When I awoke this morning at 6:00 AM, we were already tied up at the pier in Hamburg, and the cruise was officially over. I woke up before the wake up call set at 7:00 AM, thinking that maybe we needed a little more time to get ready and finish our packing. I went ahead and showered while Stephanie slept just a little longer. I headed down to the International Café to get our breakfast sandwiches, avoiding the lines at the buffet, while Stephanie was getting ready. I had already seen people disembarking at about 6:10 AM, the first group of the walk off passengers and those with early flight connections, and I could see some taxis coming to the port terminal, but it did not seem like there were as many as we might see at a home port like Ft. Lauderdale.
Port of Hamburg
The taxi situation is one concern we have for today since it is Easter Monday, and a holiday across all of Germany. There was some discussions on the Cruise Critic forum for this trip about the possibility of limited taxi service today because of the holiday. That, along with the fact that Hamburg is not a normal cruise port, we were ending here for the ship to go into dry dock for two weeks for maintenance.
We were all dressed and finished with our breakfast by 7:15 AM and started our final packing, mostly our clothes from last night and our toiletries. We had set a goal to be out of the cabin by 8:00 AM, and were about ten minutes ahead of schedule when we left. There was some type of problem with the elevators in the front of the ship, there was only one working out of the four, and there was already a line of people with luggage trying to go down to either Deck 6 or Deck 7 for disembarkation, from Deck 10 where our cabin was located. We waited for a while before deciding to roll the luggage down the three flights of stairs to Deck 7, waiting on the elevator was futile.
I took both rolling suitcases and maneuvered them down the stairs while Stephanie took her backpack and my camera case down. It certainly was a lot faster then the elevator, but more strenuous. We went to the gangway on Deck 7, through security to check out, and then headed inside the terminal. There was quite a long line of people waiting to go through immigration, I guess we hit it right after one of the large time specific groups were called to disembark. It took about 15 minutes to get through the line and through immigration, where they scanned our passports for verification, and then stamped a blank page.
We headed outside the terminal and there was sort of a line to get a taxi. There were quite a few taxis arriving continuously to replace the ones picking up waiting passengers. It was a little chaotic, and the line was loosely defined. There was a man trying to manage matching up passengers with specific taxis, mainly to make sure the taxi was large enough for the passengers and their luggage, but it was not working out very well. We sort of pushed our way out and were assigned a driver, and he loaded our luggage in the hatchback area in the rear of the taxi.
We told him we wanted to go to the Hamburg Train Station, and off we went. He drove very fast, making both of us a little nervous. He obviously did not speak much English, he made no response when Stephanie asked him a question about how many cruise ships came to Hamburg. There was no traffic today since it was a holiday, and we made it to the station in about 15 minutes, for a fare of Euro 25.00.
Hamburg Train Station
We headed into the station and found our platform. The station was fairly large, and there were not many places to sit and wait for trains. It was just about 9:00 AM, and our train to Berlin was scheduled for 10:36 AM, so we had quite a wait.
We purchased some food items from one of the food shops, Stephanie got a large plain Pretzel, and I got a pastry that had either raspberry or rhubarb on top. It looked like raspberry, but the name in German looked more like rhubarb. They had seats to sit at while we were eating, which was the main reason we had purchased the food. We stayed for about 20 minutes but the seats were hard and we felt bad about staying too long since we were finished with our snack, and other people needed the seats to eat at.
There was an upstairs area with shops and restaurants, so we took the escalator up to check them out. We noticed there was a McDonalds, and there were several people with luggage sitting inside. We went in and I purchased a cup of coffee, which entitled us to sit inside at a table. I nursed the coffee until about 10:05 AM, when we decided to head in the direction of the large electronic sign that shows all of the train schedules to confirm our train’s departure time and platform assigned to our train. We waited a little longer, standing by a store entrance for heat and then headed out toward our platform, which was one level down. We waited until the train that proceeded ours left, and we took the elevator downstairs since there was only steps and an up escalator. It was quite obvious that a homeless person or persons had been using the elevator as a urinal, it really stunk inside. We boarded with another lady, who was also complaining about the smell, and unfortunately, pressed the button for one deck up instead of one down, so we all got a lot more exposure to the smell than we should have.
