Berlin, day 1

The National Express was due to leave Cambridge at 4.20pm, and it left on time. I had been in the second seat behind the driver, but when the couple in the opposite front seat moved back, the couple in front of me moved over, so I moved forward. It was perfect. The traffic was hideous getting out of Cambridge but I had come to expect that. Strangely, the driver turned left into Regent Street instead of going straight through down Lensfield Rd. He then turned off at the station and I assumed he was doing another pick up. Turned out ‘someone’ had told him about a quicker way of getting out of Cambridge, and considering Station Road is a cul-de-sac, was a pretty stupid thing to do. It took us ages to get around the roundabout at the end of the street, then we turned left back onto Regent St and crossed over to Trumpington Road on Long Road. Even that had slow-moving traffic, so by the time we’d stopped at the Trumpington Park and Ride and got out to the M11, it was 5.20, which was when the bus was supposed to arrive at Stansted. Was not happy Jan!!!

Thankfully, we made very good time despite the bus being blown all over the road in very strong winds, and arrived at Stansted at 5.45. I had checked in online so only had to be at the gate at 6.15, so I had a chance of being there in time. All the same, I made haste. Thankfully security didn’t take long even though I had to have my liquids in 100ml bottles in a 20 x 20 cm plastic bag inspected and put my shoes through a separate x-ray machine. I made haste again to a rather distant gate.

The flight was late in boarding anyway, but at least I had priority boarding so I got on quickly by walking across the tarmac in the wind. The flight took off 25 minutes late but landed on time due to the horrendous tailwind. The flight was quite smooth but I had no music because my mp3 player had decided to go on strike. There were two Australians next to me, and a couple more behind me.

The flight landed at 10.30pm, and I made my way through passport control, found the train station, a ticket, and the right train (S9) easily. The train was quiet until about Treptower Park, and then more people got on. There were announcements in German, and a sign at the end of the carriage, so I had no trouble working out where to get off. I changed to the underground at Alexanderplatz (U2) after a bit of a walk, and went one stop north to Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, arriving just after 11pm. I managed to leave Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz station by the wrong exit but found myself and the hostel, and Rachel and Jake (who I wasn’t expecting), fairly easily. The hostel was literally at the top of the stairs from the underground station. It was very nice – industrial funky and newish with a good bar, and we had a triple room to ourselves. It cost €25 a night, which I thought was great.

I was really hungry, not having found anything suitable to eat at the airport, and it turned out that Rachel and Jake had been waiting for me to go and eat themselves. We went to dinner at a restaurant/bar called ‘Courage’ that R and J had discovered the night before. It had a very diverse German/Italian/French menu – I had a giant chicken schnitzel and tomato with spaghetti. We went to bed around 2am.