Berlin travelogue

As the regular readers may have noticed, I spent a few days in Berlin with my family. This was the first trip with Aapo, currently three months and a week or so. Things were, ahem, more interesting with a baby.

Aapo is already a seasoned traveller, he has been once in a plane before and had spent extensive periods with me and Sanna while we have toured Finland in a few occasions. We had bought a brand new buggy, Maclaren, for him to travel comfortable. It folds down, so we can use it in the airports and take it to the plane, too.

The trip to the airport, to the plane and even to the hotel was almost eventless. Both Helsinki-Vantaa and Berlin Tegel airports are so small that they are easy to navigate. The only complaint was extensive queues for check-in counters in the Helsinki end. The hotel was really nice and Aapo got a lot of positive attention from the staff. The room was on the top floor and was roomy enough to accommodate a cot for Aapo.

The first day, Saturday, was spent with getting oriented with the huge city and visiting some major sites: Potsdamer Platz, the Jewish memorial, Brandenburger Tor, Unter den Linden, Guggenheim Berlin, and Jewish museum. Only Guggenheim let us down: It was only one room and a café.

Aapo seemed to tolerate everything quite well, but we found the real truth while going back to the hotel. He started crying desperately in the metro and didn’t calm down as fast as usually. The day must have been taxing, and the noises and strange people in the metro were probably too much. Back in hotel, we had similar incident in Deli 31 while eating a light dinner.

The schedule had been too much to make him freaky. Sunday was spent in the banks of Spree river — really nice place, by the way — and in Hamburger Bahnhof contemporary art museum. The metro was again too much for Aapo, and we spent the rest of the evening in hotel. Which was surprisingly nice — just three of us, no hurries and no worries.

We shopped on Monday on Kurfürstendamm in Charlottenburg area. A lot of top-notch shops, including Porsche Design, and a few bigger chains. We ended the shopping spree to KaDeWe, a mammoth of a department store. No metro on Monday.

Our plan for Tuesday was to visit Reichstag, the German parliament building, and Alexanderplatz in former East Berlin. We managed to get to the parliament building quite late, as packing and breakfast took some toll. The queue was long and not moving. We had already decided not to go, and then spotted an entrance for people with moving difficulties, including families with strollers. No queues, just instant access to the roof top.

The views from the dome built on top of Reichstag were magnificent. You can also climb to the very top for even better vista over the German capital.

When we had descended from the dome, Aapo demanded food and we sat in a nice literature café, savouring coffees. The café looked like a good place to have political meetings and think of a revolution.

Finally, we visited Potsdamer Platz again, saw a glimpse of the wall in an open air exhibition and then went to have a late lunch, grab the bags from the hotel and get back to the airport.

The trip was nice, but really different compared to previous ones. More relaxed, but there were some places that we would have visited had just two of us travelled. Aapo should have been a bit older, a couple of months maybe, to better sustain being in a different and strange environment.

Now, we’ll stay put in Finland for a few months. I’ll be travelling in business, the next flight is on Friday, so you’ll be able to read about my new escapades here later.