Hotel City B - A Review

Time for another hotel review, don’t you think? We’re up to Berlin, where I stayed in Hotel City B.

The location for Hotel City B gets mixed reviews. On one hand, it was great because it was right across the street from a U-Bahn station and, thus, transportation anywhere else in the city, and Berlin is huge. On the other hand, there really wasn’t much going on in the section of Potsdamerstrasse and the area was a little sketchy. About a ten-minute walk north, however, brought you into the heart of Berlin, not to mention a Dunkin Donuts, so it wasn’t horrible.

Check-in and check-out were painless. My room was on the third floor, so an elevator was very necessary. Fortunately, it also existed at this hotel. The hotel’s motif is sort of hard to explain. Very strange colors in the hallways, on my floor the walls were purple, and the room numbers looked like they were handwritten, but I believe that was purposeful.

My room was huge. It had a double bed and the entire south wall was a window that looked directly into the U-Bahn station across the street. The room had an internet connection. It wasn’t wireless, but that was fine as I used the good connection to spend one night catching up on American television shows that I’ve missed while I’ve been in Europe. The only English-language stations on the television were CNN and MTV.

The breakfast wasn’t free, or cheap, so I didn’t indulge. In any event, with Dunkin Donuts all over the place in Berlin, that was going to be my breakfast in Berlin anyway. Oh, how I do love me some Dunkin Donuts coffee.

The rate was dirt cheap, around $70/night. Another thing I liked about the hotel is that I wasn’t required to leave my key at the front desk, so entry/exit was less work here than at some other places I’ve stayed at in Europe.

All-in-all, though I would have liked some better eating options close to my hotel for late-night runs, I was happy with the room, the staff and especially the price.

German Efficiency, My Ass

I really wish that I had started writing about Berlin before I tried to get out of it. I absolutely adored Berlin, much more so than I expected and even more than Munich, but I’m afraid that my description might be clouded by the hellatious time I’ve had trying to get from Berlin to Amsterdam. Maybe if I write about it first (not sure if I’m going to post it first), I’ll get the venom out of my system before I start writing about the rest of my trip to Berlin.

First off, let me say this. “German efficiency” can kiss my ass because I haven’t been able to get in or out of this country on time, yet. So far, my second trip out – the one I’m on now – has been the worst of all. People had less trouble getting out of East Berlin during the cold war than I’m having today.

I’m neurotic when it comes to travel. I get to where I need to be on time. No, not on time. Early. Very early. I was at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof an hour before my train was supposed to take off, waiting patiently. I got a sandwich to pack away for lunch, got a muffin, got some coffee, and went to the track forty minutes early.

Now, let me tell you about the tracks. There are eight tracks, numbered 9-16, all in this little complex. The weather outside is bad, so there are numerous delays and announcements, mostly in German. Now, occasionally there would be an English announcement, but that didn’t matter. Announcements were coming over the speakers at five tracks at once, all different announcements, and even if I was fluent in German, I wouldn’t have been able to understand five people speaking it at once.

I kept checking the overhead board at my track that said my train was coming at 10;37. At around 10:40, they took my train off the board. Then there was an announcement, finally in English, that the train would not run today. Then, they apologized for any inconvenience. That made everything better. GODDAMMIT!!!!

So, I go to a ticket counter to see if I can get a different ticket, perhaps to a train that was going to run. At least this part was relatively easy. They put me on a train that had to make a connection in Duisburg that was leaving in five minutes from the track on which my original train was supposed to leave. I can handle that. Just walk back to where I was and wait three or four more minutes. Right?

About ten minutes later, some woman comes to yell at me in German. I tell her that I don’t understand what she’s saying. She obliges me by yelling at me in broken English. The train’s not running upstairs. I have to go downstairs. She tells me that I should have looked at the big board downstairs. Oops, sorry. I go downstairs to the big board and it says Track 13. There’s only one Track 13. It’s upstairs. And the train is running 50-minutes late (meaning I’ll miss my connection, but I’ll get to that).

I go to the people who exchanged my ticket and they tell me everything is fine, but the train is actually going to run out of Track 3 or 4, downstairs. I still have a few minutes, so I knock people down and jump over suitcases like O.J. Simpson in the 1970s. (I was tempted to go all O.J. Simpsons in the 1990s, but fortunately, it didn’t come to that. At least, it hasn’t yet.) I get down to Track 3/4 and wait about five minutes and notice, without any announcement in either German or English, that the board has changed to say that the train is now heading out of Track 7. Grab my 100 pounds of crap, run upstairs, run downstairs get on Track 7.

