Monthly Archives: July 2024

Day six: Wrocław

I’m on a train for the next three hours, might as well make use of it.Wednesdy. (My birthday). Wednesday might as well have started on Tuesday morning. I’d arrived at my apartment in Wroclaw on Tuesday evening, see St Elizabeth’s and the market square and then gone back to the apartment. Reviews said it was quiet because it’s on a residential courtyard away from the town centre. Well, the location was accurate but it wasn’t quiet. There was the couple yelling from the other side of the courtyard until 4am, there was the person who sneezed 3000 times and was determined that everyone within half a kilometre should hear it (turns out there are two of these people in my courtyard!) and also it was so hot. I think I snoozed a bit about 6am but that was about it.

So I got up, went down to the Zabka on the corner for some fresh bread, didn’t succeed and had to go to the one on the next block, had a nice breakfast of fresh bread and butter and cold juice from my fridge and then decided I was going to the Aquapark first thing. I’d decided I was doing it at some point but being in the water during the hottest part of the day seemed a good idea. So off I went for a tram. The trouble with Wroclaw compared to Berlin is that when you want to go somewhere, the map will say “take this tram from this stop in three minutes. Otherwise, you’ll need to walk 300m to a different stop to get that tram in five minutes. But if you miss that, go to one 300m in a different directions and try there”. And then when you get there, the trams obviously aren’t running on Google Maps’ schedule anyway. Anyway, I managed to get on a tram that would go towards the Aquapark and then walk the last 5-9 minutes.

The Aquapark is a huge water park, as its name suggests, with a lot of play pools and slides but it also has a lane pool, a gym and an 18+ saunarium. I liked the idea of the saunarium, especially the onsen pool but I soon discovered why it’s 18+ – these things are textile-free just like in Germany but you’re supposed to have a towel to sit on in the sauna and I don’t generally travel with two towels. Well, I do if I’m going to Iceland but then I expect to be in a pool every single day, whereas here it’s just when the opportunity comes up. So I had a quick dip in the onsen pool and then returned to the family-friendly area. There’s a big kids’ pool, with mini slides and waves that go off every half an hour and last nearly 20 minutes and a lazy river that takes you in a loop outside and there’s a swim-through door to the outdoors pool. On a hot July day, it was packed. It had a sort of cafe-restaurant inside the pool area and there was a second, smaller, quieter, darker cafe/bar in the saunarium. I don’t now if you buy food and drink on your electronic wristband or whether you’re supposed to take your card with you. Bracelets make more sense.

I came back from the Aquapark quite late in the afternoon and had a late lunch then I decided I really should go out again. To Cathedral Island, that sounded good. Seven Gothic churches on one island. The trouble was, the only one that was really open had a dress code and I couldn’t go in because Jesus disapproved of my knees. The big cathedral was good – more good stained glass – but it had a service going on. I lurked at the entrance and took pictures of the great east window but that was about all I could get at.It was hot. It was getting on for 7pm by then and the temperature was not dropping. I was too hot to walk any further so I jumped on a tram, which had a modicum of air conditioning. Didn’t really matter where it was going but following our progress on the map, it stopped at the square where I got off yesterday evening. I could get to the big square from here and find a pavement cafe for a drink. I was so hot and thirsty that my mouth had turned to syrup. On the way into the square, I found a fountain which was spraying water into the air in a way it probably wasn’t meant to. It made a great photo with the setting sun behind it and obviously I walked through it. Somehow I wasn’t expecting it to be as wet as it was. But then when I got to the other side of the square, there was another fountain doing the same thing. This is clearly just how they cool down in Wroclaw. I didn’t find a suitable cafe. Most of them are restaurants or proper bars – a flight of mini beers in a spectrum from bright yellow to bright red looked appealing but their menu didn’t seem to suggest they were big on Coke or Fanta.

In the end, I went to the Zabka and bought a can of something cold and fizzy and with 20% apple and watermelon juice in it. Apple juice isn’t very tasty when it’s fizzy but at least it was cold. I found a slab of decorative concrete to sit on and sat there watching the square while it gradually got cooler. At last I decided I’d had enough of enjoying the square and the drinking something cold on the pavement and headed home – but I stopped in the opposite corner to watch a man spinning fire. He lit a kind of extra-long one-ended poi (I’m going to have to find out what that it!) and left it burning on the ground, spun it around, extinguished it and then lit up a fire staff, which he also left on the ground. No sign of singeing this morning – I assume that the fuel burns so enthusiastically that the fire doesn’t have a chance to burn anything else, although now I’m attempting to put it into words, it sounds beyond stupid. But it did stink of fuel and there were lovely little black clouds puffing off it.I stocked up on snacks on the way home and then was too tired or too hot or both to eat them before going to bed.

