My wife stirred long before I did which I took as a good sign. She said she was still feeling pretty rubbish, unfortunately, but at the very least she did seem to be in a much better mood. We managed to get through breakfast and packing up ok, checking out of the hotel and getting into a taxi without incident. Once we’d found our way to our platform, long before our train was due to arrive, my wife started to feel ill again. It’s a pattern that would repeat itself over the course of the day although, thankfully, we had a whole first class cabin to ourselves for the majority of the trip.
Unfortunately the train ride wasn’t as luxurious as our previous one was, being more like a budget airline than anything else. Our Eurail pass granted us first class seats however there were 6 of them to a cabin. Throughout the trip we had various people come and go in the 4 spare seats we weren’t using although none of them stayed longer than an hour. This was great for my wife who could curl up on the seats and get some additional rest. We drew the ire of the conductor who told us we hadn’t used our Eurail passes correctly, something which the first train we boarded neglected to mention.
The trip over was uneventful, spent mostly reading through my book and playing a couple games on my phone. This train was also bereft of any Internet connection as well, something that torpedoed my plans to post yesterday’s blog and, possibly, catch up on that Mirror’s Edge Catalyst review I had lined up before I left. It was nice to see the transition from The Netherlands to Germany however, the landscapes dotted with wind farms, small towns and various other things of interest.
We arrived in Berlin late in the afternoon (which would be the dead of night at home, something which my body clock is still coming to grips with) and made our hotel. I was a little worried that we were out in the sticks somewhere as I thought I spied our hotel from our train on the way over. By the looks of things though we’re pretty well placed with most of the things I want to see a short train ride away.
I’m hopeful that my wife’s condition will have improved enough by now for us to really sink our teeth into Berlin. I have to admit I was a little disappointed by how little we did in Amsterdam, even if it was a rather relaxing time. Berlin is definitely one of the cities that I wanted to see a lot of and, since we’ve really only got 2 days here, we’re going to have to make them count. Even though our new hotel would be nice enough to while away the hours in I’m certainly not looking to make a repeat performance.
