We took the train from the main Prague station to Berlin at about 8:30 on Thursday morning. The Prague station has a section near the front that I remember from when I was there with my friend Lawrence eight years ago; however, much of it has been redeveloped – there’s lots of shiny red walls and new shops. We only passed through this time, though, having already got our Eurail pass and reservations.
The ride to Berlin – in first class – was fine. Once we arrived at Berlin Hauptbahnhof – the main station there – we had a few hours to kill until our host was available to receive us. The station is a vast structure, with platform down underground and platforms up at the top of the building, and it’s all open inside, so you can look down from the upper platforms and see the lower ones; in between there are lots of shops and cafés.
We set up camp at a Caffe Ritazza, drank their expensive coffee, ate the little food we’d brought with us; Habiba went and got a currywurst for us to share – a sausage with tomato ketchup and curry powder.
Later we took a train down to Südkreuz (which we’d already passed on the way in) and took the S-Bahn (the city rail system) to Innsbrückerplatz (having determined that our Eurail pass was good on the S-Bahn), where our host, Till, lives.
We were too early – about 45 minutes too early. Habiba wanted to sit on a wall and wait, but I went and found a café nearby and we ended up going there.
When we returned, Till let us in and showed us to his living room – which was to be our bedroom. His flat was reasonably spacious – not massive, but it had a bedroom and study as well as a kitchen and bathroom in addition to the living room.
Once we’d settled in somewhat, Till needed to do some work, so we went out for a couple of hours. We went up to the Brandenburg Gate (or Brandenburg Tor, in German), took some obligatory photos, ditto with the nearby Reichstag, had a piece of cake at a café in the Tiergarten park.
Next, we walked to the Holocaust Memorial, which occupies pretty much a whole city block and consists of thousands of blank, concrete stelae of differing heights standing at varying angles on an undulating tiled surface. There were a few kids running around through and over the monoliths. While the place is dedicated to the memory of one of the most notorious periods in history, it also functions as something of a playground. Habiba and I joined in, stepping from block to block before they got too tall and scary, then chasing each other through the maze of columns.
Later, Till took us to a restaurant for some German cuisine – I had a dish with noodles, beans, a sausage and bacon as well as a dollop of mustard (which I mostly left for Habiba) and some delicious granules that Till told us were caramelised onion or something, although they tasted nothing like onion.
We were very glad to have found Till as a host. He was a gentle guy, smart and possessed of a dry and slightly whimsical sense of humour. He offered the use of his books while we were there and I took him up on this and read a graphic introduction to semiotics. Unfortunately, he had a cold while we were there and didn’t hang out with us during our three days with him; we did eat dinner with him every evening, though.
Captain Maybe 
You must be logged in to post a comment.