Ich bin ein Berliner

Okay, so I'm not a Berliner but I sure did enjoy the city. I did a fabulous job of eating all their meats and potatoes, drinking their beer, and taking in as much history as I could in a freezing cold 3.5 hour tour. (Sounds a little bit like a German Gilligan's Island, eh?)

Despite a rocky start on the airlines, our vacation in Berlin turned out fabulously. Like I said, we ate a LOT of meat and took in all the cool history the city has to offer. We battle some seriously cold days but still managed to have lots of fun!

We left Paris Monday night with no clue that Berlin was getting hit hard with the European Snow Fall. And unlike the wusses at Heathrow or CDG, Berliners know how to handle the snow...well, their not experts, but they are better. As our piolets requested permission to land, they were denied at Tegel Airport because the runways were not ready for any plane landings. Thus, we hung out in the sky for a little while and waited for Tegel to clean off some road. Eventually we were told to land in Dresden while everyone figured out what to do with all these planes that were supposed to land. Hmmm.....

B and I took out our Lufthansa Air Magazines to learn that Dresden is NOT Berlin. It's a good train ride away or something. So we land and we sit. Dresden doesn't want us so we can't deplane but they will allow us to sit on the runway while Tegel clears it's runways. But to make a long night and long story short, I'll sum up with that we eventually leave Dresden for Berlin, land in Berlin, and safely make our way to our apartment via taxi. We finally get in around 1:00 AM. Not a good start, but we're safe, warm, and we have beds for the night!

Tuesday!! What adventures await us as we tackle Berlin? Well we fortunatly slept until about 10:00 and slowly got rolling to the Pergamon Museum. Now, if you ever get to Berlin, you MUST hit up the Pergamon Museum! It is outstanding. The museum is by far the best antiquity collection I've ever seen! Even the ladies got into the amazing artifacts, friezes (not sure if that's the correct use of the frieze...), and displays!

After finishing up our culture for the day, we headed to lunch at Rogacki's. Another must on your Berlin To Do List. (We learned about Rogacki's the night before we left for Berlin by doing some serious research: Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations in Berlin.) Anyways, we had a late lunch of fried fish, potato salad, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, a brat, and Elise's favorite: green olives wrapped in anchovies. (She really ate two of them! See picture at the right if you don't believe me....). It was a great lunch, cafeteria style, and the place itself was worth the trip. There were fabulous butcher and fish stands. Some of the most amazing looking things that I would have loved to explore had I (a) had the slightest clue what it was and (b) could deutsch sprechen! Either way, it was really fun just to be there, take in the experience, and watch all the people!

Alright, this is getting to be a novel of Berlin and I've had a long day. We'll do some Part Two of the trip tomorrow and I'll upload some more pictures to share. (BTW, being the smart, worldly traveler that I am I brought a 98% empty camera battery on our trip without a charger. Smooth, eh? So not a ton of pictures but some keepers that I'll share. I gotta keep you coming back to the blog for more....)

Off to bed. Here's a teaser for what's to come: Ka Di Wi shopping, carrousels and merry go rounds, and a 3.5 hour tour!

Good Night!