Beer, Bears and Bratwurst in Berlin - day 1 Tuesday 23rd October 2018

[Goldia]

Welcome to the Beer, Bears and Bratwurst in Berlin trip report!

I’m Abby, my DH is Dave and we have 2 children Max (14) and Kate (11). We love a city break in October half term and this year we were trying out Germany as we’d never been before, specifically Berlin. We like walking and each day we had a tour designed by me to take in the sights of the city.

This is the travel day, we had stayed overnight at the Airport Inn at Gatwick as we had a very early 6.45am flight to Berlin.

The alarm was set for 4.30am and we ended up getting up at 4.15am as we were awake anyway. I felt like I’d dozed all night rather than having a proper sleep, but oh well, that’s just the way it is before a trip. Dave and myself had a less than satisfactory cup of tea in the room while getting ready and we headed down to catch the 5am bus to the airport.

The bus timetable said there would be a bus every 10 minutes. This was good as the 5am bus didn’t turn up and it was cold waiting in the dark. We hovered in the reception area waiting for the bus. Eventually the 5.10 bus appeared and we paid another £9 to go to the airport. The bus took ages as it went to a few other hotels first to pick up other passengers.

We had already checked in online and were flying hand luggage only so when we arrived at the terminal we could go through security straight away. This was actually fairly speedy and me and the kids were through by 5.43am and waiting for Dave as his bag had been put to one side for extra screening. Apparently he had not heeded my advice and some of his toiletries were not in the liquids bag. The kids found this very funny.

We walked through the duty free shop and Dave bought a plug adapter while I went to check out the screens to find out which gate we needed to go to. The kids were disappointed as the gate was already showing - they had hoped to get an airport breakfast (this is one of the traditions they rather like…as do we!).

We walked to gate 109.

We bought some water and went through to the gate waiting area. We headed out pretty much straight away to the plane.

But then for some reason they made us all wait on the tarmac. I assume the plane wasn't ready, but why send us out into the freezing cold and not let us wait inside?

In the end it wasn't a long wait and were loaded on and in our seats by 6.31am. The plane was due to take off at 6.45am so I was feeling pretty good about the day as it looked like everything was going according to plan and we were ahead of schedule. Then there was an announcement that the weather in Berlin was very poor and they were not allowing us to take off. The pilot said he anticipated the delay would be around an hour. There was a large groan from all the passengers and I was less smug than I had been 30 seconds previously.

We took off at 6.41am so we barely waited 10 minutes and that was 4 minutes ahead of when we were supposed to take off. It was a fairly uneventful flight. We had all downloaded TV shows to our tablets. Max had lots of episodes of Scrubs and Brooklyn 99. Kate had Gilmour Girls. I don’t know what Dave was watching and I had Thirteen and lots of episodes of Richard Ayoade’s Travel Man series. Another shout out to Cazzius, thanks for recommending the episode where Richard travels to Berlin, I watched this on the flight and it was a great appetizer for what was to come. I also watched his trip to NYC and Iceland.

After landing we had to wait for the 2nd bus to transfer us from the plane to the terminal and it was cold and wet! Kate was very pleased that she had the biggest coat in the world and it kept her really warm, it had 2 zips and a big hood that covered most of her face.

Getting through passport control was very quick and of course we had no luggage to collect so apart from a quick toilet stop we were on our way to the taxi rank.

There was a very long line but as it was pouring with rain and we didn’t fancy having to make our way to the station and then deal with changing buses/trains we waited in the line. It actually moved very quickly and we were in a taxi on our way to the Novotel Suites hotel by 10am.

We checked in and I had fully expected them to say the room was not ready as we were so early, but again luck was with us and we were given our room key cards and headed up to the third floor.

We were pleased with the room, there were 2 single beds with 1 pull out from under the double bed.

This was a much wider bed than the horrid little bed that could barely be called a double bed in the Airport Inn the previous night.

Max showed off how much space was in the wardrobe.

There was a separate toilet, which is always handy when you are all in the same room.

