and then we’ll take Berlin. Leonard Cohen, RIP

The other choice for the title was “Why I hate Flying”

Tuesday, 9 October, 2018 – Weather – grey, who cares we are leaving town

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I start the day with the leftover green curry. We have booked a taxi to pick us up early and he shows up on time and we are ready to go. We get to the airport early and have to wait to drop off our baggage.

After they finally accept our bags we are warned that it will be a dog fight to get on the plane. We go upstairs to the boarding gate and wait and wait and wait. The same staff show up at the boarding gate but show no signs of opening the gate. Finally, we realise that our plane has just landed. After it is unloaded, there is another long wait before we are invited to board. Ryan has listened to my advice about overhead locker space and pushes us and our remaining bags to the front of the queue.

We were told that we had to board at the rear which mean down portable stairs, in the rain, and then up another set of stairs that are quite slippery. We get to our seats and are able to grab overhead space.

We had paid for extra room in the exit row. Yes, there is extra room but gee it is narrow and not a lot of advantage. In fact, my knees were sore for a few days afterwards because of the cramped “extra space”.

I am against the window and it is not possible to get out for a toilet break. The flight is for 2 1/2 hours and seems to take forever. We are travelling West and South into another time zone. When we get off the plane we have to walk on the tarmac to buses. Trouble is that there are only two buses and there are enough people for three. It turns out we only go a few meters on the bus – it would have been much easier just to walk there.

There is another long, long wait. I go off to the toilets because of no toilet break on the plane. Of course, the toilet was closed for cleaning. There was a disabled toilet, of course it was permanently locked. The cleaner moved very, very slowly while the two Ladies toilets moved like clockwork. Finally, the cleaner opens the door and I get some relief.

Even after that long wait, our bags are just coming off the carousel when I return. When we take Ryan’s bag off, we notice that one of the wheels has been broken. We go to the Easyjet claim centre and there is no one in there or else they refuse to come to the window.

We go outside to get a taxi as it will take a bus and two trains to get near our place. There had been a long queue but it had mostly dissipated. However, we needed a large van with all of our luggage and people. So they push us to one side and get on the phone to call in big vans. After a lengthy wait, one finally shows up, but there is another big group in front of us. Another van shows up after us but the guy is in a very angry mood, I guess he thought
he was picking some body else and argued with the traffic controller for ages. Finally, he agreed to take us and turned into a nice guy. Julie rode with him in the front seat and they had a nice chat because he lived in the area to where we were going and gave her some advice.

The exit out of the airport was another major issue as there were enough cars for 8 lanes and at times we had only one, it probably took another 25 minutes to go 1/2 KM. Once we escape the shackles, it is a smooth ride until we are back on city streets in which case the traffic was really bad and slow with lots of lane changes to get through. Finally we arrive at our destination which was a driveway in front of a driveway to a youth hostel.

So all in all it took around 9 hours door to door with a variety of hassles, delays, mishaps, pain, stupidity along the way. That is typical of why I hate flying even though I put up with it for years for work.

Things look ordinary as there we were in a narrow driveway leading into a couple of courtyards into a backpackers den. Plus I had not read the instructions well enough. Then our bad day turned into solid gold. We were informed by the landlords that there had been serious damage in the powder room by the previous guest and we would not be able to check-in until 4:00 PM. We accepted that. I was supposed to find the caretaker for the back packer home but did not follow the instructions, but fortunately he found us. There had been some advance concern about storing our bags, but this guy was great. He grabbed them all and put them in a very secure room for which he had the only key. We then went out looking for food while we waited for 4:00.

There were tons of restaurants around us with a primary theme being Turkish. We did not have a good experience because the menus on display were all in German, which I mostly could not translate, and they would not talk with Julie because she was English. Finally, I find a Kebab shop run by a Father and his 3 Sons. They were happy to talk with me in English and generally were very nice to me which was a welcome change. I thought Julie was going to a Salmon place but she showed up here and also was treated really nicely, Julie was impressed.

We get back to the backpackers place around 3:30 and there are more pleasant surprises. The workers were unable to fix the vanity sink, but there were two such sinks so we survived nicely. We were escorted up to the room by the Managers Wife at 3:30, and the rest of the family brought up all of our luggage and chattels we had left in the storage. This was all a big wow, especially with what we were expecting.

For details of the layout of this apartment refer to this Airbnb link

The only disappointment, which I possibly should have known already, was that there was no dishwasher.

Ryan was sent up and knocked on the door at 4:00 and we let them in and everything was good. Each bedroom had a couple of small balconies.

Incidentally, the kids found that the people were quite unfriendly to them too, they did not really like Berlin. The weather however was quite good.

Earlier we had bought some local wine – it was rat piss. Julie goes out to scout and gets food for tonight.

I never did get my Bratwurst, apparently Berlin does not do them and circumstance worked against me in the rest of Germany.

What with the lousy wine and awful snag, I end up with bad reflux in the night. The anti-reflux relief Julie had bought for me earlier came in little tubes and kind of did the job.

So it was definitely a day of multiple ups and downs.