bretzelitos

After a lovely breakfast in our hotel “Europäischer Hof” in Hamburg – with very kind service in spanish languague by Ms. Benitez from Cuba, we packed up our things, checked out and went to Hamburg Central Station. Today, a rather short trip of only two hours in an ICE train – this time an ICE 1 type – towards Berlin was planned.

The trip was completed uneventfully and on time.

We checked in at “Steigenberger Hotel” at the Los Angeles Platz, close to Kurfürstendamm and Gedächtniskirche. Once again, a nice room with a view.

Short refreshments… and off we went to have lunch in the food court of KaDeWe. The initial plan needed to be changed as the “5J jamon bodega” was still closed due to CoViD. Hence we looked around and found a nice place in the “Augustiner Schwemme”. We took then a walk to the nearest U-Bahn station and went to the area of Wedding. From earlier trips, I knew that we can find there cost effective hair dressers – it was very much needed after these months in confinement. We chose eventually “Hu’ng Style”, a shop run by a young Vietnamese couple – who did a magnificent job for a very acceptable price with absolutely excellent customer service.

After a short rest in an Arabian Shisha bar, we took the U-Bahn back to Friedrichstrasse train station. From here, we started our walk through Berlin via Unter den Linden passing by several embassies, Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag and Tiergarten. We took some extra time to visit the monuments for the killed Sinti and Roma, Shoa victims and the Russian soldiers who all were abused, tortured and eventually killed by Fascist Germany following National Socialist ideas. We just concluded with one voice: “Never ever war again!”. A creepy surprise occurred just after leaving the Shoa monument towards the South, passing by a public car park area. This has been the place where the so-called “Führerbunker” was located – the actual place where Hitler and Goebbels ended their lives by suicide in their last hideout in April 1945. We continued our walk via Berlin Mall, Bundesrat and Potsdamer Platz where we took the train back to our hotel.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant “Berliner Stube” and retired after having walked another time 12 kms through the city center.