Category Archives: germany

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.

Sunday 18th: Frankfurt day 6 (Wiesbaden)

Yesterday I bought my ticket for Wiesbaden (technically a day pass for an extended zone of the local public transport) and so today I went to Wiesbaden. I took the S1 and it was a pleasant journey – not too busy and a lot of winter wonderland scenery along the way, although there was a lot of ugly industrial stuff too. Some nice fences, blue ombré and then green layer on.

I’d checked the Therme situation and the big famous one is closed to save energy. The other is open but its bubble bench and whirlpool are closed because it’s proving impossible to get replacement parts for them. But there’s an indoor pool and an outdoor pool and I thought I’d go for it.

I could have taken a bus because it’s three and a half kilometres from the Hbf but I wasn’t sure which bus or whether my day ticket was valid and anyway, I needed my 2km so I walked. I’m glad I did – once I was across the busy main road it was pretty much parks all the way, all white and frozen, with frozen lakes and weird unfamiliar geese. It took 55m to walk up to the Therme and I decided the walk alone had been worth coming here. Frankfurt is very nice but I haven’t had much opportunity to roam in crunchy snow in parks.

And the Therme! I saw it billowing steam from the other end of the park. There’s an indoor area linked to an outdoor area. The indoor one is mostly full of children and then you swim outside and it’s all green water and steam and half-frozen gardens and it was amazing. I did have to keep going back inside to defrost my nose but it was wonderful. Very worth the trip and the walk.

I came back through town. Not much in the way of Christmas market here but also, it was Sunday afternoon and the town was closed. I was delighted to discover my hair had frozen – frozen far more stiffly than it did that time in Longyearbyen. I don’t think Germany is colder than the High Arctic but it was a longer walk back to the station than it had been from the pool to the hotel in Svalbard. I detoured to see the current hot spring. It’s inside a fake stone building, locked away behind a chipboard door but there are manholes nearby and those are steaming adequately.

Now I’m on the S8 home. I looked up the timetable: 56 minutes back to Frankfurt Hbf so I thought I’d use the free wifi to write today’s blog.

Saturday 17th: Frankfurt day five

I went out pretty early this morning. The market was calling and it turned out there was a lot I hadn’t found, including the Pink Market. It’s pretty pink but it’s not so much a market as a square full of places to eat and drink – absolutely dead at 10.30am. Further on was the Red Market – or that was how I translated it. Nothing particularly red about it. The Pink Market was very pink. The Red Market was also dead at that hour but there was a Lindt shop behind it so I invested in some Lindor.

Then I went home to drop off my shopping and fetch my swimming stuff. If I was in Iceland I’d have been to the pool every day. Now I knew how it all worked. On the other hand, it’s Saturday so a lot more children. I knew they’d turned the temperature down 2 degrees but today I could feel it and I wasn’t entirely unhappy to get out. I took the tram route up and back – much quicker and quieter than the long journey on the U1.

I came home and warmed up in a hot shower, had some food, wrote yesterday’s blog etc and then went back to the market. I’ve seen it all and you can’t see anything in the evening because it’s just too busy but it calls me and so I went. Had a wander and a shove, a cup of hot chocolate, got a glimpse of fireworks which turned the misty sky bright red and came home. There was a concert on the roof overlooking Römerberg.

On the way back I discovered Wiesbaden is on Frankfurt’s S-bahn. So I bought a day ticket for tomorrow so I guess I’m going there, whether I swim or not.

Now I’m catching up on blogs and watching Netflix.

Friday 16th: Frankfurt day 4 (Cologne)

Today is Saturday but I haven’t written yesterday’s blog yet.

I woke up quite early, had my breakfast and was out not long after 9. I went to the station because I wanted to go to Cologne. Why didn’t I come here when Germany still had the 9 euro train tickets thing? Well, the cheapest way to get to Cologne was on a few haystack trains which would take three and a half hours each way. Not worth the effort. The second cheapest way was to book specific and non-flexible tickets. The 10:09 out and the 18:18 back.