Once on the platform, we tried to find the diagram of our train so we knew the approximate location of our car, which was number 32. These trains have reserved seats, so we needed to know the proper car to board for our assigned seats. We needed section A on the platform, and as we headed there, the train came into the station. As the front cars passed by we saw car 32. We had to walk about two train car lengths to get to our car, but boarded easily, and found our seats. I had forgotten that we were in a center seat section with a table and four opposing seats.
Our Train To Berlin
There was no baggage storage at the ends of the cars, so I lifted our heavy bags up onto the overhead storage before realizing that there was enough room between the opposing direction seats behind us to place the bags on the floor, in the “V” made by the seat backs facing opposite directions. I went ahead and got the bags down while we were not yet moving, and placed them in the space between those seats. The train was really empty, so we had the table and four seats to ourselves. We had gotten opposing direction seats by the window so that Stephanie could face forward, no matter which way the train went out of the station Sometimes, the trains come into the station, and continue out in the same direction, and sometimes they come in and go out the opposite direction, so you never know which is really the front of the train when purchasing tickets. With these seats, we had one seat in both directions, guaranteeing Stephanie could face forward.
Power Windmills In The German Countryside
The train left right on time, and we had an enjoyable ride, and used the free wi-fi to work on the blog and check email and Facebook.
The train ride was smooth and uneventful. We only made one stop at a station on the outskirts of Berlin before arriving at the Berlin Central station, right on time at 12:16 PM. We got our bags and waited at the doorway for the train to stop and we headed out. The trains do not stop long, so you need to be stationed near the door to make sure you can get off before other people block your path when they are trying to hurriedly board the train.
Our Train In The Berlin Train Station
The Berlin Train Station was huge, and is on multiple levels. We arrived on the bottom level, and needed to go up a couple of levels to the S-Bahn part of the station, which is the local commuter trains. We used the elevators, and thankfully, they were nice and clean, and odor free.
We had difficulty finding a ticket machine for the S-Bahn trains, we were not sure which level we needed to be on of the five levels of the Berlin Station. There was an information desk on the level we initially took the elevator to, but it looked like it was for information on DB Trains, not the S-Bahn. Finally, we decided to go up to the level for the S-Bahn train platforms, and found the ticket machines there. We wanted to buy a one day pass, and made the selections on the ticket machine after selecting “English” and tried to pay with our PIN credit card. It was refused. Then we tried an ATM card and it was also refused. I was irritated, we were having a repeat of the Rotterdam ticket purchase issue, and it was frustrating. We then realized that the machine did not take credit cards at all, which we thought odd. It did take Euro bills, but only 20.00 or less, and all we had was two 50.00 bills. A nice gentlemen asked us if he could help us, and we inquired about any ticket machine that might take credit cards, maybe there were other machines set up for that type of payment, and he let us know there were none. We were really surprised since most ticket machines in other countries take that form of payment.
Our options were to find an ATM and get money out in smaller denominations, or find a ticket desk. We went down one level and found an ATM. We needed more cash anyway. That was when Stephanie remembered she had two Euro 20.00 bills in her wallet. That was a good thing because when I selected 100.00 from the ATM, it gave me two more 50.00 bills. Other previous ATM withdrawals earlier in our trip had all been in 20.00 bills, go figure.
We headed back upstairs and purchased our transportation day passes from the ticket machine, we were getting a lot of practice using the machine, now having tried to order the tickets three or four times.
Hackescher Markt Restaurants
With passes in hand, and a visit to the validation machine to time stamp them, we waited for the S5 train that would take us to the station nearest to our hotel. We rode two stops and got off the train at the Hackescher Markt Station. We headed downstairs and found the street the hotel was located on, only a very short walk from this station.
We headed inside the Adina Apartment Hotel – Hackescher Markt to check in, arriving about 1:15 PM. They informed us that the room was not going to be ready until 2:00 PM, so we dropped off our luggage in their secure storage area, and headed out to get some lunch. There were quite a few restaurants located under the elevated Hackescher Markt train station so we headed back there and looked over several menus before selecting a restaurant called Barist.
The restaurant was quite busy, but we did not have to wait for a table for two. The menu was quite large, so it took us a little bit of time to decide what we wanted. I ordered a roast pork entrée and Stephanie ordered a spinach and gorgonzola cheese pizza. We had noticed that almost all of the restaurants here had pizza and pasta dishes, as well as some more traditional German dishes. There were a lot of people eating pizza, it must be something that people in Berlin love to eat. Both our lunches were quite good. We ordered two German beers, Erdinger Weissbier Dunkle, which I thought were good, but a little dark for Stephanie’s taste.