About an hour late, the second train arrives. I get on it. It goes from Berlin to Amsterdam, but there is a connection in Duisburg. Originally, I had a 41-minute wait time for the connection. Now, it appears I’m going to arrive 20 minutes or so late, depending on how much more time we lose. My hopes are that (a) the train running out of Duisburg is a half-hour or so late and/or (b) there are plenty of trains running from Duisburg to Amsterdam since I’m arriving in Duisburg around 4:00 pm.

Anyway, the best laid plans and all that. F@#king German trains. I thought these things were supposed to run on time. I hope I get to Amsterdam sometime tonight and I’ll probably update this post eventually to let you know if/when/how-in-the-hell I make it.

Toodles.

(Ed: Obviously, I made it to Amsterdam. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be so high, umm, I mean I wouldn’t be able to post this. Since the train stopped in a station other than Amsterdam’s main station and after 8 pm, trying to figure out the public transportation here was futile and I had to hop a train without a ticket and randomly guess where to hop off. I guessed wrong. Cost me about 30 more minutes. Oh well. It’s all better now . . .)

Berlin: What I Liked (Most)

As the train cruises from Germany into the Netherlands, I thought I’d do a quick post on the two things in Berlin that intrigued me the most – The German History Museum and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

The Germany History Museum covers nearly two thousand years of various groups of people who have lived in these lands over the centuries. As far as German history that I am actually interested in, particularly with respect to Berlin, most of that took place in the 20^th century, or the second half of the 19^th century at the latest. Apparently I’m not alone and the museum’s curators realize that because I would estimate that out of the two-thousand years of history, about half of the museum covered the period from around 1820 to the present.

What I most wanted to see before I went into the museum was how things like World War II, Nazis and the Holocaust would be portrayed in the country in which those atrocities either took place or had their genesis. The answer is pretty frankly. There was a significant wing dedicated to Hitler’s rise to power, the war and the murder of millions. There were various documents demonstrating early discrimination of jews and homosexuals in Nazi Germany, leading to a sculpture of the death camp at Auschwitz (if I remember correctly). I was glad to see that the issues were not swept under the rug, not that they really could have been, but it also left me with a deep sense of confusion of how this could have been the same place that I was visiting less than 70-years ago. As time passes, it becomes easier to think back to the time as something far back in history, doomed to black-and-white film and Time/Life books, but it in the big scheme of things, it really wasn’t that long ago at all.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the museum.

The other thing that intrigued me in Berlin was the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the church is about 60% of the size it was prior to a 1943 Allied bombing raid of Berlin. Rather than save what they could, tear down the building and rebuild, however, the “hollow tooth,” as people from Berlin refer to it, stands as a memorial, with a completely new church built right next to it.

I never got a straight answer though as to what exactly is being memorialized. Is it to memorialize the German dead of World War II? There were millions of them after all. Or is it a memorial to the severe destruction that war causes and a reminder as to why it should be avoided at all costs? Or is it just a sign of defiance to a world that kicked its ass? There’s probably an answer somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.

Anyway, I was really enjoyed the church.

Berlin: What I Did

I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting to find in Berlin. Aside from the Brandenburg Gate, currywurst and remnants of the Berlin Wall , there wasn’t anything in particular that I was hoping to see, though I had hoped that the more I examined the city, the more I would find that interested me.

Berlin surprised me with the degree to which I found myself mesmerized by various things that I found. In particular, off the top of my head, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche and the Deutsches Historisches Museum. I’ll go into more detail on each of those in a future post. For this post, I’ll just highlight a little of what I did.

Because of the strategic positioning of my hotel, I decided to hit Berlin in two waves over the course of my two full days there. On the first day, I went towards the center of the city. My hotel was just a short walking distance to Potsdamer Platz, which is surrounded with skyscrapers (by European standards) by companies such as Sony and Mercedes. Turning left on Ebertstrasse takes you straight to the Brandenburg Gate.

If you’re familiar with Berlin at all, you’re familiar with the Brandenburg Gate, which was built in the late 18^th century. It’s long been the scene of celebrations of military conquests, and not just those of Germany. Napoleon marched through its gates. So did the Soviets. So did I, though I imagine it was much more dramatic when the others did it.