The 10:09 was delayed but only by about seven minutes. It was packed until the airport and then a lot quieter – I got two seats to myself! The countryside was very pretty – snow in Germany appears to cling on where feet and wheels don’t disturb it. It snowed in Frankfurt on Wednesday morning and there’s still a car down the road with an inch of snow in it, although as more and more people write in it, it’s getting less and less. The countryside was the same. Fields and trees all grey and white and glittering and absolutely winter wonderland-perfect.

My train was to Cologne Messe and I decided I hated Cologne. How do you get to the Hauptbahnhof? I found the S-bahn but there was no way of buying tickets. I found the U-bahn. Also no way of buying tickets and no map. Ticket machines, luckily, were lurking right down on the platform and although there were still no helpful signs telling you which direction the train was going, I found a city-wide map and eventually figured out a) where I was b) where I was trying to get to c) what combination of trains I required for that d) which direction those trains needed to go. It shouldn’t be that difficult!

I planned to change trains so I bought a day ticket. But when we arrived at the change station, it was basically a tram stop, right in the middle of the street, and there was a Christmas market between me and the Dom. So a walk! Walk through the Christmas market!

This was the old-fashioned market. All the stalls had matching wooden fronts, half the stallholders had old-fashioned costumes on, there was an ice rink and the mugs were dark red with yellow insides and round bellies. I discovered eventually that the end of that market led on to the Dom Christmas Market and they had different mugs and their stalls were higher and brighter and marked with shooting stars. Lots of the same stalls, though. Lots of the same stalls as in Frankfurt.

And here was the Dom! It was free to go in and it was breathtaking. Soaring Perpendicular Gothic, so ornate on the outside, so simple on the inside and such glass! Every single window was stained, even the high ones where you need to zoom in with you camera to be sure that’s colour up there. The south aisle had windows full of yellow glass – this is a more recent innovation, which is why I’ve seen other cathedrals remark on it. Those turned proper gold with the midday sun coming straight through them. It was all incredible.

And then there’s the tower. It cost 6 euros to go up the South Tower and signs say “No lift. No joke”. It’s a lot of steps. It’s five hundred and something spiral stone stairs You get a brief respite at the belfry and then up you go again. When you think you’re there, there’s a metal staircase in the middle of a room and because they’re open, even though there’s only about ten of that going up and up, it’s somehow more terrifying than the 500+ stone stairs, and those were terrifying enough. There are windows on the south side, which help you keep track of how many circles you’ve done and lots of them have no glass in them. They’re less than six inches wide, you couldn’t fall out if you tried but it’s still scary that high up. At the very top, you walk around the top of the tower. It’s all confined by fences and wire and all the usual but it’s very high. It wasn’t until I got home that I discovered it’s the highest double-spire church in the world and the third-highest church of any kind. I climbed that!

Back down, I now took some time to explore the markets. I got a cup of hot chocolate in the old-fashioned market and discovered there are at least three variants of that dark red round mug. I wandered down almost to the river through medieval streets that were deserted – leave the markets behind and there’s no one else in the city. I found a Catholic church with an overly large and ornate tower on an otherwise fairly non-descript church. I bought some things. I searched the city for a cloth badge, preferably with the towers on and found no such thing.

By now it was getting cold. A thick mist had descended and if you climbed the towers now, you wouldn’t even get a view for your efforts. It was cold. I took shelter inside the cathedral but who’d have thought: a massive stone medieval building is not warm! It was somewhere to sit down – my feet were tired, especilly after the long climb – but it wasn’t warm. No, for warmth I resorted to Burger King inside the Hauptbahnhof which is right next door and also where my train departed from. No time spent faffing around trying to figure out how to get back to Messe station. But I still had two hours to kill before I could use that non-flexible “cheap” train ticket. There’s nowhere really warm in Cologne Hbf. Cold air drifts down from hundreds of tracks above and it’s open at front and back. I popped into shops. I contemplated blue ceramic doorknobs and white boots like lace-up wellies and explored German scifi and fantasy books. Helpfully, when you buy a train ticket from a DB machine, you can print out your timetable. It’s useful to know exactly which train you’re allowed to get on but it’s really useful that it tells you the platforms. 4 A, B and C.