Day five: Poznan to Wroclaw

The trouble with deciding to spend a chunks of 24 or 48 hours in various places is you end up either having to carry everything with you or figure out places to leave them all morning or afternoon. I was lucky yesterday when I arrived in Poznan – my apartment was ready and I could just move in and go out. Today I left my luggage at reception…..

I had a train to Poznan at 16:44 which left the best part of an entire day to enjoy Poznan. I started it with running to the Zadka across the square for some fresh bread for breakfast, got packed up slowly and left the apartment and particularly the view very reluctantly. This apartment is too nice for just one night! Much too nice!

On the other hand, I did like the market square. So I walked down into the old town, in search of more old buildings and churches. I found the pink parish church, which was nice enough but so unmemorable I can’t even describe it. Then I found myself back in the market square. I found lots of places to sit in the shade, by a fountain just outside the square and soon it was 11.30. Now, the symbol of Poznan is a pair of goats which emerge from the tower above the town hall and butt heads twelve times at noon. I’d just been cheerfully thinking that there’s not a lot in the way of either tourists or tourist shops in Poznan but there they all are, standing in the shade opposite the town hall, cameras aloft. Oh, it’s all a bit of a drama! First the bell chimes twelve times, then a man with a clarion appears on a balcony and plays something that doesn’t sound entirely unlike the Last Post and then the goats appear. The whole thing takes about three minutes and some tourists, after waiting there for half an hour or maybe longer, get bored and walk away before the goats have finished. This astonishes me.

After that, I decided to wander east towards Poznan Cathedral. It’s on the other side of the river and there are a couple of other buildings in the complex, including a kind of half cut-off Gothic brick thing I’d really like to have seen inside. But the cathedral itself is another blocky red-brick thing that doesn’t look very Gothic from the outside but is interesting from the inside. It’s not as intricately detailed as the exhibition in Berlin but it’s still very pretty and very interesting. It’s got pillars that are part stone and part brick, endless interesting side chapels, some nice modern stained glass and – star of the show – a golden chapel. You can put 5zl in a slot to switch on the lights, at which point is becomes truly breathtaking.

Then I took a long stroll back via another long sit in the market square, a stroll back up to the park opposite the tower where I sat and enjoyed the duckpond and then it was time to collect my luggage and get my train. The train, according to the departure board, was from platform 11. Platforms in the station only go up to 6. Where’s 11? Aha, 7-11 are downstairs and outside. I couldn’t figure out how to get to 10 and 11 – I tried going up the steps back to the road and down the other side but that only took me to 10. There’s no connection to 11. Of course, it’s not as hard as that, there’s an underground passage joining 7 to 11 and all the others in between. Polish stations are weird – you have a platform number but you also have a track number. Seeing track 2, platform 2, track 3 on the way was really odd and took a moment to figure out. Anyway, the train arrived shortly after I did because Polish trains have a habit of stopping for an extended time at major stations – 21 minutes at Poznan and 15 minutes once we reached Wroclaw so there’s no need to rush to grab your luggage and jump off. It’s about an hour and a half from Poznan to Wroclaw and I had my own seat (unreserved this time, I checked several times) with a window, an empty luggage rack above it and air conditioning in the windowsill.

Smartphones have made the chances of accidentally jumping off in the wrong place somewhere between exceedingly difficult and actually impossible, which reduces accidental adventures but makes planned rail adventures much more efficient. I got to Wroclaw. I knew I needed to get a tram from the north side of the station. Seeing a sign for centrum, I followed it, only to emerge opposite Wroclawia, a big shoppipng centre that I knew was on the opposite side of the station. Turn round, march back through. There are ticket machines right at the tram and bus stops, so I got my 48 hour ticket, missed the 7 tram with a five minute walk and had to take the 8 with a 10 minute walk. The trouble was, the validator on the tram didn’t validate my ticket. Is it supposed to? It’s got a slot exactly the size of the ticket but when I stuck it in, it didn’t do anything. The internet says to validate them but it also says something incomprehensible about the linked payment card, which makes me wonder if I’m supposed to zap my bank card to validate my ticket – or possibly to pay contactlessly without meaning to. I’ll get on another tram tomorrow and try again.

