Inspiration came from a comment made by my uncle Henry and friend Annie who wanted to macabrely send me their eyeballs so they can see what I see on my explorations and foodie trips. As I am relatively peace loving and not an advocate of self inflicting wounds,I innovatively thought to instead blog semi real day about it.
Its the first time I am trying it so please bear with me on sloppy writings !
The day started with a trip to the Klagenfurt airport. As far as airport goes, this is a really tiny airport strange considering how tourism centric this region is. With a sweeping glance from right to left without even needing to turn my head, I saw the full extent of the shops available.
An hour later, we were at Cologne airport which is way bigger and jam packed with people. Luckily the transit is only an hour before the next leg. And another hour later we walked out of Berlin-tegel the closest airport to the city.
An icy blast of cold air greeted our arrival. Berlin was -4 the whole day and made travelling extremely uncomfortable.
Getting to Berlin city was pretty straight forward with the bus. After checking in and leaving the luggage , we decided to brave the frigid temperatures to get some food.
Looked for the Sbahn at the central Berlin station but everything was delayed indefinitely. I found out later this was due to chaos from the cold temperatures where trains break down and schedules are missed. So had to look for alternatives, the buses and trams look a bit better so off to find the right bus which took longer than the SBahn and had to change then to the UBahn.
Finally arrived, cold and hungry and the next challenge was to look for the restaurant. There were multiple roads which criss crossed and it was tough finding the right road and then which direction on that road to go.
Found It!! I had read good things about this Korean restaurant and it had a Lunch menu which means a cheaper main meal with free soup and free softdrink thrown in. Just had to get there before 5pm which was close call when we arrived at 440pm. The waitress was friendly and fast and soon the food arrived. Yes!! It is as good as it looks!!
After that it was still super cold and didn’t make walking around an inviting idea and I needed better gloves. There was a Karstadt and caught more UBahns to reach there. It is so warm and cozy inside the mall that I never ever want to leave but did end up with 2 pairs of gloves and a cute hat, all were on offer. As usual I had to find fitting gloves in the Kids Department but im not complaining since its still cheaper !
In the vicinity was another Vietnamese restaurant which I found good when I was here the last time with Dad. Ok this is turning out to be a foodie cum shopping trip.
Time to go back to the hotel with hopefully rest time and to charge my phone which seems to drain out battery in this cold. I had a reservation to see the Reichstag Dome at 9 pm.
Getting from the U Bahn to the bus stop was pretty ok. Then getting on the bus which drove for about 20 minutes till I realized something was not right. I switched on my dying phone to see that we were going to the exact opposite direction to where we were supposed to be. I tried to check for a good place to get down without being stranded in this cold. Saw an opposite bus stop and went down and waited for the other bus which was another 25 minutes back from where we came from and then some till we reached.
I skipped the Reichstag which I was looking forward to because like my phone I was also on low battery by then.
-End of Day 1-