The Bernard Files.: Day 14 - Berlin to London

It was a super early start today as we had to catch our first train at 6.00 in the morning, meaning setting the alarms for 5.00.

Neither of us must have been sleeping well, as I woke at 4.00 and couldn't get back to sleep, and then at 4.30 I hear "Are you awake?"

So all of our worries about missing the alarms was unnecessary, although no doubt we may be tired when we hit London late this afternoon.

As we left our digs so early, the reception was not open, so they told us to just lock our cards in the room as we left. We must have checked about 50 times to make sue we had everything, because once we shut that door there was no going back in.

Leaving our Berlin digs at 5.50 in the morning.

Dawn over Berlin, and the good weather arrives just as we leave.

A similar thing happened when leaving the building, as there were only certain doors we could exit from, all other doors needed the keycard. Imagine our panic when a door closed behind us that we could no longer go back through, and we found ourselves in the main atrium of our hotel, that we were told would be locked until 9.00. For a few minutes we actually thought we were locked in and would not be able to get out, thus missing our trains.

The relief we felt when the door to the outside opened for us was unbelievable. There was quite a deal of mumbling as we walked towards this door, God only knows what we would have done if it was locked!

Our experience of running the rails yesterday paid dividends today, we made every train easily and on time. By the time we left Berlin we actually felt confident in negotiating the city by public transport, a pity that we go and leave the very next day.

Today was meant to be a flight to London, but we did choose to change our plans after the tragedy with Germanwings last week. We do realise the chances of it happening again are so remote, but we have discovered that we actually love travelling on the train as there is so much more to see.

A brief stop in Cologne to change trains gave us enough of a chance to see that this would be an amazing city to explore.

I think it was on our original plans, but we changed our route significantly when we decided to include Berlin in the trip.

After working out the time differences with her and home, I realised that I could pick up some live AFL scores, so it has been interesting to see that Essendon are touching up Sydney. The train we are on now doesn't have wifi, so I am missing out on the rest of the match!

I was also halfway through listening to the Coodabeen Champions show from last week, so even that is on hold, much to my disgust.

As we have now left Germany and are speeding through the Belgian countryside in grey and drizzly conditions, one cannot help but thinking about the various wars that have been fought in this area, particularly in the Great War when so many thousands of Aussies lost their lives in the areas we are travelling through.