In the same neighborhood as the Brandenburg Gate is the Reichstag, which is the official seat of the German Parliament. It probably is best remembered for the 1933 Reichstag Fire, which helped bring the National Socialists into power, even though they likely were the ones who started the fire. One of the things that I found most intriguing about the building is that although it has had extensive renovations, parts of the façade are still riddled with bullet holes, courtesy of World War II.

Walking east from the Brandenburg Gate takes you down Unter den Linden, one of the most famous streets in Europe, not to mention the most famous in Berlin. Before I walked down the street, I had read that it was full of beautiful old buildings and beautiful scenery. The first kilometer or so, though, primarily all I saw were fast food joints and souvenir stores, and the only beautiful building I saw was the Russian Embassy. As I got further down the road, however, I saw what they people were talking about, as I approached the Dutch History Museum and the Berliner Dom. I spent a few hours in the Dutch History Museum, but like I said, that’s for another post. I didn’t enter the Berliner Dom, but I took pictures of the outside, which will have to do for now.

On the second day, I headed west. The first of the two places I wanted to visit Kurfurstendamm, which is a two-and-a-half mile street filled with shops, shops and more shops. A lot of shops. I walked the entire length, each way. In the middle, I stopped for my first currywurst.

(Detour: Currywurst probably deserves its own post, but I’ll talk about it now. I had heard for years that currywurst was a Berlin specialty and that only people from Berlin could appreciate it. What I’ve learned is that you can find it at least all over the German-speaking world – I saw it in Switzerland, Austria and other parts of Germany. Currywurst is a sausage, usually something in the neighborhood of a fried hot dog, drenched in this ketchupy-curry sauce and sprinkled with curry powder. I avoided eating it until I got to Berlin because I wanted the original currywurst. I wasn’t disappointed.)

Much more interesting to me than the shops of Kurfurstendamm, however, was what I found at one end of the street, my starting point. What is there is the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis-Kirch (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church). Nicknamed “the hollow tooth,” the church once stood 370 feet tall and was one of the largest structures in Berlin. Following a 1943 bombing raid, the church became a severely damaged 206 ft ruin, but the Germans left it standing as a memorial to . . . something. A new church was erected next to the ruins and services are held in the new structure.

The last part of Berlin that I wanted to visit was Olympic Stadium. I’ve seen matches on television played at the Olympic Stadium, home of Hertha BSC. I’ve also seen old film of the Hindenburg flying overhead and Jesse Owens winning his four gold medals there. The stadium has changed significantly since the 1936 Olympics, including being partially covered in the last decade or so. Nevertheless, one could get the sense of how it would have looked when it was the Nazi’s pride-and-joy as they showed off their culture to the world. It was a very interesting trip.

Those are the highlights of my trip to Berlin. I’ll go a little deeper into a few of the items that I mentioned above, though I’m probably through talking about currywurst. Let’s hope so.

Minotel Hauser (Munich): A Review

It’s time to work my way back and talk about some hotels, so I’ll do that now. The next on the list is the Minotel Hauser in Munich.

After the easy time I had getting to my hotel in Zurich, the Minotel Hauser was a little harder to locate, but that primarily was because the Munich train station was much more difficult to maneuver through. It’s separated into separate buildings. Once I found my way onto the U-Bahn (subway), however, the hotel was not that difficult, though I did have to switch trains to get there.

The hotel was in a little bit of a strange location. There were plenty of restaurants and bars and stuff around the hotel, but most of them seemed strangely empty much of the time. Granted, this was during Oktoberfest and most of the tourists were there, but I expected to see tourists everywhere else in Munich and that really wasn't the case, especially in the neighborhood I was in.

Check-in was easy and I was able to get straight to my room. Returning to the world of free wi-fi made me a happy puppy. The room, once again, was small but it wasn’t too bad and the bathroom was a little larger than I had gotten used to in Europe. I believe that the hotel had a lift, but I was on the second floor, so I didn’t have to use it.

As mentioned above, the hotel was close to public transportation, but also was close enough to Oktoberfest – about a 20-25 minute walk – that I walked there and back a few of the days that I was there. It also was very close to several restaurants as well as to a few grocery stores, so provisions could be picked up. Also, because of the mini-bar refrigerator, picked-up provisions could be stored for future use, in case you’re a squirrel or something.

The breakfast was free. More importantly, it was nice to be back in a culture that gave you meat for breakfast. (I hadn’t had this since London.) One problem with breakfast was that there was a limited dining area, so it wasn’t always easy to find a seat, but the selection of German breakfast items was impressive. I even go to try some blood sausage.