Anyway, a ten minute walk took me to my apartment. That is, it took me to the restaurant right outside. I had quite detailed instructions including six pictures, making getting into the apartment a bit of a scavenger hunt. Clue 1: “right outside” actually means “opposite, on the other side of the road”. My apartment is on the third floor, keep to the left. That wasn’t so easy. Third floor? Up three floors I went and there was nothing but a blank wall on the left. I went back through my emails in search of an apartment number. Aha, number 5. Go to the door with a five on it. No key safe next to it and it didn’t match the scavenger hunt photo. It turns out you go up to the first floor and then step through into, effectively, the next building, and up some more stairs which run in the wrong direction up the middle of the building. But there it was – a door with the right number, a key safe and a piece of paper pinned to it which has the name of the apartment and the Airbnb and booking.com logos. I opened the key safe, unlocked both the locks and let myself into my next apartment. Not as nice as the one in Poznan, besides the difficulty in getting up to it. The view is over the courtyard where you access the backs of several similar buildings and the apartment is just one small room. It’s not unpleasant but yesterday’s was so much better. A waste to only spend one night there, I’m telling you.

Once I’d settled in, it was time to go out and refill my fridge. Yet again, there’s a Zadka every couple of hundred metres. Two blocks down is another Gothic church, and it was open at 7.30. It’s of a pretty similar type to Poznan’s cathedral, less impressive, but with better windows. Whoever presumably commissioned these windows after the war knew what they were doing. Oh, these are good windows! Lots of them are fire-themed and I swear one of them is things zooming around a burning Earth.

Right outside the church is Wroclaw’s market square – just as beautiful as Poznan’s, possibly bigger, and more commercial. Lots of tourists here. Tourist shops still open this time of night, packed pavement cafes and restaurants, banks and McDonalds, Burger King, Dominoes and KFC, all disguised as matching pavement cafes. There are fire jugglers and all sorts entertaining the tourists. Poznan but bigger.

So that’s my plan for the next day or two. Aqua Park, cathedral island and more time in the market square. I suspect my time in Poland is going to be a whirlwind of pretty squares and Gothic churches.

Day four: Berlin to Poznan

This was the other travel day that I was a bit concerned about. When I first had the idea and began putting the route together, back in March or April, there was a direct train which continued to Warsaw. Tht fr in advance was just too far to book, though, and by the time it was allowed, it had become a local train to Frankfurt Oder, on the Polish border, followed by the express to Warsaw, jumping off at Poznan. But a week or so – probably less – before I set off, I got an email from Deutsche Bahn saying that my journey didn’t exist anymore and to click here for alternatives. Do I even need to say that there were no alternatives?

No, there are always alternatives. I went back to DB’s ticket booking system and discovered that the alternative was to weave my way through Berlin’s public transport system, with half of the S-bahn in the city centre missing, to Erkner, at the far end of the S3. I could get on that local train from there to Frankfurt and then back on the original Polish Intercity that I’d originally planned. What I actually did would depend on where my local stop was, whether it was convenient, what the best route was from there and exactly which bits of Berlin were closed. My nearest station was a couple of hundred metres away at Naturekundemuseum, which is on the U6 – so much easier than taking the tram two stops west to Hbf and starting from there. I’d looked at my connections and I needed to be on the U-bahn by 8.45 to get to Frankfurt with enough time to not feel stressed and in the end, I was on it by about ten past eight. A few stops south to Friedrichstrasse, moment of “where is platform 6???” (DB helpfully gives platforms to save you the hassle of finding a departure board!) and onto the S3. Moment of doubt here because according to the signs, eastbound trains left from the left-hand side and westbound from the right but the eastbound Erkner train was on the right – agreed by both the electronic departure board and all the signs inside the train. By the time we reached Alexanderplatz, I was satisfied because there the signs were on the correct side – but the fact we reached Alexanderplatz at all said we were going in the right direction.

Erkner is right out in the woods. The electronic boards don’t bother listing half the stops, so at least twice I thought we’d reached the end of the line and we hadn’t. Then we came into platform 32 and I had to find the train on platform 2. Actually, the S-bahn lines are all numbered in the 30s and then down the side is the mainline station which may have more than one or two platforms but the Frankfurt train was waiting right there. I was expecting something like a slightly overgrown metro train and this was a full-size double-decker real train. Of course I sat upstairs!

It was only 35 minutes on the local train to Frankfurt. An easy transfer to the right platform and there sat the Warsaw Express, more than 40 minutes before it was due to depart. I was suspicious. The last time I got on a train that was waiting on the platform suspiciously early was in Helsinki and instead of ending up in the Arctic, I ended up going through the train wash and into the rail depot ten miles up the road. So I lurked. “See if other people get on” isn’t foolproof because that’s exactly what I did in Helsinki but it all seemed real enough. The signs on the train – at least on the outside – matched up and once I was aboard and looking dubiously at the signs in the corridor which gave nothing more than the date and time, I spied railway staff directing people onto the train and into the correct coaches.

