Frankfurt to Berlin

Location: Berlin

Subject:
We left the hostel this morning after a free breakfast and hiked back to the train station taking some pictures of Frankfurt. It looked a little less unapealing early in the morning but it still is not that pretty of a city to me. There were lots of ducks and swans hanging out near the water which was neat but I thought that to people who live here it must be like the geese in Fenway are to us Bostonians...annoying. We left at 10:13 for the 4 hour trip to Berlin. We soon found out we were sitting in someone's reserved seats, but we figure better we find out sooner than later. We ended up getting two aisle seats across from each other. I sat next to a sweet German girl who was helping me figure things out (how the seat goes back, stations on the free radio in the arm rest, and explained to me that you can't really sleep becauset the conductor changes or comes through at ever stop...there has got to be a better way I'm sorry). Eventually the girl next to Ed left and I scooted in next to him. The trip was nice and went by quicker than expected. We then waited for the EuroAid office to open which is a free booking and information place staffed by Americans. It was worth the wait because we had some big questions such as how do we get to the hostel we booked?? It is called Lete'm Sleep, which is in Eastern Berlin and a bit umm dirty. It is cheap though, which is fine AND free internet which makes me pretty happy. Score! We headed out to dinner after settling and exploring where the toilets that aren't clogged and flooded are and decided to eat at a non-German restaurant. It was actually middle eastern and right across the park from where we are staying. We were thinking of doing the pub crawl to see what the night life is like here but neither of us really want to actually drink or anything so we probably will pass. We are now watching how some of the towns we really wanted to see in Switzerland are flooded. Serious flooding at that. We are pretty shocked and will have to plan according to that. Interlaken was high on my list of to-do's and they showed it covered in high waters. Bern was also shown where we thought we might stop by in on the way to Lousane and/or Geneva. Oh well. We will keep you posted. It seems that we will stay here until the direct train either tomorrow at 4:40 or the following day at the same time because that is the only direct train to Baden-Baden which is a spa town with a casino. Oh yeah. Looking forward to that!