It was delayed! Only by about 10 minutes but the result was that the 18:27 to Frankfurt left before the 18:18 arrived and I couldn’t get on it. It was at platform 4 D-G which is normally fine but as it was still sitting there when my train was approaching, we had to move to platform 5. It was reasonably quiet. I guess anyone whose tickets had flexibility jumped on the 18:27.

I think we got into Frankfurt at 19:41 which meant home by 8. Quite a long day and the one with the most exercise. So I didn’t write my blog and I didn’t do my Finnish lesson either.

Thursday 15th: Frankfurt day three

I didn’t sleep very well last night. My watch beeped at 1am, which surprised me – I accidentally set it to go off at 8am a while back and so now it beeps at 9am. But it was too dark, surely, for it to be 9am? It was! It was in fact 1am. Then I woke up and smelled toast. Was the hotel on fire? Or is there something wrong with a receptor in my brain?

So I didn’t even stir until housekeeping came round at ten to nine. I had breakfast enthusiastically, although the breakfast room was so busy it was hard to find a seat. Then I had a slightly slow start to the day. I decided I was going to go to the pool today. There’s a hammam in Frankfurt, there are ordinary boring pools but I decided to go to Titus Therme, which is more of a waterpark.

It’s in north-west Frankfurt. I had the choice of taking U4 or U5 one stop to Willy-Brandt-Platz and then going virtually the entire length of the U1. Or I could take tram 16 to its terminus and then go two stops on either the U1 or the U9. I haven’t been on many trams and it also looked like that was the quicker way. So I bought my day ticket from the tram platform at the end of the road instead of under the Hauptbahnhof.

Titus Therme is right next to a fairly big shopping centre. It has a Primark and a Decathlon and the biggest supermarket I’ve ever seen in Germany. But I was trying to make my way out and up to the surface and find the pool. I stopped at the entrance to check the map. It’s past McDonald’s and Decathlon. Where are they? I’m at the red dot but what’s that thing off to the side? I can see McDonald’s but… there it is! I can see it!

I’ve really felt the fact that I don’t speak German the last couple of days. People either can’t speak much English here or they won’t. I speak other languages, I’m not an English monoglot, but I don’t speak German. So I had no real idea where was going on. I seemed to have paid 5.50 (still can’t figure out the euro symbol) for 90 minutes access to the pool, but I wasn’t entirely sure about that. Neither was I sure how to get to the changing rooms, or that I was in the right changing room and then I couldn’t find the pool. There aren’t enough signs and the few signs are in a language I don’t speak. And there it was at last!

It’s quite a big place. There’s a bubbling pool, two hotpots, a lane pool with a diving board, a huge play pool that has bubbles and a lazy river which turn on and off on a circuit of about 10-15 minutes each. Behind that is a quieter pool with three jets and a slide and a cave. Interestingly, the lights under the water in all the pools and pots are pink which makes the pool look purple. It also can’t quite decide whether it wants to be a proper pool with square white tyres or whether it wants to be a jungle oasis – it’s decorated with fake columns and arches and statues.

I got out after 90 minutes. I could have stayed in a lot longer. I’d done circuits of the lazy river and nearly drowned. I’d sat on bubble benches until I was completely boneless. I’d had my neck pummelled by a very powerful jet. But my 90 minutes had expired.

Yes, they had. German efficiency! I had a plastic card and when I scanned it at the exit, it told me I’d overstayed and needed to pay an extra 50c.

Once I’d escaped, I went in Decathlon. I didn’t particularly need anything but I always like to go and have a look. I popped into Primark too – my mittens are so nice and cosy but I can’t manage the camera with them so I bought a pair of thin gloves. Then I finally found the big Rewe, which is downstairs and technically over the road. One thing was astonishing me: it’s ok and entirely normal to smoke in the U-bahn station and in the shopping centre. It’s the tail end of 2022 and you can still smoke inside in public places??!!