You get assigned seats here, whether you like it or not. I was in coach 368 (why not just number them 1-4?) and seat 15. Polish trains, as far as I can see from this one and the one I got from Sopot to Gdansk a few years ago, tend towards compartments rather than rows of seats. My seat was by the window and facing forward and my compartment empty. I hoisted my bag onto the luggage rack, took out my phone charger and plugged it into the green-illuminated personal socket next to my seat and made myself comfortable. Not so comfortable when a large man with an even larger suitcase came and sat next to me. Nothing personal, that’s just his assigned seat. I was pretty convinced that suitcase was falling out of the rack and killing someone on the way, though. And then a couple with a kid came and filled up three of the remaining four seats and the last role was taken by a girl who looked far too young to be travelling across national borders – albeit Schengen ones – by herself.

We sat together on that train for the best part of half an hour before it finally set off – late. I can see no reason why a train that’s been sitting there for so long should be late departing. My compartment-mates had pretty much eaten their lunches before we left.

It was a little over an hour and a half to Poznan. Five or ten minutes maximum to the river that forms the border just here and then ninety-ish minutes of green countryside, wind turbines, builders yards, farmland and the occasional small town before we reached Poznan.

Poznan Glowny, the main station, was very busy. It was just after 12.30pm. I had the afternoon to explore but what to do with my luggage? As far as I could see, only four of the luggage lockers took cards and I had no Polish currency at all, let along coins. Well, my apartment is in the tower literally on the other side of the road so I’d go over there, see if I could get in (unlikely, two hours early) and leave my luggage if not. It turned out the room was ready – well, the cleaner was just leaving as I walked through the door. I’m on the 16th floor, overlooking the station, some of the more high-rise part of town and mile after mile of trees, chimneys and more greenery. 10/10 view. With only one night to enjoy my apartment – not only with a view but a fridge, a sofa, an armchair, a gigantic shower and a king-size bed (ok, it’s so big it covers the light switch and plug socket that are meant to be on the side of it), it seemed a shame to waste time there by going out and seeing Poznan but I had to go out and see Poznan. According to Google Maps and the cover of the book I brought with me (“A Chip Shop in Poznan” by Ben Aitken!), there was a very decorative town square.

It was about a 20 minute walk away, during which time I discovered that you can’t go 100m without coming across the next Zabka convenience store. And then the square was dead ahead and it was stunning. It’s four sides of tall thin colourful houses, exactly the sort you’d expect in an Old Town. All less than 80 years old, of course – like much of Poland, most of this square was rebuilt after being very literally flattened in WWII – but it’s still very pretty. There’s a fountain with a mythical figure in each corner and in the middle is the most spectacular town hall I’ve ever seen.

I was hungry. Producing a loaf of bread and a packet of cheese slices on a busy train is inconvenient and I’d left them in the fridge when I came out because I didn’t want to carry everything. There were cafes under big white umbrellas everywhere and I immediately decided I wanted to rest my feet, have a cold drink and eat some chips. Finding somewhere that looked like it might do just some chips was a bit of a challenge but the answer came unexpectedly at a Mexican restaurant – although they couldn’t bring themselves to do plain plain chips (“What about salt? Yes, absolutely, as much salt as you want). I had a seat, I had shade, I had a drink, I could see two sides of the square – and I was hassled by a wasp so much that at one point I accidentally threw my (95% empty) glass down on the table at it. I can’t bring myself to squish it but if wasps just went extinct, I wouldn’t mind.

A bit more time in the square and then I went souvenir shopping. I wanted some postcards and I wanted a badge for my camp blanket with a picture of the square on it. Or, as I searched the city fruitlessly, maybe just a badge of any kind. Poznan is big on magnets but non-existent on badges. In my search, I came across a great fountain, a big shiny glass modern thing in two halves that you could walk through, great for cooling down, some frescoes on a wall, a brick castle that’s actually an art museum and like everything in Poznan except Zabka, closed on Mondays. That was enough for the afternoon. I was hot and tired and ready to come home. My train tomorrow isn’t until 4.45 so I have plenty of time to read my guidebook this evening and see what else there is to see in Poznan but if I do nothing else, I’m satisfied to have spent an afternoon in that square.

I did pop out again. I searched the station for a souvenir shop. I didn’t search the big attached shopping centre but I suspect it’s not overwhelmed with rubbish souvenir shops. But I did want to get something else to drink, partly because I don’t have much and partly in the hope of getting a 1zl piece. Standing in front of a large bottle of orange juice, mentally calculating “if I give them this note, I get this change…” to figure out if it’s going to do the magic I wanted. And it did!

