Day 12 (Thu 13 Sep) A Day in Berlin

Woke to our new surroundings.  We had enthusiastically selected the Hotel Kurfurst because the photos and description we'd seen gave it the very feel of ‘old’ Berlin from the days before and during the Weimar Republic.  On arrival, that feeling had turned out to be 100% true, down to the detail of the reception desk being on the third floor, serviced by a lift that would take one person with suitcase.  On becoming more familiar, through the senses, the feeling increased – by sight, from the brown, cream, maroon and wood/woodgrain of the interior décor, through the gurgling sound of the hot water radiators to the lightly-mildewed bouquet and the sixth sense that the wi-fi was actually steam-driven.  Nevertheless, we had slept very well and woke to enjoy the variety of taste sensations in an excellent, genuine old berlin breakfast.

There followed the second organizational error in two days when, with a combination of imprecision in the documentation, compounded by misreading, we went the long way around to arrive at the middle stop of the Hop-on-Hop-off bus tour.  ‘Lost’ some time but got a reasonable overview of some of the major sights to be seen and gained some good ideas about where to return later.

The afternoon was largely taken up by some long-awaited Wasching (Laundry, we hasten to add).  In the absence of any in-house system, we used the Waschwell TOGO Waschcenter, which happened to be handy to a shop with beautiful maple and walnut flavoured ice-cream to top-off the snack lunch we’d had on the way there.  Folding completed and clothes returned to our room, we set off to the Ku’damm and a visit to the Ka De We Shopping Centre, the biggest.  At first, this was just to go to the door and look ...

But then …

 Well, just for a bit of Window Shopping then …

Or was it ??

 Dinner on the way home incorporated a variety of flavours to be obtained from a variety of wursts, sauerkraut and kartoffeln.  Early to bed not a surprise given today’s steps recorded from the mobile phone app are 19365 (Helen) and 17371 (Doug)