Money-wise, this is the most expensive hotel I’m staying in during my trip to Europe – around $210/night – but it being Oktoberfest, that was unavoidable. All-in-all, I was very happy with the hotel, just not particularly happy with the price. Also, it would have been nice is the neighborhood was a little livelier, but liveliness (is that a word?) was close enough, so that didn’t matter too much in the end.

Finally, check-out was as painless as check-in. The staff was very friendly and, overall, I had a very good experience at the hotel.

Munich: Passing Thoughts

As promised, or I guess not really promised but suggested as possible, I thought I’d do a general post of Munich. Mainly just random thoughts and I’m not sure if I’ll have pictures to associate with the thoughts, but we’ll see.

I enjoyed Munich. Not as much as I enjoyed London or Paris, but it was still a good time. Foodwise, I found myself eating bratwurst and schnitzel. And, oddly enough, pizza because there was a really good pizza place right around the corner from my hotel. There was also a lot of beer, unsurprisingly. I kept my streak alive of drinking primarily native beers and I think that Paulaner was my favorite of Munich.

Munich has the biggest bicycle culture of any city I’ve ever seen (though I haven’t been to east Asia yet). The bicycle lanes take up half of the sidewalks and it seemed in places that there were more bicyclists than drivers or even pedestrians. Also, there were huge parking lots of nothing but bicycles. Good for the environment? Perhaps. But I don’t like bicyclists. That’s a story for a different blog, however.

English (and occasionally some form of sign language) was good enough to get around and get fed. Munich isn’t as English-friendly as a city like Paris, but the basics were understood by most. I have to say that my favorite thing about German is that my last name pops up all of the time unexpectedly, which I love.

The weather again was perfect. Without exception, every afternoon I have spent in Europe, going on twenty now, has been sunny or partly cloudy and in the 70s. Mornings have occasionally been grey and it’s getting a little cooler now that we’re closing in on October, but the weather has been unbelievably beautiful.

As I move east across Europe, I find that it’s getting darker earlier and earlier. Of course, part of that can be attributed to the time of year, but part of it also is because all of continental Europe, or at least all that I am visiting, are in the same time zone even though some of the cities are hundreds of miles apart. It’s sort of like the difference between Detroit and Boston. Even though they are in the time zone, it gets dark in Detroit at least an hour later than it does in Boston because of the distance. Brussels and Vienna are affected the same way.

Okay, as far as languages, this was the itinerary: English, French/Dutch, French, German, German, German, Czech, Czech, German, Dutch, English. Munich is the second of four German-speaking cities that I’ve stayed in and it’s finally growing on me. I’m not saying I’m learning any of it, I’m just saying that it doesn’t sound as strange to me as it did from the beginning.

Okay, that’s it for Munich, with the possible of an exception of a hotel review. As I write this, I’m in Vienna (with no internet access except at McDonald’s), so that’ll be the subject of the coming posts.

Later.

More Munchen, More Munchen, More Munchen

I told you there would be another post about Munich and here it is. This time, I’ll hit Olympic Park, Schloss Nymphenburg and Allianz Arena. I may come back in another post with some passing thoughts, but we’ll see how that goes once I get to Vienna.

Olympic Park, as you can probably guess, includes a series of structures built for the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Now, I don’t remember the 1972 Olympics, but other than Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals, everything I know about them is bad. First there was the September 5 massacre of Israeli athletes. The only thing I can recall about the Olympics is the Soviet Union’s ending of the United States’ perfect record in Olympic basketball after a very controversial call or calls. Those are the thoughts that I had in mind as I strolled around the area.

I have to say that most of the sports arenas on the complex look alike, and not attractive at all. I went by the Olympic pool complex to see where Mark Spitz made history. I also took an unguided tour of Olympic Stadium to see where Bayern Munich played its home matches during the height of its power. Both were sort of disappointing in person, but it was still an interesting experience.

I took an entire morning to go by Schloss Nymphenburg and never even made it into the Palace. The garden and paths around the building are not only beautiful but also immense, covering several acres. I don’t know much about the history of the place, so if you want to know more you can google it, but I spent a few hours strolling through the gardens and taking pictures. It appears to be very popular with the early-morning joggers and with good reason. I didn’t get a chance to visit the Palace or any of the other buildings on-site, but I needed to get to a soccer match.