The bathroom was lovely with a large shower and then a shower over the bath too.

We pootled around the room putting some stuff away, the kids fought over who would sleep on the floor – Max lost!

I thought with having 2 single beds there would be no arguing over who slept where, but I was wrong, the arguing over beds continued throughout the holiday and by the end of the trip all 4 of us had slept on the floor.

We left the room after an hour as it had stopped raining and started our walking tour of Berlin.

We were all quite hungry and I had built into the plan lunch at the Back-Factory, I read about this bakery in CrispyA’s Berlin trip report and the kids loved their lunch here and were desperate to go back again later in the trip. We eventually did return on the last day.

Max had a sausage roll, Kate and myself shared a sausage roll and a pretzel.

Dave had a chicken sandwich.

We all had drinks.

Plus some little donuts for dessert.

We really enjoyed this lunch. The sausage rolls were great. This came to just 15 euros so was very cheap.

We passed Checkpoint Charlie, but didn’t stop for a photo with the man dressed up in Army uniform.

We were heading out over the river Spree to Alexanderplatz. On the way the kids spotted a play park and had a little play.

There were lots of parks over the city and even though Max is 14 and Kate is 11 they still like to have a play in these.

We carried on walking and of course found another park.

The kids had a climb.

They were not too happy when I told them it was time to move on.

It was very cold walking across the river and quite windy.

We passed a lot of interesting buildings on the way. It was about a 30 minute walk.

We also passed a church that had been bombed in the war. There are quite a lot of buildings that have bomb damage and rather than pulling them down or restoring them fully many of them are just the shells of buildings.

Alexanderplatz is a square named to honour the Tsar of Russia, Alexander the First. In November of 1989 1million East Berliners gathered here to hold a demonstration protesting the GDRE regime. It wasn’t long after the protest that the Berlin wall fell and apparently this was the biggest demonstration to ever take place in Germany.

The World Clock is on one side of the square. We headed towards the centre of the city and museum island. At the foot of the TV tower there are some little trampolines built into the pavement that the kids enjoyed bouncing on.

This was something that Kate really wanted to re-visit so we popped back here on our highlights tour on the last day.

It was now very cold and beginning to rain a little.

We had brought umbrellas with us but they didn’t offer a lot of protection.

We continued the tour around to the Berliner Dom which was built between 1894 and 1905. It is a baroque cathedral and stands on museum island. As it was so wet we didn’t really appreciate this too much.

The red and green crossing men to help pedestrians cross the road seemed to be a bit of a thing in Berlin.

There were lots of Amplemann shops in the city and the kids enjoyed this.

We walked down Unter den Linden which is a large road from East to West Berlin with Linden trees along the avenue.

I tried to get a photo of the real life green man for crossing the road but it was a bit tricky.

We were all a bit cold and wet and so we headed into a café for a beer.

The kids had hot chocolate and we shared a piece of cheesecake between the four of us.

This was super tasty cheesecake!

We walked back to the hotel for an afternoon rest and the kids watched some stuff on their tablets and were glad that the hotel room had wifi. There was a Lidl just round the corner of the hotel and we stopped off in there for some breakfast items (bread and jam) and some tasty treats for the room.

It was still raining quite hard and it was very windy. So we decided to just go to the Italian restaurant on the same block as our hotel for dinner rather than walk to one of the restaurants Caroline recommended. While getting ready the kids made a discovery that the room had dividers that you could pull out to separate the adult sleeping area from kids sleeping area.

We all had pizza for dinner. Kate had salami pizza.

Max had margherita pizza.

Dave had a seafood pizza with squid on.

I had the spiciest pizza in the world! It did say in the menu that it was a spicy sausage and boy it was as at points my mouth felt like it was on fire.

We both had a beer and the kids had cokes.

We went back to the hotel room and had the lovely chocolates we’d bought from Lidl.

