(no subject)

Today I am in Berlin and the WiFi sucks. The hotel is also fairly terrible. Still, it is only for four nights and cheap, too.

After I nap, it will be ONWARD TO MUSEUMS.

Berlin

It's a two-hour flight from Dublin, and I spent most of mine asleep. After breakfast of cereal, and second breakfast of a sweet-but-not-very-flavoursome cupcake and some orange juice, I ended up with the entire seat row to myself.

Getting in to the city from the airport didn't present much of a problem (particularly not after I ate the chicken sandwich my mother packed for me): a regional train to Alexanderplatz, followed by U2 to Spittelmarkt, followed by a spot of walking. The hotel's underwhelming, with low WiFi signal and significant bounciness, and a lack of physical security that might worry me, if I were the kind of person to worry. But despite sleeping on the plane, I arrived wiped, and lay down to watch unchallenging TV for a couple of hours in the hope of recouping my get-up-and-go.

I confess, the get-up-and-go sort of got-up-and-went, instead of coming back. So by the time 1400 rolled around, I was cranky and starving, and decided to set out for the Unter den Linden and that sort of area on foot, to see if I could see any fooderies. I found a place called Jenarmann, or something of the like, on the Unter den Linden near the Humboldt University, and ate the best meal I'd eaten in what feels like forever but really was probably only today (Berlin meatballs, purée mashed potato, and buttered carrots: simple, but there was plenty of it). It would've been fairly reasonable, too, if I hadn't had coke to drink. I guess they make their profit on soft drinks.

Anyway. I left there full, in the twilight, and walked down to the Brandenburger Tor. Unter den Linden is covered in roadworks right now, and I've never been really impressed by wide boulevards filled with neo-Classical buildings (Fredericus I Rex Apolloni et Muses, etc: the first king of Prussia rather left his mark), especially not in the dark.

When I tried to take the underground back to someplace nearer the hotel, I got lost and turned around. Ended up at Friedrichstrasse twice, on different trains Not Going Where I Wanted Them. When I exited the station and attempted to take a taxi, not one, not two, but three German taxi-drivers refused my fare and wouldn't even try to get me where I wanted to go when I asked if they spoke English. (In German: I'm not completely incompetent.) (I have a map with an address written on it, damn your eyes: that's just rude, bad form altogether.) So I ended up piecing together directions to Unter den Linden, where I ate, from there to the river, and from there retraced my steps back to the hotel, cold and somewhat pissed off.

Also I bought six doughnuts in a Dunkin Donuts and ate four. Sweet stress-relieving sugar. I was hungry again when I got back to the hotel.

Tomorrow I have arranged to rent a bike, and hopefully I will have better luck if I avoid public transportation and stay in daylight.

*retires to narrow hotel room, muttering darkly*