You see, opposite my tower is a little park and in the park is a duckpond. And at the top of the slope leading down to the duckpond is a dispenser for duck food, only you need to put a 1zl coin in. I was a bit worried, it being gone 7pm, that the machine would be empty and I’d have got my coin for nothing but it worked! Handful of birdseed! All the pigeons in the park running to me and then all the ducks on the pond paddling at me as fast as they can. Yes, ducks. It took a moment to realise it’s an entire pond of girl ducks and not a single boy in sight. Unless they’re not mallards and a species of duck that all look like female mallards.

Ducks fed, I came home, put my big bottle of orange juice in the fridge for breakfast (there’s a Zapka right outside so I’ll get fresh bread in the morning and check out just about as late as possible) and now I’m sitting on my balcony, listening to my neighbours playing Eminem and planes coming in overhead (at least, I think they are – I have no idea where Poznan Airport is) and writing this balanced uncomfortably on my knees.

Day three: Berlin but better

I liked Berlin more today. That’s partly because there was a cool breeze when I left the hotel, partly because it didn’t feel hot and sticky today even when the hot sun came out and partly because I didn’t follow the You Must See These Things rules.

First a croissant and some juice from the Rewe City at the station. It’s just about the only supermarket open on a Sunday so it was chaotic. Then I got a new 24-hour ticket but didn’t validate it – not when I’ve still got 40 minutes left on the last one! I went to Museumsinsel and sat on a bench under the trees overlooking the cathedral to eat my breakfast. The croissant tasted bad. Is it different butter? Lard? I don’t want to eat it. At last I pulled it out of the bag and looked at it. Filled with cheese – and ham!

The cathedral was closed to visitors until the afternoon, Sunday being a cathedral’s busy working day, so I had a look around. Two red brick spires caught my eye so off I went to find them, via a huge patch of construction work that doubled the distance. It’s a big red brick church, kind of square and angular but something about it appealed to me. The door was open and when I peeked inside, it turned out to be a free sculpture exhibition. I’m not interested in the sculptures but I was interested in the church. And it was great! For such a dark red angular brick church on the outside, it was all lightness and Gothic inside – cream pillars, huge expanses of stained glass, brick vaulted ceilings and every time you thought you’d seen every detail, there was another detail! Is it my favourite thing in Berlin or does Badeschiff still have that? I don’t know.

I strolled the long way round to the opera house where I discovered I was on Unter den Linden, the boulevard that ends at Brandenburg Gate, only I was at the opposite end. Then I think I got the u-bahn to Alexanderplatz. I’m not sure what I thought I wanted there – maybe to look up at the TV tower, maybe to pass Marienkirche, which is supposed to be Gothic but certainly doesn’t look it from the outside. Instead I walked down to the Rotes Rathouse which I also liked (I like red brick apparently) and then accidentally took the long way down to the river. Time for a boat trip.

There are hundreds of boats and companies but they’re basically all the same. I picked one because it was boarding there and then and you could buy tickets as you boarded. It had a retractable roof which covered the front and back of the boat but left the middle empty. There was a big black cloud behind us so I wasn’t surprised when it started threatening to rain but I was impressed by the waiter who pulled the cover over mere seconds before the entire black cloud fell onto Berlin. Five minutes later, the mega rainstorm was over, the sun came out and the roof was retracted again.

We floated five minutes up the river to see old Berlin, turned round and floated the other way to a little past the huge Hbf to turn round and come back again. I had vague hopes of getting into a bit of river that seemed a bit more untamed, like the bit down by Badeschiff where I’d seen plenty of boats yesterday but this was all quite calm river, other than the procession of tour boats. I noticed they all have their length written down the side and the biggest by far was Moby Dick, an actual shark-shaped boat.

I came back via Brandenburg Gate (quieter than yesterday but still surrounded by stuff) and the Memorial to Murdered Jews (interesting in itself but didn’t feel like a memorial; I wondered if there was a significance to the way it’s built that I and Wikipedia were both missing) and then came home because my camera and feet needed recharging.

While back, I checked to see if there were any Berlin essentials I’d missed and came across Liquidrom, a spa that thinks it’s a techno club. That seemed very Berliny so I reserved my space and I’ve written this sitting on its steps waiting for my time.

It was a spa, more or less. There are two pools and four saunas, I think – I didn’t go in the saunas. The main pool is underground, under a concrete dome, lit in shades of blue and green, with projectors splashing coloured light into the water and reflecting it onto the dome. It’s supposed to be a silent sanctuary except the music under the water but there are speakers above the water too and anyway, you can hardly hear anything over the water sloshing over the edge of the pool and into the gutter that runs around it, and the echoes of the splashing. There are hundreds of black and white pool noodles and you lie back in the water and listen to the music. It’s not techno. I don’t know what it is. It’s about as tuneless and pointless as proper spa music but with more saxophones and more bass.