Our Room At The Adina Apartment Hotel
After finishing lunch, we walked back to the hotel and retrieved our stored luggage and headed up to our room on the top floor of the hotel, floor number 8. The room was really nice, it had a balcony and a small kitchen area with a refrigerator, stove and really small dishwasher. We unpacked our luggage, but just the clothes we will need here, leaving all of the warm weather and dirty clothes in the suitcases. The weather had been much better so far today than forecast.
Brandenburg Gate
It was mostly sunny, but we could see some rain clouds approaching. We had a brief rain shower, but then the sunshine reappeared, so we looked at our map and decided to head over to the Brandenburg Gate. We walked back to the Hackescher Markt Station and took the S5 for one stop, then the S2 one stop and were at the Gate. It was crowded since today was a holiday.
The Reichstag Building
From there we headed over to the Reichstag Building, with its glass dome, one of the most visited sights in Germany. It is currently the home of the German Parliament. Of course, there was quite a crowd there. There was an information booth and we learned we needed to register for a free pass to visit the building at a ticket office across the street, so we headed over there to wait in the registration line. We found out that the time slots for today and all of tomorrow were already full, so we would not be returning to see the dome until Wednesday at the earliest.
The Reichstag Building
We needed some type of ID to register, and luckily we had our laminated color copies of our passports with us. This was sufficient to register, but we needed to show our real passports for security verification when we returned for our tour on Wednesday. We requested a 10:45 AM tour time and received our printed registration form. Unfortunately, the weather had now turned from sunny and fairly warm to cloudy, windy and cold, with some short rain showers, all while we waiting in line for our registration. We got out our sweaters and scarves from our backpacks and put them on under our coats to keep warm. Within about fifteen minutes the sun reappeared, and we had to peel off some of the added layers.
The Berlin Cathedral
We took the S-Bahn back to the Hackescher Markt station, and walked a short distance to the Berlin Cathedral, and then to some sights at Museum Island. We just walked around taking pictures while we still had sunny skies. We will most likely visit some of the museums on Museum Island tomorrow since the weather is forecast to be cloudy with rain showers, certainly “inside time” weather.
Museum Island
We had been looking for a grocery store during the time we were walking around, we wanted to get some items for a snack for tonight, not needing to eat another big meal after our large, late lunch. We did not find one, but also thought that even if we did, they would most likely be closed since it was a holiday, having experienced that before on previous trips to Europe. We walked back to the hotel and went to the bar to enquire about their happy hour, which I had thought was free for hotel guests, based on some reviews I had read. It was not free, just reduced prices for mixed drinks only. Stephanie asked the bartender about a grocery store location, and he told us there was one on the other side of the block from the hotel, but it was closed for the holiday, just as we had surmised.
Now we needed to find something for dinner, so we headed back to the restaurants at the Hackescher Markt. We looked over the menus, hoping to find some appetizers to split for a smaller meal. We looked at all of the restaurants, probably about 10-12, and picked one called Grand Rocka. Stephanie ordered chicken and cheese nachos, and I ordered a cheeseburger, certainly not local German cuisine. Of course, they also had pizza and pasta dishes. We were quite surprised that the cheeseburgers seemed to be a favorite of the locals eating here, as well as the pizza. We could tell they were Germans, or at least from Europe, we watched them eat a hamburger entirely with a knife and fork, cutting it up into pieces. Of course, I ate mine the American way, by holding it in my hand. The chicken and cheese nachos we also really good, they had a really good seasoning on them. Of course, we each sampled a German Beer with dinner. It was more than we had wanted to eat, but everything was very tasty.
We headed back to the hotel to relax for the evening, it was already about 8:00 PM, and we were tired from the early wake up and travel day. We put together a plan for tomorrow, keeping our fingers crossed that the weather would not be too bad. We did call my mom using Viber over the internet. Mom called first, but the connection was not good, so I called back, and this time, it was just like talking through cell service, very clear and no delay.
We turned in about 10:30 PM after having had a great first day in Berlin.
Panorama Of Our View From Our Balcony