Traveling to Berlin

James was invited to participate in a cross-country meet with other international schools in Berlin, so we saw this as the kick in the behind we needed to take a weekend trip.

James left early today on the bus with the team and will spend the night at a youth hostel. God bless the people willing to chaperone these trips.

The rest of us hopped a train to Berlin. I wish it was really that simple. David bought train tickets and made seat reservations ahead of time and we were to have seats in a compartment (à la Harry Potter on the Hogwarts Express) on one of Germany's high speed trains, known as ICE. We could have flown, but did not want to deal with the stand-by issue. More importantly, we've always bemoaned having to drive long distances in the U.S. and have wished the U.S. had a more extensive, but less expensive train system. This was the perfect time to try a train trip.

We collected the girls from school and then had to take a taxi to the main train station to catch the ICE in time. With more time, we would have been more German and would have taken a bus to our local train station, then a local train to the main train station in Frankfurt where we would have caught the ICE.

So, we waited and waited for our train. Where was it? With only 10 minutes to spare, our train still had not arrived. David asked around, received several different answers, and in the nick of time found out that the powers that be were having trouble "turning trains around" so we needed to hop on a local train to a nearby town where the ICE would pick us up. None of this information was readily available, and we were lucky to get on that first train. So was every one else trying to get to Berlin and there were not enough seats to go around. I had forgotten that there are almost never enough seats on a train in Europe. You can reserve a seat, but there are plenty of extra people without reservations who sit in the aisles and in the spaces between trains. Getting to the potty involves stepping over many people. I had Bex on my lap and David stood in the aisle and we just needed to remind ourselves about the golden rule of traveling: Expect problems.

We disembarked at Hanau and waited about 20 minutes for our ICE train to arrive. And when it did, people literally ran for the doors. I trudged along, dragging Emilie and a suitcase, with David yelling at me over his shoulder, "Hurry up!" Once aboard, I snipped, "Why do I have to run for the train? If the conductor sees people walking to the door, won't they wait till everyone's gotten on?" David answered, "I don't want to find out." (Just a little bit of foreshadowing.)

We found our 6-seat compartment, where a gentleman was reading a book and settled in for the 4-hour trip. We had comfortable seats, had pizza for dinner from the dining car and enjoyed a fast, smooth ride, except for one thing. And her name is Rebecca. I don't know what got into this child, but for the entire 4 hours, she was a whirling dervish. Could not stay still for a second if her life depended on it. She climbed up and down the seats, writhed around on the floor and pretended to be a noisy horse. If we were on an airplane....well....I don't want to think about it. Plus, her double pink eye infection diagnosed this morning gave her blazing, icky red eyes. She looked like a crazed demon. The gentleman and then the young lady who sat with us later put up with her without betraying too much annoyance (or fright). I told David later that I was embarrassed and felt very bad for our fellow passengers. His response was, "Well, don't. We bought and reserved all six seats. They didn't have a seat reservation and technically, we were allowing them to sit with us." That made me feel a bit better.

We arrived in Berlin at about 10:00pm and I was able to convince David that a taxi ride to the hotel, rather than a bus or train ride with a transfer and then a 5-block walk, made more sense at this time of night with three tired kids. On the way to our hotel, I marveled at the energy and number of people walking around in the city. I haven't been in a big city at night in a while and was a bit surprised that people weren't already at home getting ready for bed, as they would be in little Liederbach.