The second pool is a small shallow pool outside in an enclosed garden. This is Germany. The sauna is textile-free and you can choose to be textile-free in the outside pool too, and in the various loungers and sunbeds around the pool and around the bar. Swimwear is required in the main pool, though. Entry to the saunas is €2.50, paid using your electronic wristband and then, yes, textiles off. So I opted not to sauna. Initially, seeing a tiny pool and a dark pool and a lot of nakedness, I thought the two hour slot was going to be more than enough but actually, it turns out I can lie in hot water for two hours very easily. I say “two hour slot”. You pay when you depart and the wristband knows if you’ve overstayed your slot and charges you accordingly, €2.50 for every extra thirty minutes, no fuss.

I stayed within my time, not least because I knew it would take at least half an hour to get home and I have an entire room to pack up ready to be on a train much earlier than intended tomorrow.

Day two: Berlin

It was a fairly grey day when I got up. I had some butter and chocolate yoghurt/pudding things I was hoping to keep cool but the air conditioning had decided at some point overnight that the room was cold enough and stopped (it wasn’t). I’d enjoyed how cold the room was last night but it was warm again this morning. And despite being grey and damp outside, it was also warm. I started with the u-bahn station around the corner to get a 24-hour transport ticket but the machine was out of order. Fine, I’ll do it online. But it wouldn’t work. Oh, that was frustrating. Eventually, I had to give up and walk in the direction of Friedrichstrasse. Down the road, I found another u-bahn station and that did have a working ticket machine. I validated it there and then, even though I’d had no intention of getting on the train by then, but since it was validated and my 24 hours had started so I thought I might as well use it.

Once I’d done my important shopping at Friedrichstrasse, I headed for Brandenburg Gate. There was a lot of very loud music from a big stage immediately behind it and lots festival stuff in front of it – fences, portacabins, generators, toilets etc. I managed to get through down the side but you couldn’t see it any better from the front. The festival was fenced off and evidently hadn’t started yet. I finally figured out what was going on from the little pink tents nearby for media and photos – this is Berlin Pride and it was today. So a glimse of Brandenburg Gate and then over to the Reichstag Building. Now, this was a bit unexpected. You always see the big glass dome but it’s actually surprisingly hard to see it – there isn’t a good angle from nearby and I haven’t found one a bit further away either yet. I might have quite liked to go up there but I didn’t fancy queuing in that heat, going through security in the heat or climbing a glass dome in the heat. It was hot.

I’d seen a u-bahn stop for Checkpoint Charlie while I was failing to buy a ticket so I took a couple of trains and found myself just round down the road. There are a lot of tourists taking grinning photos at the checkpoint and utterly oblivious to the fact that this is still a functioning city road. By now I was hot and thirsty and my bag, frustratingly, had split open along the top seam. This yellow bag has been an endless problem. It’s basically the same pattern as my green and orange travel bag but the green bag is in great condition, despite much heavier use than the yellow one. So I needed a needle and some thread and luckily there was the sort of shop that might sell such things right outside the station.

By the time I got back to my local station, it was pouring with rain. I scurried to the nearby Rewe for some fresh bread for lunch and then scurried home holding my bag together. I ate fresh bread and cheese and then sat and sewed my bag back together.

Because it was so hot, I decided there and then to go to the outdoor pool on the river so I booked my ticket and then decided to spend the afternoon having another go at Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag Building because they hadn’t captured my imagination in the morning. They still didn’t. But now Pride was started. I wasn’t surprised because I’d seen a lot of people on the tram and on the streets wearing rainbows, sequins, leather shorts and crop tops, so I strolled in. Nope, still can’t see Brandenburg Gate properly, but I quite enjoyed singing Queen, Abba and Atomic Kitten on my way down the road. Then back to the u-bahn and I headed for the pool. It was early but it was hot and Berlin was busy. The u-bahn was spectacularly busy. I’ve never been on a train where I’m literally squished between people so tightly that I can’t fall over even when people stand on my toes. I eventually concluded they were heading for the start of the Pride parade – having seen the kiosks and the street party, I’d decided there wasn’t any parade in Berlin but there was. Not that it makes sense to take the route they all appeared to be taking but they were clearly all going somewhere together.

