We take Berlin

[addedentry]

24-28 September 2008

Sleeper trains

We didn't. The City Night Line swayed and juddered through the night from Brussels to Berlin. At least it was only on the way back that a businessman made a mistaken claim on the third bed in our compartment.

Berlin HauptbahnhofI proposed spending the whole holiday in the new railway station, but Janet vetoed

Comments

[footpad]

I know the City Night Line all too well. An absolute minimum for decent rest is earplugs, eyeshade, both light pyjamas and a decent blanket for the wild temperature variations, a vast reserve of fortitude, and a double dose of valerian.

Edit: no, I don't have a solution for the businessman. Fortunately I've never had a similar problem in my score or so of CNL journeys.

[addedentry]

I'd been lulled, if not into sleep, then into false confidence, by comfortable overnight trains from London to Scotland. I also thought I was inured to industrial noises after two years in a flat next to a supermarket loading bay!

The businessman was friendly without being overfriendly. The conductor explained that he'd got on one day early and I think his solution was to spend the journey in the bar.

[kineticfactory]

That sounds a bit like my Berlin experience. I too caught the sleeper train (though I seem to have had a better time of it, by your account) and stayed at the Ostel. I didn't go up the Fehnsehturm, though (the half-hour or so estimated wait put me off).

[addedentry]

Yes, we waited half an hour to ascend the tower and another half an hour for a table at the restaurant (though they take bookings). It took a few revolutions (as it were) to identify any landmarks, having to work from Unter den Linden because the obvious orientation point was the Fernsehturm itself. Daylight would be better for seeing the plan of the city.

TripAdvisor has several damning reviews of the Ostel (including two reports of thefts!) but in part these are from people with high expectations.

[qatsi]

It took a few revolutions

LOL! I remember reading somewhere, a Soviet comment (maybe Stalin, not sure) that Germans would organise a revolution at a railway station, but only if they had all bought platform tickets first.

[htfb]

In 1990 my father, uncle and I went on a tour of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern hunting out ancestral sites.

The chocolate and revolting cola changed, because each Kreis or perhaps Ort had its little food factory, but every local Hotel am Bahnhof or Hotel am Ratsplatz in every picturesque town had its bedroom mirrors cut from the same batch of glass, which was faulty and gave a wavy image down one side. Some of them had been hung upside-down, so the clear side was on the right.

(This comment only so I can use the avatar of, if you look closely, a monkey and a plywood violin)