Barb and Baden’s Excellent Christmas Adventure – Part 3

Speed

There’s almost no subject on my blog that I’ve written about more when we’ve been in Germany than driving. Driving fast. For anyone who has a remote interest in cars and driving, it is well know that Germany is the holy grail of places to drive due to the excellent highway system known as the Autobahns but of course the fact that many parts of the Autobahn have no speed limits. Coming from Canada, there is just nothing that compares to this.

We did a fair amount of highway driving on this trip and we dropped off the rental car in Frankfurt a few days ago. As I’ve said to myself on just about every trip to Germany after dropping off a rental car: “I’ve got to rent a faster car next time”. 🙂

Friends

Since arriving in Germany on Friday, we’ve been with friends who first started with us in Bad Kreuznach and then we all moved to Frankfurt (where they live) for the past few days. Barb and I have travelled to a lot of places over the year and we have learned that there is one truth about travel and that is there is no better way to experience a country that to spend the time with friends or family who are local to that country. I love nothing better that getting the inside perspective about a country but also to be able to spend lots of time talking about the differences and similarities between our country and theirs. It’s also really great if you have friends with whom you really enjoy their company which is definitely the case here.

The photo above was taken at a cafe in Bad Kreuznach where we stopped for kaffee und kuchen. This is a delightful German tradition where you stop for coffee and cake (both always excellent in Germany by the way – especially the cake) in the late afternoon. In the colder weather where you have been walking around the whole day it really hits the spot. While we were having kaffee und kuchen quite often I have to assume that in normally life in Germany this only occurs occasionally as I can’t think that people can have cake every single day. Beer of course, but probably not cake.

Northward Bound

As I’m writing this section, we’ve just left Frankfurt and are heading north towards Berlin where we will be staying for the next few days. We’re taking the high-speed ICE train from Frankfurt and we should get into Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in about 4 hours. Barb and I love travelling by train. Not only do you get to see the countryside as you go by but unlike travelling by air, you can show up at a train station around 15 minutes before leaving so there’s very little waiting around. Assuming that you’re travelling light (which we aren’t), you can just jump on the train when it arrives and go. It’s all very civilized.

Berlin

After arriving at the train station this afternoon, we took a taxi to our hotel in Berlin which ended up being a relatively short ride. We had barely dropped our suitcases in our hotel room before leaving right away to go walk along the major street near our hotel, the Kurfürstendamm. This street was absolutely teeming with activity and much of the street was lit up with a variety of Christmas designs including a huge Christmas tree in the middle of the street (above photo). Up and down the street are numerous small stores and big department stores and as a result there is lots of people walking along the streets. Each store has some kind of Christmas-themed display inside but it is the large department store KaDeWe that stands out in this sea and has numerous large display windows, each showcasing a different department from the store.

There’s many things that we like about Berlin but it’s the variety of contrasts that I think is unique. Since many areas of the city is relatively brand new, rebuilt after the Berlin Wall came down in 1990, many areas of the city such as around Potsdamer Platz were completely redeveloped and now has a number of new buildings, stores, restaurants. Of course, almost none of any part of Berlin is very old (pre-WW2) as the city was mostly destroyed during the war.

But it’s really so much more than just the buildings. What I really love about Berlin is that it has so many distinct neighbourhoods, each having something unique about it. Today we walked through 4 to 5 different districts throughout the city, enjoying the Christmas decorations in each area. We’ve seen at least 3 different Christmas markets throughout the city an have a few more on our list before we’re finished in Berlin in a few days. We could easily spend a month here and never see everything in the city.

My next update will be in a few days and by that point our train ride out of Berlin will be approaching to take us to our next destination where we will be spending Christmas.

Baden