It is another beautiful day—and warm too—as we sail out of Gdynia, Poland, a suburb of Gdansk, and make for the open waters of the Baltic Sea.  Tomorrow is a sea day, with plenty of time for rest and relaxation after two days of heavy touring.  We are heading for St Petersburg, Russia, and will spend two days there in port.  So far, the weather has been beautiful and the sailing has been very smooth.

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

Hamburg, Germany

Full-Day Excursion to Berlin

Because we have an early shore excursion today, we opt for room-service breakfast, which arrives on time, with hot coffee, cold cereals and milk, assorted pastries and muffins, and all the usual accompaniments.  There are three tour buses taking passengers from the Prinsendam to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, a very large train station with a traditional glass and steel train shed that floats over ten or twelve tracks.  It is also a very busy station, especially at rush hour in the morning.  But our tour guides are well-practiced and lead us to the right platform in time for the ICE (InterCity Express) which whisks us at high-speed non-stop (well, one brief stop in a Berlin suburb) from Hamburg to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, another glass-enclosed station, this one newly built after the reunification of Germany, with four levels, wide platforms, and tracks going both east-west and north-south.

                                                                                                                                                     Berlin

Hamburg

The German rail system (DB) is very modern and very busy.  High-speed trains run on dedicated tracks and achieve speeds over 120 miles per hour, smoothly and quietly.  There is a digital speed calculator in each car, which is the only way you can tell how quickly you are moving.  We have each been given a snack bag to enjoy on the train, with sandwiches, fruit drinks, water, cheese, and fruit.  It’s just 90 minutes from Hamburg to Berlin—when I first rode this route from Berlin to Hamburg in 1987, it took about 4 ½ hours!

I have been to Berlin many times, both before and after the demolition of the Berlin Wall, but this is Will’s first visit.  In 2012 I spent five days here before taking the train to Amsterdam to join a cruise.  Even though I know the city well and public transportation is efficient and easy to use, the limited time has convinced us that being on a tour is the best way to see the highlights of the city in one day.  Our tour bus and guide—a Welshman named Sean, who has lived most of his adult life in Berlin—is waiting as we exit the train station and we begin in the former eastern part of the city, driving past the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and Potsdamerplatz, the last three of which we will return to later for longer looks.  Our first stop is at Checkpoint Charlie, now just a kitschy tourist attraction, but formerly an important border crossing between East and West Berlin. 

We turn round and head back through the former eastern part of the city, passing the Gendarmenmarkt, with its two beautifully restored churches (now both museums) and concert hall—you can find pictures of this area on the blog entries from 2012.  We stop nearby at Bebelplatz, site of Humboldt University, St Hedwig’s circular church, and the site of Hitler’s infamous book burnings.  We drive through the former soviet sector’s Alexanderplatz, with a full-size advertisement for Return to Planet of the Apes and its famous TV tower, and Museum Island, with a matchless collection of art and history museums (again, check the blog from 2012).

From here we drive to the “Berlin Wall Gallery”—a long strip of street paintings on one of the few remaining pieces of the Wall— with a series of pictures of public feeling about the Wall.  This is also the site of the new O2 sports arena. 

We are all hungry again, so the three buses drop us at the Nolle Restaurant, under the railroad tracks that emerge from Friedrichstrasse Railway Station, which you probably know from the film Cabaret.

After an excellent lunch served family style with local beer, we take a short ride to Unter den Linden (Berlin’s answer to Parisian boulevards), to Pariserplatz and the Brandenburg Gate.  From here we walk to the quite-controversial Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, with over 2500 concrete stele and disorienting pathways.  A drive through the post-modern architecture of Potsdamerplatz, past the museums of former West Berlin and the Philharmonic Hall (pictures on earlier blog), brings us to Kurfurstendam and the final stop of the day, KaDaWe, Berlin’s finest and most famous department store, where we have one hour of free time to browse and shop, before busing back to the train station for the return trip to Hamburg (with another snack pack).

It’s after 9pm when we reboard the Prinsendam, after the 12 ½ hour excursion.  We have eaten so much all day that we just go back to our suite and call it a day.  The ship sails at 6am tomorrow morning, but we are not planning to get up for the sail away festivities.