The kids and Dave were doing magic tricks with the cards as we were all quite tired and none of us really wanted to play anything where we had to concnetrate. I was very tired and ended up in bed by about 8.30pm. The kids and Dave watched some videos on you tube of David Blaine doing card tricks. But I think they were in bed by around 9pm.

Steps today: 22,289

[Melbatb]

What a shame about the rain but you still did lots!

I love German restaurants!

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by Melbatb

What a shame about the rain but you still did lots!

I love German restaurants!

See more...

It was the worst day of the trip for weather so we shouldn't complain really - it's to be expected in late October. There were a couple of showers over the next few days but not too bad really.

We came to love German restaurants too!

[collybird]

How rude of the gate to already be showing and you to be cheated out of breakfast.

Haha at Max in the 'wardrobe', you'd not catch me in a space that small.

Those sausage rolls look amazing.

Where is Kate's coat from? (I have already bought this year's winter coat but I am a sucker for coats)

Those pizzas look lovely.

You fit in a lot today despite your early start, I'm impressed!

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by collybird

How rude of the gate to already be showing and you to be cheated out of breakfast.

Haha at Max in the 'wardrobe', you'd not catch me in a space that small.

Those sausage rolls look amazing.

Where is Kate's coat from? (I have already bought this year's winter coat but I am a sucker for coats)

Those pizzas look lovely.

You fit in a lot today despite your early start, I'm impressed!

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Oh I know both us and the children felt incredibly deprived to not get our airport breakfast.

The sausage rolls were yummy.

The coat is from Sports Direct, we only bought it a couple of weeks ago! It's an adult size 6 as we wanted it to be big enough to go over the top of her school blazer. It's a cute coat and it wasn't expensive I think it was around £30. By the way I saw your reply to the Orlando trippie and I need to check the T shirt as I know that my brother bought it but I can't remember where it's from so I can't reply to that message until I have a proper answer for you...I'm hoping it still has the label in as Kate is super sensitive to those and we often have to cut them out.

[collybird]

Originally Posted by Goldia

Oh I know both us and the children felt incredibly deprived to not get our airport breakfast.

The sausage rolls were yummy.

The coat is from Sports Direct, we only bought it a couple of weeks ago! It's an adult size 6 as we wanted it to be big enough to go over the top of her school blazer. It's a cute coat and it wasn't expensive I think it was around £30. By the way I saw your reply to the Orlando trippie and I need to check the T shirt as I know that my brother bought it but I can't remember where it's from so I can't reply to that message until I have a proper answer for you...I'm hoping it still has the label in as Kate is super sensitive to those and we often have to cut them out.

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Thank you, I might look up the coat, not that I need one. Although my friends will be pleased because it's not the usual khaki I go for

[CrispyA]

Glad you found the Back Factory - we thought it was great! Shame about the rain but you still managed to do loads, not surprised you were worn out.

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by collybird

Thank you, I might look up the coat, not that I need one. Although my friends will be pleased because it's not the usual khaki I go for

See more...

It probably does come in khaki! It was available in black but the navy is nice.

Originally Posted by CrispyA

Glad you found the Back Factory - we thought it was great! Shame about the rain but you still managed to do loads, not surprised you were worn out.

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Thanks to you for recommending it! The kids were desperate to return but we were never near it at the right time for some lunch. On the last day I promised we could get a couple of pastries before going to the airport.

[smithlane]

Boo to the weather! Other than the minor delay it sounded a smooth travel and you packed so much in once you arrived! Hotel looks lovely as do those sausage rolls. I'd already had that café written down after reading CrispyA's report but will certainly be having one of those, yum

[Goldia]

Originally Posted by smithlane

Boo to the weather! Other than the minor delay it sounded a smooth travel and you packed so much in once you arrived! Hotel looks lovely as do those sausage rolls. I'd already had that café written down after reading CrispyA's report but will certainly be having one of those, yum

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This was the worst day weather wise, the next few days there were a couple of showers but they were gone in a flash. The Back Factory was very close to checkpoint Charlie. They had lots of different pastries and sandwiches, everything was yummy.