Iceland and Berlin 2024

 We are in the middle of the festival of lights.  It's scattered around the city, after dark, and we didn't set out to see any of it.   But the TV tower is visible from our room. Well, mostly visible, but it was definitely foggy.

 Getting ready to return home.  Another collection of random thoughts before we leave: Berlin is enormous. And there is construction everywhere. All of the fruit we have gotten, in store, market and restaurants, has been very good. There are doner and currywurst everywhere :-). There is still a lot of smoking in Berlin, mostly outside. Scootering is challenging.  Lots of cobblestones,. Curb cuts are typically a couple of inches high,  Do-able but a significant jolt.  And the streets are very crowded, with people likely to walk right in front of the moving scooter.  Nonetheless, we have done a lot of walking, and I only got hung up a few times. The convenience and grocery stores we visited all had a lot of beer and wine.  Most of the convenience store aisles and about a third of the big grocery store. I meant to try an Aldi, but the closest one is a couple of miles away. There are many groups of young people wandering around,  10 to 15 or so in a g...

The plan for today, such as it was, was to go to Friedrichstrasse and hang around, and later go to the Zeiss planetarium.   The tower from our room last night   Paula at the Brandenburg gate Our wanderings took us to the main train station, the Hauptbahnhof, by way of the Brandenburg gate. Lots of construction along the way.   Paula and Isaac with gryphon   Isaac and me with gryphon We ate various things at the Hauptbahnhof, and got directions from the information booth about the best way to get to the Zeiss planetarium. The directions were excellent, but when we got there, the planetarium was closed for some special event. I was tired of wandering, Isaac is still sick, and Paula has had it with cobblestones, so we all came back to the hotel. Paula arranged for a cab to the airport at 10:30am tomorrow. Autumn colors

In the (late) morning after coffee, I went off exploring the immediate area around the hotel, away from Hackscher Markt. I found a Kaufland grocery store only about two blocks away. I think it's the same one we were at before, but we went "the long way" to it. I got milk, bread, and more jam. They have these stupid carts where you have to insert a coin to unlock it from the next cart. I had to ask somebody which coin (apparently 1 euro), but just as I was fiddling with it a woman came by and gave me her cart--left before I could give her a euro for it. After leaving the store, I noticed that this cart didn't have a coin in it. So I just left it loose for the next person.   Church   Old church and modern spire Later, Paula and I went exploring a bit; Isaac was sick and didn't come along. We thought about going up the fernsehturm (tv tower), but the line was too long. I'm still looking to fill some of gaps in my comic collection. We went to Alexande...

 We have been riding mostly the S-Bahns, which are above-ground regional rails.  (The U-Bahns are subways, the trams are local street-level, the Deutsche Bahn are nationwide.).  The S-Bahns cars have a  small gap between the car and the platform, reasonably easily handled by my scooter, so they don't require any special effort to ride.  The trains are long, with cars at both ends marked with wheelchair symbols.  Coming home from the zoo yesterday we were right in the middle of the train when it stopped, and it looked do-able, so we just got on.  The car was similar to the wheelchair ones -- no folding seats to make a wheelchair space, but I hadn't been using those anyhow.  Fine. Then we got to our stop, and the gap to the platform was much wider; wide enough that I thought my front wheel could get caught.  So I got off, and Dave, Isaac and a helpful passenger got the scooter off. Back  on the platform, I noticed that our station is...

This is a photo of the MarienKirche on the left and the Fernsehturm on the right, taken from the plaza in front of both.  The kirche dates from the 13th century, the tv tower from the 1960s.700 years on one plaza.

Monday was zoo day. The problem, of course, was that the S-Bahn stop for the zoo is the station with the broken elevator to the station that we need. So we had to get off at Trodelmarkt and walk to the next stop. Paula checked, and the elevator will be fixed in December (!). So I have some random pictures from the zoo.   Isaac and boar   Dave and rhino The zoo used metal statues as location markers, so the rhinoceros was on the way to the rhinoceros enclosures, and so on.   Paula and real rhino   Bear The rhinos led to a discussion of body armor.   Grumpy pink fish   Statue The aquarium had several tanks of various kinds of jellyfish.   Jellyfish   Anemones The sloth was exactly as slow-moving as the cartoons would suggest.   Tortoises   Sloth Paragraph. Or two.   Falafel bowl   Dinner! I was hungry, so we went to the aquarium cafe. They were closing in ten...

This post is out of order because I did something in blogger... Iceland was fascinating.  The landscapes are so varied and so different it's hard to believe.  Getting a private guide for Iceland was definitely the right call.  He even managed to drive us right past Grindavik, where we could see the month-old lava.  No longer hot, but amazingly black and rugged.  The town is still deserted.  It was eerie. As expected, food was very expensive.  But very good.  I ate so much lamb! Setting it up  the tours to be a late evening followed by three 8-hour days followed by a 4AM pickup for the airport, on the other hand...  We reached Berlin and all slept for two days.  Next time I'd put a rest day in there somewhere.  I'm not sorry to have managed to see so much, though. Iconic Reykjavik church, bridge between the American and Eurasian continents, one of thousands of waterfalls with Siggy (our guide/driver), black sand beach ( all Ice...

Sunday was for the Trodelmarkt, to look for the missing Lustiges Taschenbuch comics in my collection. That's what we came to Berlin for, right? No further issues with transportation, since we now have a better idea of what we are doing. Isaac slept in (he's been staying up late to watch baseball games), so Paula and I went by ourselves. Sadly, but not too surprisingly, nobody was there selling comics this time. But Paula bought a pretty royal blue scarf, and we explored the area a bit. If I'm correct as to location, the restaurant we ate at several years ago is now a Burger King, and probably doesn't serve spargel.   Dave at Trodelmarkt   Paula at Trodelmarkt.   Paula at Charlottenburg Tor   Paula with friend Sunday is flea market day, so we went to another one that the net said included booksellers. There, we did find someone selling Lustiges Taschenbuch. Isaac went through six cases of books and found two books that I'm missing. Surprisingly few,...

Berlin. First order of business: Replace Paula's phone, buy Berlin Welcome six-day public transit passes, and buy coffee. We walked to Alexander Platz and accomplished all three. We also hit a Saturn store and bought some extra wall adapters (type F to type A). And had some currywurst. The guy at the Deutsches Telekom (T-Mobile) store was very helpful. Paula said the important consideration was that the new phone not be larger than her current phone (which died in Iceland). We looked at a Pixel 9, and said yes. He went back to get one and came back with that and also an 8a, which was cheaper and slightly smaller. So Paula got the 8a, in blue.   Our hotel   Entrance and kitchen area I like taking pictures of our hotel rooms. It helps me remember the place.   Living area   View from the balcony Our hotel (Adina) is half a block from Hakescher Markt, which is full of interesting restaurants. There is also an ATM there (more on that later). There are a co...

Isaac is right, doners are incredible and the rest of the world should have them. Basically a meal on a roll -- doner meat, veggies, sauce.  And enormous.  I've also discovered salad with donor meat on it and doner platter without the roll.  Also curry wurst is as good as I remember.  And yesterday after most of  the flea market near us had closed, one last stand was selling their bratwurst for  €2.  Also delicious. Getting a new phone when the old one is dead means I can only transfer the info Google knows about.  Not most of my apps, and none of my game records.  I find I'm not all that upset to break assorted daily records, which I shall henceforth ignore.  Euro notes are slippery. Berlin is still very full of cobblestones.  Also still a significant number of people who only take cash.  We never actually used an ATM in Iceland; we've hit the ATM here three times.   Total flea market haul is two scarves, a purse, an...