it was a easy Metro ride to get there we thought it would be a nice way to ease into our time in Berlin.
The square did not disappoint, it was stunning. There are two cathedrals as well as the gorgeous symphony hall in between the two. The square in comparison to anything we just saw in Amsterdam was rather empty, so it made walking around and enjoying the beautiful Berlin afternoon even nicer. After we took in the square we went to dinner right around the corner at a local German restaurant.
This being our first foray in German cuisine we tried to go with the basics. We started off with two soft serve pretzels which I hear the Germans are known for and they were great. I absolutely love dipping pretzels in mustard so that was a real treat for me. I also had my first German beer of the trip, a Augustiner Brau Lager Hell. For my main course I went with a veal meatball with potato salad and Jenn had some sausages with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. Both meals were absolutely delicious. Not items we would normally order at home but still great. What's ironic is that we basically switched meals as we enjoyed each others dishes more. I thought the meal was done but Jenn threw out a surprise vanilla ice cream dessert order to round out our dinner.
Once we wrapped up our first German dinner we jumped back on the metro and made the fifteen minute ride back to our beautiful hotel. Although we didn't get to explore much of Berlin today, from what we saw it looks like we have an exciting couple of days to look forward to in Germany.
