Bear and Marmot in Germany and the Czech Republic Into and Around Berlin, page 1	Up To Overview Previous Next

We landed at noon at Düsseldorf, and grabbed a quick train to Cologne... where we promptly got a hotel room. Once again, the Cologne Tourist Office came through with a nice $60 hotel room, just a block off of Hohestrasse. They seem to always give us $60 rooms. Then again, we've never been there during a trade fair or Carnival... Anyway, we grabbed a sub sandwich at Tommy's, cruised this woofy bear named Arno, discovered he was the proprietor of the bear bar in town, Zipp's, promised to drop on by around 8:00pm... and we promptly sacked out at 6:00. The nine hour flight was tiring. So the next day, we got up and dashed off to the train station to catch an Intercity Express (ICE) train to Berlin. They leave, conveniently, every two hours from Cologne, and it's a six hour or so trip. The trip was uneventful. I kept on looking for the former border between East and West. Didn't see much, except for a big abandoned train switching yard with lots of tall light poles now rusting.
One of the guidebooks described Berlin as ugly, but I guess they haven't seen Trona, California, certainly the most unappealing place I've been to. Berlin was leafy, with lots of shops and restaurants--and unlike the rest of Germany, you can actually find a place to eat after 9pm! Some of the restaurants even stayed open until midnight. It was great... but then, that was the western part of the city, which struck me as dependable excitement.	Above, a typical central Berlin street. Here we see the post-Cristo Reichstag, now wrapped in silver scaffolding.
We wanted to see the eastern part of the city. Chris had been there in 1988--but what had changed? Next...

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