Anyway, I did some shopping and took U1 home, via Willy-Brandt-Platz. I was correct to take the tram out this morning; most of the length of U1 was slow!

I came home and had lunch which became a long afternoon in the room. Then I went back out to the market. It’s manic by evening – it’s just people crowded into the square drinking hot wine and eating interesting things. I had a cup of hot orange juice (actually hot this time and I returned the cup and reclaimed my pfand) and took it across the road to the river to drink. Orange juice isn’t all that tasty when it’s hot but I wanted something clean and wet after my long lunch.

I rambled around the market until I’d done my 2km. I didn’t particularly want to do any shopping – it was my third visit and there’s probably not much more I want to buy but I like to have a look around. There are always stalls I have’t spotted, always things I want to take photo of. I wanted to check whether the tram that goes through the middle of the market would take me home. I’ve always taken the U-bahn so I wanted to see central Frankfurt by train, if I could.

There are three trams leaving from that stop. All three go to Hbf and two go to my local stop. Of course, the one I got on was the one that doesn’t, and its Hbf top is technically on the street next to the Hbf. That meant in the dark, with glasses steamed up over my mask, I didn’t realise that was where I was supposed to jump off. The next stop was further away than I expected so I got off, crossed the tracks and got on the 21 back in the other direction, back to my local stop.

And now I’m home! I’ve had a shower and washed the chlorine out of my hair with conditioner that smells amazing. No plans for tomorrow yet – Cologne? Wiesbaden? Something interesting around Frankfurt?

Tuesday 13th: Frankfurt day one

Day one started at 4.30am with a drive to the airport that wasn’t as icy as expected – at least, not from the A31 onwards. I only got slightly lost once at Heathrow when three conjoined mini roundabouts spun me quicker than the satnav could cope with and I lost sight of the signs to the right car park.

Security was slow. Even in the summer, when it was at its worst I didn’t have to queue in eight or twelve lines just to approach security. Toast and apple juice, a 20-minute delay (which I think got stretched a little) and then off we went.

London and Kent were thick with snow and then we sailed above the clouds and saw nothing more until we started our descent to Frankfurt. No snow here!

I had a bit of an alarm when I finally found passport control and it told me to have my passport and vaccination status ready. Quick, connect to the airport wifi, check the app hasn’t unloaded itself, get the pass – and then they didn’t want it. Hardly even looked at me as he stamped my passport. Didn’t ask me to take my mask off so he could check I was the same person as the picture.

I took the S9 into town, nice and easy, just three stops and then five minutes to the hotel. I’ve done it again – this is definitely a very-slightly-rubbish-hotel-near-the-station but it’s nowhere near as bad as the one in Paris. My floor is straight and my door closes for a start and the room smells slightly of Lynx Africa.

First job, charge my phone. Second job, find the nearest supermarket. 3, go shopping. 4, eat the food. 5, discover the hotel has given me no cups. Well, I was going to get a Christmas market mug anyway but now it’s slightly more of a priority unless I want to keep drinking straight from the bottle.

So out I went. U4 or U5 to Römer/Dom but I forgot my mask. Frankfurt still has mask-wearing on public transport but it’s been so long since I used public transport that it’s not habit yet to check I have a mask before going out. I compromised by wrapping my scarf tightly around my head and felt so awkward that I’m guaranteed to never forget again.

The market is pretty in the dark! There were thousands of people gathered by the entrance to the station drinking glühwein. Why there, when there are so many other places? No idea. I got my mug. It contained hot orange juice – well, lukewarm. Got more orange juice-like as it cooled. I don’t think it’s the “proper” mug, which seems to be red and gold this year. I suspect, and I’ll look it up when I’ve finished this, that it’s the 2018 or 2019 mug. It’s black with a red inner and it commemorates a German Revolution of 1848/9, which is something else I’ll have to look up. I also bought a couple of bits. I’ll do the market properly during the day when it isn’t so rammed with people drinking wine and eating interesting things and have another go at getting a red mug. But for now, it’s 7.15pm and I’m home for the night because it’s been a long day.