Interrail Adventure Part 4: Germany wieder

I can't believe it's been nearly 2 years since I went abroad! While I'm still confined to dreaming about foreign holidays from the UK this year, I thought I'd look back at my solo Interrail trip in August 2019. The whole journey ended up being far too long for one blog post so I have split it up into parts. In this final part I return to Germany for a week to visit the two largest German cities: Hamburg and Berlin.

Hamburg - Germany (14th - 18th August)

I had a good journey on a direct train to Hamburg - nearly 7 hours in total. I took the S-Bahn ride to the suburbs to meet Judith and Patrick, friends of my dad from his university days in France whom he had not seen in nearly 20 years. I had never met them but they were very friendly. They had 2 children at home but their oldest daughter was away on holiday so I got to take her room to myself.

After a busy couple of weeks of non-stop travelling I was glad I was staying a bit longer in Hamburg. I had my first proper day of relaxing and not doing too much. Plus it was raining most of the day. I caught a break in the showers though to go on a walk by myself down to the Elbe river. They also had a piano that I enjoyed spending quite a long time playing.

The next day I took the S-Bahn back to Hamburg city centre. As I'd been enjoying most of the walking tours of cities on my trip so far, I decided to also join one in Hamburg. I found the start of a walking tour and waited. However, just as the tour was about to start, there was the appearance of a "Fridays for Future" march arriving in front of the Rathausmarkt. I was a bit distracted by the march as the guide tried to explain the history of the townhall through the noise of the protest. I couldn't really hear what he was saying and I was finding him a bit boring anyway even at the next stop without much noise, so I decided I couldn't stay for another 2 hours of this. I would have just left the group but he'd explicitly said to tell him if you're going to leave as a gesture of good manners, so I told him a white lie about having to meet a friend...

Instead I took myself on a self-guided tour of the city. I went to Port-Hafer to see the Elbe and ships and found this long underground tunnel under the river. I wasn't that taken with the city centre, especially in the dull weather so I took the train to a big park/ garden called Planten un Blomen. I wasn't pleased about all the toilet fees in Hamburg but I managed to sneak around the barriers and only had to pay for the toilets once. Honestly, all cities should be like Ljubljana with a policy of free public toilets.

Back at the house, I watched Bibi & Tina with Sarah in German. Full of plot holes but fairly amusing and good for my German. I mostly spoke a mixture of French and German with the family while I was there.

It was now the weekend so Judith and Patrick took me on a long walk round their local area of Blankanese to the Elbe and explored the Treppenviertel, which was pretty even in the rain. The weather just felt a bit Scottish compared to the rest of my European trip.

I thought I'd mention this ended up being a day of 2 lunches (!) and it was very nice to be cooked for and have some homemade meals again.

While Judith and Sarah were out shopping, Patrick got his trumpet out and accompanied me playing some of my piano pieces! It was really nice and he played the trumpet very well. Later that evening Patrick got out his photo album of Grenoble featuring my him and my dad.

On the final morning it was Patrick's birthday and apparently it is a German tradition (or maybe just their family's) to celebrate birthdays in the morning. So after Patrick opened his presents and blew out the candles we had fresh bread and cake for breakfast! Then Patrick and I performed some of our pieces from the previous day. It was lovely. You can even listen to our rendition of "Vois sur ton chemin" from Les Chroistes below!

Berlin - Germany (18th - 21st August)

I was met at the Berlin Südkreuz station by Nikolai, my friend from university, whose house I was staying at. It was nice to see him after a long summer! We took the S-Bahn back to the house (but first in the wrong direction...!). That evening we headed out on the train to a lake called Schlatensee and swum to the other side and back again. It wasn't too cold and lovely with the sunset. I had learnt my lesson and had not taken any valuables this time to lose while swimming so no pictures of this, only snapshots from my memory. Then we cooked dinner and ate with his dad before a rather late night quick driving tour of the city.

The mission for the Berlin sightseeing day was to beat the step record from Bled - which I did manage to do! No need for a walking tour as I had my own personal local guide for the whole day! I saw all the major sights - churches, TV tower, Berliner Dom, Tiergarten, checkpoint Charlie and of course the Ampel Mann shop. Such an interesting city, with lots of history. I also learnt lots of German vocabulary along the way.

