(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed) Jet lag’s a funny thing. My lights went out the second my head hit the pillow at about 10pm. Out like a log, sleeping like a baby but my body decided I’d had enough at 4:30 in the morning.
I can’t just get up as Tim and Letty are still sleeping in
the same room so I lay quietly for a couple of hours until Tim stirs. We all gradually awaken and shower up before
breaking out for the day.
Potsdamer Strasse in the Schonberg district, south of the
center of Berlin, will be our home for six nights. This is a Turkish neighborhood. If it was in
Los Angeles, we’d call it ‘Little Istanbul.’ Red flags with white crescents
decorate many of the apartment balconies here.
Little cafes, or bars, populated solely by Turkish men dot the area.
A bakery across the street delivers us cheap but good,
filling food with strong coffee to get us started.
Today is just a slow day to get us accustomed to the
different time zone and to recover from our jet lag.
Watch the Video!
It’s a little over a kilometer from our hotel so we walk
over and get a really in depth tour of normal, everyday, residential Berlin.
The airport was decommissioned a little less than a decade
ago and has been transforming into a huge park ever since. We finally arrive at the main terminal, now
locked and empty. The semi-circular building is huge, more than a half
kilometer from end to end.
The only way through is around so we make the long trek to
the eastern end of this formidable structure to finally find an entrance to the
park on the old runways.
Past a couple of baseball fields (home of the BerlinBraves), we find a biergarten to settle into, have some currywurst (Tim’s been
dying to try some), and a couple of cold brews on this very hot day.
Luftgarten sits under some of the precious few trees in the
new Tempelhof park with a great view across the former airfield. Currywurst is
available as is a Berliner, a pastry Tim’s been dying to try.
I get the currywurst from the guy manning the barbecue and
order a Berliner from the stand at the biergarten as the girl hands me a beer.
“I want a Berliner.”
“That is a Berliner.”
“No, the pastry.”
“We don’t have the pastry, that’s a Berliner bier...Berliner
Kindl. Trust me, you’ll come back and
let me know how good it is, no?”
OK, so a bit of a misunderstanding but Tim loves the
currywurst and I love the beer. And, yes, I did let her know.
It’s about six blocks through a residential neighborhood to
the U-Bahn station back to the hotel. I
love these kinds of walks because it gets us a taste of the real flavor of a
destination, not the ones you see in the tourist brouchures.
Kids at play, parents watching, and...for some strange
reason...hand-water pumps on every block.
I couldn’t get any of them to work and am still mystified as
to why they’re there.
Eventually, we find our way back to Potsdamer Strasse to our
lovely, comfortable, and friendly Turkish neighborhood for another dinner at
Neffes Cafe and settling in for the night.
It’s a laid back, slow moving day but that’s what we need to
combat the jet lag from the 30 hour travel day before and the activities to
come.
Darryl
Copyright 2016 - Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved
Pictures Copyright 2016 - Letty Musick
All Rights Reserved
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