Berlin - Day 1
Mostly a long train travel day (7 hours and 4 trains) for us today, starting at 5:15am from Aarhus central station, about a 15 minute walk. We have our packed breakfast ready to go this time.
We have treated ourselves to first class seats, meaning a roll (a parting gift from Denmark, they really like they bread in Europe!) with jam and cheese and free coffee to start our day, but we don't seem to have assigned seat numbers. Which was a bit of a pain for the first leg as we kept getting shuffled around. This wasn't an issue for the next 3 legs at least.
First change at Fredericia, where you are either continuing south to Germany, or heading back East towards Copenhagen. Next change at Flensburg, just across the border in German (guten tag!). Last change at Hamburg.
Very noticeable as we are travelling down through Denmark and into Germany is the amount of wind and solar-farms we pass. They seem to be everywhere!
We arrive at Berlin HBF at 12:20pm, straight into the hustle and bustle. We have about a 15 minute walk to our hotel which gives us a chance to get a first impression of the city. She ain't pretty from these first angles as we walk a little along the Spree river.
We drop our bags and quickly freshen up before heading out on a desperate laundry mission. The coin laundry we have targeted is about 3o mins away.
Its raining, so we take the opportunity to grab our first currywurst; simple German street food consisting of sliced sausage on fries with curry powder and tomato sauce. We've had so much bread so far today, so any meal without it goes down well. Ok, first German foody novelty ticked off.
We get the washing going and head to a nearby brew pub for a few games of viking chess (this is proving to be a challenging game).
We are ready for our next German meal. There is a beer hall down the road called Hofbrau Wirtshaus which seems to tick all the required boxes; beer, sausage, sauerkraut, sold!
It seems to be in a pretty central location for a beer hall, and we are worried its going to be touristy and expensive. But it was neither. Very happily surprised by the prices., but I guess we did just come from Denmark...
The food is brilliant. We think our bodies might have been craving some protein from all the walking we've been doing. We devour a roast pork with all the German trimmings, an array of sausages with two types of mustard and some German bread dumplings. Washed down with a couple steins of beer, naturally. Man, that hit the spot. We are quite chuffed with our first food experience and sated for the night.
We head back to the hotel put our feet up and make some solid plans for Berlin tomorrow.
