Day 7 - Back in Berlin

Most longer vacations have at least one of these days. A day when nothing goes as planned and you get more and more frustrated until you realize it's time to stop worrying about it and enjoy the experience.

Even though we arrived back in Berlin at 2:00 am, we were planning on getting-up early, doing our laundry, and leaving for Hamburg or Hanover (both relatively short train trips from Berlin). The long travel to Munich had taken more out of us than we thought and were weren't up as early as we wanted. Then, we found that the laundry places weren't very close. But we picked the closest one that we could reach on a walk, and left.

Looking back, it would have made so much more sense to call Jody and Erik and see if they also needed to do laundry, and maybe all ride over to the laundromat together in their car. Instead, I mixed-up the path and even though I was following along on an offline GPS map, I took us down one wrong turn after another. Since we were walking, it wasted tons of time. Then, when we went probably a mile out of our way to get over the rail tracks, we found that the laundromat had turned into a warehouse. This wasn't a good part of town either.

Thankfully, I had written down an alternate laundromat in my book. This one was further away, but it was still in business. We were exhausted, so we bought a day subway pass and made our way to the nearest line.

Along the way, we picked-up some lunch at a stand the locals were flocking to near the S-bahn (suburban subway) entrance for Yorckstrasse. They had a giant spit of Gyro meat spinning. I thought gyros sounded good and ordered one for each of us. Instead, because of he language barrier, I ordered falafels. This was a good thing though, because Alicia said it was her best meal in Germany yet. She was confirmed later when she asked if we were anywhere near that stand again because she wanted another falafel.

Once we hopped off the subway, what looked on the map like a short distance turned into another long, long walk. This time through the city's auto center. We passed Mercedes, BMW, VW, and Porsche dealerships and repair shops. These are different from their American counterparts in that they don't have rows of cars to examine. Instead, they have a beautiful showroom (often with a restaurant) and you work you deal out in the office. I don't know how they work test drives. Perhaps in a sample car.

When we finally arrived, the laundromat, Freddy Leck sein Washsalon, was a like a breath of fresh air. There was not a hot, languid squalor of people plinking coins in machines and schlepping laundry around a filthy interior. Instead, there was classical music, an impeccably maintained interior and machines, and a pleasant young gentlemen who spoke English and helped us operate the machines properly. And no coins. You pay for what you use at the end. Our two loads of washing and drying was 10€. You may be thinking that $14 to wash two small loads is extortion, but in expensive Germany, it as half of what I had expected, and a bargain when compared to letting the hotel wash our clothes.

Another neat find was the laundromat's neighborhood. Instead of feeling like we were in the uber clean city, it felt like we were in SoHo in Manhattan. Nothing dangerous, but a melting pot of cultures. We explored a little and found another present for one of the kids.

This area doesn't have a subway stop nearby. Instead, buses serve these regions. So we took a couple busses to the Zoo and caught a subway to the hotel. While we were there, we caught a flash mob doing a promotion for the upcoming world culture fair.

I called Erik when we arrived back at the hotel and asked how they were doing. They had been having fun with ball games, work, and keeping the kids occupied while shopping for furniture and appliances. They had just finished dinner, had a lot of leftovers and invited us over. We were grateful for the food and the chance to visit.

The house transfer is tomorrow (6/30) and I think they are excited to get out of the hotel. The kids are taking it in stride, even though Jody said there have been some times of anxiety. Sophie and Lucy were already asleep and Sam was out in the first minutes after we got there. But we had some fun with Pete, Karston, and Chloe while talking to Jody and Erik about washing machines, German adventures, and business.

As Alicia and I returned to our room and prepared for the next day, we started talking about what we really don't want to miss while we are here. That way we can go to those places first. Both of us agreed that the Rhine Valley (what they call storybook Germany - Cochem, Bacharach, and St. Goar) with a castle visit and Prague were important. So we spent some time planning the Rhine Valley for the next two days.

The train journey is pretty long again, about 4-5 hours to Frankfurt, then another 2-3 to the Rhine Valley. So we decided to head to Frankfurt tomorrow morning, get there in the afternoon, explore Frankfurt, stay the night there, and then head out to the Rhine Valley first thing the next morning. Then we can enjoy the Rhine and be done in early afternoon and head back to Berlin hopefully in time to help Jody and Erik move all the luggage to their new home. I say hopefully because I have found that it is very hard to predict how things are going to go when there are so many unknown, foreign variables.