You need to bear with me. While still in Berlin I‘ll write in the breaks I take from entertaining my in-laws 😜
We started on Monday early morning. For the ~600 km we opted for the train, which is less hassle for me and usually an efficient medium of transport in Germany. It should have taken about 5h.
We had to change in Frankfurt, and the second train took us through former East Germany, right up to the beautiful village of Neudietendorf.
About 500 m before the place in the middle of nowhere our train hit something. We all hoped for a wild animal, but unfortunately not. Due to problematic nature of train incidents with persons we had first to wait in the train for about 2h, then it was hauled into the station 500m further down the track and a new train was send from Frankfurt. Changing the train took almost 1h for all passengers (I‘d say maybe 500 persons), and then the train had to be integrated again into the traffic. All in all we lost about 5h and arrived in Berlin at 18.30h …
The reservation for the Pergamon museum in the afternoon was gone as well, and spirits were not too high. I felt it was not the right time to impose a Berlin cuisine regimen on my mostly Mediterranean-oriented family.
Little one behaved remarkably well, so we offered him to pick dinner. He wanted sushi and noodles 🤔
After checking into the hotel I found a small Vietnamese neighborhood joint offering both. Berlin has a huge Vietnamese population stemming from East German times, where Vietnamese were welcome migrant workers. The city now is brimming with Vietnamese restaurants, a Vietnamese shopping center and Karaoke bars.
The restaurant was low key, but the food was nice & comforting and we had a good time after a somewhat unnerving day …
Two versions of Bun bowls … the second one was spicy beef in betelnut leaves. Very good.
My MIL wanted Pad Thai. The menu accommodated her 😉
A tiiiiny bit tired maybe ?
A small stroll around the block took us to the Gedächtniskirche and a Späti (all night convenience store), before heading back after a not quite planned first day in Berlin.
