Further Wanderings

Though both Sarah and I had been to Germany a number of times before neither of us had ever visited the country’s capital. Of all the places we’d been on this trip, Berlin was the one we were most confident about our accomodation situation, with an old friend of Sarah’s and multiple friends of her brother all living in the city. As it turned out, problems with a landlord, an out of town holiday, a sister’s 30th brithday party and a lack of even the most basic furniture meant that none of our prospective hosts could manage to put us up. No matter.we found a good deal on a hotel just outside the city’s ring metro line and were comfortably ensconced there by mid afternoon.

Berlin put on a bit of a show for us on the occasion of our first visit, with a big snowstorm on the first day.
The weather made us a little reluctant to leave our hotel, but by early evening it had calmed and we made plans to meet Bernhard, a friend we’d met some years before at Michael and Carmen’s wedding.

We met at the Alexanderplatz Weinachtsmarkt (Christmas market) for some Gluhwein. As it turned out Bernhard was well prepared for our visit, and had picked our meeting place specially to allow him to present us with a Christmas gift from Sarah’s mom: a trip up to the viewing platform of the Fernsehturm, the tallest building in Germany. So it was that we spent out first Berlin Night in style, sipping at beers some 203m above street level with the lights of the city spread out below us.

The view from the top

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Our trip through Germany was really two trips. The first was spent visiting friends and family, getting into the holiday spirit. The second was spent visiting breweries, pubs and getting as much good and interesting beer as we could. More than once, the two haves managed to intermingle a bit. And in each of my two entries about our winter in Germany you’ll get a bit of each.

But we’ll begin with a bit of the former in Munich, home to Sarah’s brother Michael and sister-in-law, Carmen. To our (or at least my) surprise, the two of them met us at the train, despite no prior planning and after a quick bit of shopping we headed home to do some long needed catching up (it had been over two and a half years since Sarah had last seen her brother!) over bread, cheese, sliced meats and a few beers.

An origami llamy! What, you ask, does this have to do with Germany? Nothing! But it’s super cool and Sarah learned how to make them while we were in Munich.

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Our last four days in München were just as packed as the first four.  We spent lots of time with Carmen's family, did some more wandering around München and even got out of town a few times.  In fact, now ... [Continue reading this entry]

We arrived in Munich (carrying on with the practice from the previous entry, Munich shall hereafter be referred to as München) and, as was already becoming a habit on this trip, didn't really know what to do with ourselves. ... [Continue reading this entry]