Lunch and dinner were both supermarket meals with Brötchen. I got to try a Club-Mate and a Radler (half beer, half lemonade). And of course, I got more apricots. We had dinner as the sun set next to the Bundestag (German parliament) before watching a projected film about the history of the Bundestag (luckily with English subtitles).

I had a really great day and broke my daily step record, which now stands at 41,377!

The next day we visited Schloss Charlottenburg, although both rather exhausted from the previous day's excursions. Then we went to Tegel Airport to pick up Alex, another maths friend from uni, who I had only found out was coming to Berlin too the day I arrived! I got an a falafel sandwich from an authentic German Dönner kebab shop, which was definitely better than the one in Vienna.

In the afternoon we took the train out to the East side of Berlin to the East Side Gallery - the well known graffiti part of the Berlin Wall which still stands. It was very interesting to see the difference in architecture and feel between the old East and West sides of Berlin. We also visited a very soviet feeling Soviet Memorial in a large park.

That evening I started to have a big energy crash before dinner and couldn't really think straight about ordering in German. I think it was a combination of so much walking and eating dinner too late. I felt a bit better after the food replenishment and we continued on to a nice pub to drink beer.

On my last morning we went to Potsdam, just outside of the city to visit Park Sanssouci (literal French translation: without worry, care-free). It's a copy of Versailles near Paris and it has a similar feels with huge gardens and large grand buildings. We got to have lunch in the University of Potsdam cafeteria.

After a rushed goodbye as my train was arriving, I got on my train to Berlin Hbf.

I really liked Berlin as a city, it had a lot to offer, and I'd like to return some day.

Münster - Germany (21st - 22nd August)

I was reaching the last leg of my journey, but I was going to stop overnight in the city of Münster, where Philip lived and was doing a PhD. He's a friend of my cousin's partner who I met at their wedding earlier that summer!

Some lovely casual magic: on the train from Berlin to Münster an older German lady sat next to me. I managed to have a full conversation with her only in German as she spoke very little English. I thought that was quite an achievement and a good test of how much my spoken German had improved over this trip!

Then began my 13 hours in Münster. It seemed like a pretty place from the walk back to his flat. When his girlfriend came home we headed out into town to meet his friends at this Greek restaurant. I wasn't actually that hungry as I'd already had a makeshift dinner of bread and grapes in the train so it as maybe a mistake to order a full falafel plate. I managed a whole Stein of beer and found myself understanding some more German than before, but it was still a bit hard in a group setting when they talked over other. We went to another bar after with extremely loud typical German techno music. So that made it pretty impossible to understand any German at all (and could just barely hear the English). We walked back to the flat with a detour to some of the Münster sights in the dark and the stars were out which was nice. I fell straight off to sleep, ready for my big final day of travel the next day.

Journey Home - Germany, Belgium & UK (22nd August)

Philip walked me to the station the next morning before I got a train to Cologne, where I had a short stop of less than hour. I sat on the stairs of Kölner Dom waiting for my train to Brussels. I had another short stopover in Brussels to get lunch before going through security and onto the Eurostar. Before I knew it, I was in London walking from St Pancras to King's Cross. Got a classic WHSmith meal deal for dinner.

While waiting for the platform to be announced I finally checked my uni emails which had accumulated lots of unread emails over the past few weeks. It turned out I had won a prize for my maths exam results among direct entry student, which I was not expecting! This brightened my mood. Even though I'd made the effort to reserve a seat on the London - Edinburgh train, they'd messed up the seat reservations so I just took any seat. Fortunately it was not too busy and I was getting on at the very first stop of the train route. Through all these train journey I have determined the best type of seat: front-facing window seat not at a table (reduced leg room if others arrive) and no one sitting next to me.

I had taken the book "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr for my trip. I was very nearly finished and was determined to finish it before I got home. I managed to read for the whole journey from London to Edinburgh to finish book just as we got into the station (yes, I'm a pretty slow reader but it was a long book!). It was one of the best books I'd read in a long time and to this day I would actually call it my favourite book. Such a fitting story for a European trip too!

At Waverly I got onto the train I've taken many times before back to Linlithgow and I was finally home. My mum picked me up at the station and I was very happy to see her again. I was surprised to not be more tired after a 14 hour travel day. I really enjoyed the freedom and independence of solo travel and I was glad it had all gone pretty smoothly (except for that pair of sunglasses in Bled - RIP).

What a journey! Subscribe to my blog below to hear about my next travels hopefully in 2022!