After the chaotic u-bahn, I got on a bus because it was easier than walking a couple of hundred metres to the pool. It’s outside of the touristy part of Berlin and in a part that’s more what I expect from the non-touristy parts – the sort of Berlin that’s got loud techno music and warehouses and everyone’s dressed all in black. That sort of Berlin. The pool is sandwiched between two warehouses and uses part of one of them for its toilets. The changing rooms are four tiny cubicles up against the opposite wall and three blocks of tiny lockers. But I was early and the ticket is as much for access to the pool area as the pool itself. When I said “Oh, I thought there was a bar and I could sit and have a drink before it was time to go in” they let me in cheerfully enough provided I went to the bar. So I did. I was thirsty. It’s hot and I’d just been squished into a u-bahn train with at least a million too many people for its capacity.

Badeschiff itself is a swimming pool set in an old barge, floating in the river. The river itself is too polluted to swim in so they put in this pool, partly as an art installation and now it’s a favourite summer cooling-off spot. It’s got sand, so the bit I could see from the top, from my seat underneath a little balcony, was a beach club. Sand, a bar sheltered under the end of the warehouse, deckchairs and I could see a hint of bright blue over by the river. When the time came, I changed, stowed my stuff in a locker – I’d done the reading and knew to bring my padlock with me – and then went down to the pool. There’s an entire deck just covered with deckchairs down by the river and then a little jetty overhanging the pool. A sign said 24 degrees. Coldest 24 degrees I’ve ever come across. There are two ladders down to the water, where the top step overhangs slightly and between the overhang and my sunglasses, I couldn’t quite figure out where the water actually was. It looked a long way down. And it was cold! I managed to get down to the penultimate rung but I couldn’t just let go and land in the water. Instead I grabbed the side of the jetty and managed to swing myself round and down onto the ledge that runs around the pool. The pool is 2m deep but it has a good ledge on the long edges and a huge edge on the short edges. You can quite comfortably just sit there enjoying the sun, although if you sit on the edge of the barge, the lifeguard will object.

After five minutes, it stopped feeling so cold so I shuffled along to the big ledge at the end and perched there with my legs dangling into the depths and after another five minutes, I began to feel like I could maybe swim. So I slithered in and managed to make my way to the other end. It was cold but the more I swam, the less I felt it. In fact, eventually it began to feel quite comfortable. I would swim ten lengths. Then I’d actually been for a swim. Make it twenty. I had a vague memory of seeing that the pool was 33 point something metres long and so I sat in the shallows at the end and did some mental maths. A standard 25m swimming pool takes 40 lengths to reach a kilometre. How many in a 33.xxm pool? Call it 33. In fact, 32 is an easier number to maths with and whatever answer I came up with, I’d probably be doing more anyway. Ok, well, 10 lengths is 320m. 20 lengths is therefore 640m and 30 lengths is 960m. Only another 40m to that kilometre, so that’s a little over one length. There and back again, that would make up that 40m with metres to spare. 32 lengths to a kilometre. And so that’s what I did. And when I’d done it, I had a go at the maths for a mile. I can’t remember how many metres to a mile but if there’s 62 miles to 100km and I’d done 32 lengths… my maths ran out but I thought I needed another 15-20 lengths to get to the mile. My phone says I needed 51 lengths, so that’s another 19. I’ll bear it in mind in case I go again tomorrow.

I had a choice of ways home. I took the bus back to the u-bahn and decided the easiest way was to go to the end of the line at Warsaw Station, up to Friedrichstrasse and then two stops home. Scuppered, of course, by the entire s-bahn through the city centre being closed. By the time I was cursing Alexanderplatz, I could have been home if I’d gone much the same route I’d arrived. But I had a go on the tram eventually and got home feeling a little less refreshed than I’d been immediately after my swim.

So that’s my day. Not hugely excited by the proper Berlin tourist must-dos but I did enjoy my swim, even if my initial response to the water was “I’ve been waiting here over an hour and now it’s too cold to even get in??”. Definitely add Badeschiff to your summer Berlin must-do list.

Day one – London to Berlin by train in a day

It all started well enough. It turns out when they say to arrive at the Eurostar 90 minutes before departure, they mean it – I wanted to make sure I had time but no, check in doesn’t open for the 07:04 until 05:30, which at least gave me time to grab a baguette. Then they don’t tell you which platform until 20 minutes before – great fun when the 07:01 to Paris was going from platform 9 and the 07:04 to Brussels from platform 10, which meant every passenger in the entire station going up the same escalator.

The Eurostar was uneventful. Nice and smooth, nice big comfortable seats, my neighbour claimed to be confused about which seat was which, with the result that she was in my aisle seat when I arrived and quite happy for me to sit in the window seat. However, when we arrived at Lille, the people behind us departed, so I moved to the pair of empty seats where I could get my main bag down and get out my portable charger, which I had very wisely packed in the bag I was going to have relatively limited access to.

