Berlin

In order to talk about Berlin, I must mostly talk about our adventure getting there. Berlin was hard to schedule in the first place, and by this point in the trip we had already rescheduled with them. Geographically there was no good time to go, and there was only one skull there. We only needed 1/5 of the time it would take to get there for Scott to collect the data he needed. However, this skull was important, so we figured this particular weekend after Florence (July 23-26) was our one shot.

Here was our plan:
We had booked a night train on Thursday from Florence to Munich in 2nd class because 1st was full when we made our reservations. This meant that we would be sharing a 6 person sleeping car with 4 strangers -- not ideal but at least we had beds. The night train was scheduled to arrive in Munich in the 6:00 a.m. hour, and then we would catch a train to Berlin in the 7:00 hour. We would arrive in Berlin just in time to take a taxi straight to the museum and measure the skull before they closed that day (Friday). Then we would spend a relaxing weekend in Berlin before heading to Vienna on Sunday which would take most of the day on another train. Scott's family was also scheduled to be in Vienna Sunday night, so we could spend our first week in Vienna with them.

Here is what actually happened:
We arrived at the Florence train station a couple hours ahead of time. About an hour before our train was scheduled to leave they posted a 20 minute delay for our train. Then, twenty minutes before our train was supposed to leave they removed the delay, so now our train should be leaving on time, but there was no platform number posted for the train, so we didn't know where it was. I asked a train station employee about it, and I was told that the train had not arrived and they didn't know when or on what track it would. THIS WAS THE SAME ANSWER I GOT 2 MINUTES BEFORE OUR TRAIN WAS SCHEDULED TO LEAVE! THE BOARD SHOWED NO TRAIN DELAY, BUT NO ONE KNEW WHERE OUR TRAIN WAS! HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!
...I probably don't need to tell you that I was panicking. They finally posted the platform number as we watched the train pulling in. *exasperated sigh*

Anyway, Scott and I got on the train carrying 6 bags and one briefcase since we are, basically, hauling around a portable lab. We found that we were sharing our compartment with 4 tall very nice Danish college aged people. They spoke English well, and were just as interested in sleeping as we were. The train employee in charge of our car came around and took our tickets and our passports so she wouldn't have to wake us up in the night, and explained we would get them back at 5:30 when she came around to get us up for our arrival in Munich around 6:00 a.m. *pause* Well, that was the good part. Scott then had to whip out his mad Tetris skills to try to fit our luggage into our tiny closet of a sleeping compartment that somehow slept six people, four of them Danish giants (comparatively), that was already full of their luggage! Finally we got settled and got to know our bunk mates a little bit. While this was going on the train started to move. I looked at my watch in surprise when I realized that we had left an hour late! Already this is bad -- our "layover" time in Munich is about half an hour, so unless this train can make-up a lot of time on the way we will miss our next train. All we can do at this point is hope for the best, so we all go to sleep.

I woke up somewhere in the 2:00 hour to a loud creaking and disconnecting noise, and then silence, stillness, and darkness. On a train, these are not good things. I expect trains to move, and make noise when they do so, and the darkness meant that we were not stopped at a train station. However, I know from former travel experiences and Rick Steves that not all parts of the train always go to the final destination, so we might have been "dropped" somewhere waiting for another train to pick us up. In the meantime, there is no power, so there is no air conditioning. It is getting hotter and hotter which means sweatier and smellier. During this time I considered my situation. I am now possibly trapped in a tiny box with 5 other people without air or power in the middle of Europe with no idea if or when another train will come to "rescue" us... On that note I tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, we did start moving again, and the air came back on, but even in my half awake half asleep state that I was in for the next several hours, I knew something was not right.

At 5:30 someones travel alarm went off. It was about 30 minutes before we were supposed to get to Munich but there was no sign of the lady with our tickets and passports. I assumed at that point that we were late, but I didn't know how late. While I waited for my answer the train stopped a lot in random places, and when we did so there was shouting in a language I couldn't understand, and lots of banging noises. Finally, around 7:00 a.m. our "lady" comes by to give us our stuff back and let us know that the train had broken down and we will be arriving in Munich 3 hours late. This means we have missed our train to Berlin, and we wouldn't make it there before the museum closed for the weekend.

When we arrived in Munich tired and disheveled, we paid for new reservations since they could not change the original ones, and got on a train to Berlin before lunch. Fortunately, while we were on the train Scott was able to get a hold of the museum on the phone, and let them know what was going on. They said he could come on Monday morning, so he could still get his data. However, that meant that we had to sacrifice a day with Scott's family in Vienna. The pictures I included above are actually taken on the train we took from Berlin to Vienna, but I thought you might be interested in seeing how we have been dragging our worldly possessions with us from country to country, and to show you how much we had to stuff into our sleeping compartment.

Once we got there we liked Berlin, and were able to get out and see some of the sites. Enjoy the pics of the fun part. Monday we measured the one skull he needed first thing in the morning, and by lunch time we were on a train to Vienna. The down side is that we were on that train for almost 11 hours...but what can you do?

Saturday we toured the Charlottenburg Palace.
Scott took this picture of me in the gardens there.
Scott's museum was also in this complex.

Charlonttenburg Gardens

The Charlottenburg Place and gardens

Scott and me in the Charlottenburg Place gardens

Sunday we spent seeing some of the major land marks of Berlin. Here I am standing by a piece of the Berlin Wall. We also went to an art museum that we both really enjoyed. I got to see some old Italian art by Botticelli and newer Italian art by Caravaggio. We also discovered that Scott like Dutch painters.