As usual, I won’t go into too much detail on this site about the soccer match. I will say that it was between two second-division German clubs, TSV 1860 Munchen and FC Paderborn. It was held at Allianz Stadium, which is the home of Bayern Munich and, I believe, the site of the 2006 World Cup final, where Zinedane Zidane made his famous career-ending head butt. I know I haven’t been to many European football fields (five on this trip, so far), but I can’t imagine a more perfect place to watch a match. Every seat looks like it is right on top of the action, and that’s not easy in a place that sits 80,000. As before, there will be a review of the stadium on my soccer website if you are interested, and even if you aren’t.

Okay, that’s it for now. I’m going to enjoy the Austrian pastoral views from my train window as we close in on Salzburg.

Stay tuned.

Munich: They Have Beer Here

It seems like it’s time to post an intermediate entry about Munich. My time here is coming close to an end, but I should probably save myself something to do on tomorrow’s train to Vienna, so I’ll talk about Oktoberfest and the Deutsches Museum.

Part of the reason I scheduled my trip at the time that I did was so that I’d have an opportunity to attend Oktoberfest. Well, I did it and now I can cross it off of the bucket list. To me, Oktoberfest was like a state fair except that there are 14 or 15 tents holding thousands of people each full of people drinking beer and singing drinking songs. The fair part is pretty standard. There are booths selling German fair food – sausages, schnitzel and fish. There also are rides and general fun for the whole family. Inside the tents, in the traditional Munich beer hall tradition, there are hundreds of picnic tables with people drinking beers out of liter glasses and usually a band on a stage in the middle leading everybody in song.

During the day, there were lots of families, including small kids, enjoying the rides and eating the sausages and fish. Gradually, as it gets later, the park gets more and more crowded and eventually is filled with people who have been drinking for several hours and there are plenty of the typical signs of people who have been drinking for several hours. I won’t go into those signs here.

I enjoyed some food (1/2 meter Bratwurst anybody?) and then made my way into a tent on Friday to enjoy some liquid refreshment. I met some people and went through a few liters of beer, and generally had a good time, but it wasn’t all I had hoped. Perhaps if I was with some good friends. Perhaps if I was a bit younger. Perhaps if I was just in a mood to get really drunk. I don’t know. I just left thinking that it lacked something. Of course, I went back the next day to try again, but the results were the same. It was a good time, but I’m not counting the minutes until I return.

The Deutsches Museum was unlike any other museum I’ve been to here in Europe. Most of the other museums were full of art and/or historical artifacts. Being Germany, the Deutsches Museum concentrated on technology and industry. There were sections on aviation, astronomy, textiles, power machinery and printing/paper technology. It also included an excellent planetarium. Again, it wasn’t the Louvre, but it turned out to be very interesting in its own right.

Okay, I still have to write about Olympic Park, Schloss Nymphenburg and the fussball match I went to Allianz Arena. I’ll go into those in another post in the near future. Auf Wiedersehen!!!

Munich: First Trip to the Fatherland

Okay, I’ve been in Munich for a day-and-a-half and it definitely is different from all of the other cities that I’ve visited here in Europe. Part of that may be because my hotel is a little bit out of the way from all of the tourist activity. I’m not sure why it’s so dead in my neighborhood because it is walking distance from Oktoberfest, yet once it gets dark, the neighborhood dies.

I have now had beer at Oktoberfest, so I can mark that off of the bucket list. I’ve been in the early afternoon and in the early evening and it is two completely different scenes. Early on, it’s still packed, but there’s room at all of the tents and you can still get beer and there’s plenty of room at the food stands. In the evening, the tents are packed and the field is packed with drunken idiots and it’s kind of difficult to work your way through the crowds at times. I’m planning to go back tomorrow morning, just to check out the morning crowd and to get myself a good morning buzz, but afterwards, I think I’d like to see some more of Munich away from all of the beer.

Walking back to my hotel, I saw a sign advertising an anti-capitalism protest here next week. Hmm . . . socialists in Munich . . . what could POSSIBLY go wrong?

I did manage to get a little bit around town to take some pictures of old buildings – if you haven’t noticed from past posts, I like old buildings – but it’s hard to get good shots of a lot of buildings in Munich because the buildings are in amongst newer, tall buildings so it’s hard to get a good angle for a picture. Any way, I’ve tried.

This is just a start. I’ll check back in with more Munich later.