But we arrived in Brussels 11 minutes late, which didn’t give me time to get to the Cologne train. It was delayed by 99 minutes – good! Well, probably bad later on, but good for this connection. I had time to go back downstairs and get some food! Some cheese slices to go with that bread! It was only when I was sitting at the platform again, thinking happily that I had over an hour to sit and wait that I realised the train was due about 11am and it was 10.40. That wasn’t an hour and a half.

No. I was supposed to be on the on-time 10:25, not the delayed 09:25! Looking at the photo I’d quickly taken of the departure board, my train had been on its platform at the time I’d sprinted upstairs. Ok, well, I could still get on this train. I probably just needed a new ticket. Where are the ticket machines? Oh, online! Except it wouldn’t sell me a ticket because according to the system, the train had already departed. I rolled my eyes and looked at later trains. €210 for the next train, €178 for the one after. Well, that was annoying. So I went off to find a ticket machine. Berlin wasn’t under either trains or international trains, so I went to the office, who sent me to the international ticket enquiries, who heard my simplified story – missed the train, can I use this ticket on later ones? – asked why I was late in a tone that made me feel like a naughty passenger and on hearing it was Eurostar’s fault, sent me to the Eurostar desk to get a bit of paper that said it was their fault which would allow me to take any later train.

At this point, the delayed 09:25 was above my head, at its platform. But there is extra security on international trains. I’d already been through twice, trying to get to Cologne and now I had a chance of getting on a train and getting to Berlin before midnight! But this time they diverted me to security to put my stuff through the slowest metal detector.

I ran upstairs, pile of paper in hand, watch and bracelet in the other, clinging ato a large bottle of Coke and my hand luggage to see that the train was still there! I threw myself through the first door and then stood there, dazed and sweaty. First things first, put the watch and bracelet back on, put the paper away, get my breath back, look for a seat. And I found one! Two empty seats next to a table, facing backwards! And there was space in the rack not too far away for my luggage! I was on the train!

After all that, I was only about 45 minutes later, and technically an hour early, because I was on the 09:25 train instead of the 10:25 train and without paying a penny extra! I’m still holding my breath that I don’t get my ticket checked, though, because I’m not 1000% sure that “get on any later train” includes any earlier train. Or indeed, whether I’m supposed to be on the ex-Thalys Eurostar rather than the next ICE train.

Now, if you depart Brussels about 11.10 and it takes about two hours, what train might I be able to get to Berlin and what time might I arrive?

Once I was settled on the train, had eaten some bread and cheese, written all this, I opened a new browser window which gives me a little selection of news headlines, some relevant to my interests, many not. And at the top was major acts of sabotage across France. Now the vague announcements I wasn’t paying too much attention to at Brussels made sense! This train was delayed 100 minutes because someone’s gone out and destroyed three major rail lines across France! The reason my intended train wasn’t delayed was that it wasn’t coming from France. The reason Eurostar staff are handing out proof of delay without any checks whatsoever is because they know what kind of chaos they’re dealing with. Headlines say major chaos at St Pancras too, long queues, delays, some trains cancelled. It feels like I was only there five minutes ago but there was no sign of it at 5am. Still clock-watching, still no real idea what time we should be expecting to arrive at Cologne but will be much more comfortable when I’m off this train without having my ticket checked, despite the fact that I have a seat, a table and an empty seat next to me.

I made it to Cologne in one piece, and in time for the 13:48. After the chaos at Brussels, I was quite impressed to be only 63 minutes late and to not have to pay an extra penny. I even had time at Cologne to rush outside to take a quick picture of the cathedral. The Berlin train is huge and I suspect it’ll fill up a bit along the way but for now I’ve got my own double seat – strategically chosen to be the last to be filled. For one, I’m in the penultimate coach and for another, I’m at a seat without a table, facing backwards. People want tables and if they can’t get tables, they’ll face forward. Good view of the cathedral as we departed. And now to settle in for four long hours.

I kept my pair of seats to myself the whole way but the train was just hot enough and last night was disturbed enough that I kept falling asleep. 22 minutes to Bielefeld. Can you stay awake for 22 minutes? You don’t want to miss your first sighting of a place that doesn’t exist. And I managed!

We got into Berlin just about on time, although our ETA had been 5-20 minutes late all the way. Made it up somewhere. Then I had to get off the platform, figure out which square to start my walk to the hotel from and walk 10-15 minutes down the road.

There’s air conditioning! The table doesn’t squeal! The bed doesn’t curl upwards at the end! I have my own bathroom! Compared to the room over the pub opposite Euston last night, I’m in a palace! I ran back down the road to a supermarket so I now have food for the next couple of days and that’s plenty for today.