A weekend in Berlin

Welcome to my brother's garden paradise in Berlin

To close out the coverage of my almost month-long trip to Europe it's time to recall my weekend trip to Berlin. After returning from Austria and spending a couple of days in Freising I packed a few clothes and got on the train for the five-hour journey to Germany's capital. I had bought the ticket shortly after my arrival in Bavaria, and since the cost difference between First and Second Class was negligible I traveled in comfort. First Class comes with a free seat reservation, allowing me to select single seats with table access so that I could actually make good use of the train's Wi-Fi and get some work done.

ICE passengers waiting for a replacement ICE train in Nürnberg 

It used to be that the German railroad was almost as reliable as a Swiss chronometer, but those days are long gone. Deutsche Bahn is now synonymous with not only delays but also cancelled trains and of course missed connections. Just in case I had taken a train ahead of schedule to connect from Freising with my ICE bullet train in Munich, and that was a good decision because my original S-Bahn was delayed so that my connection would have been imperiled. The ICE runs once every hour from Munich to Hamburg, with a stop in Berlin (as well as few other cities in between), and the train that was supposed to have left an hour before mine simply had been cancelled because of a "Defekt," a mechanical. Visions of American Airlines came to mind ....

My brother's cozy dacha in former East Berlin

My train left about 25 minutes late. When we arrived an hour later in Nürnberg, the PA system told us that we all would have to disembark, go to the other side of the platform, and wait for a replacement train since our train had a problem. The reaction of my German co-passenger was one of general resignation but also a lot of sarcasm; people are used to this. It was a hot day with temperatures above 90F, and especially the newer models of the ICE trains are well-known to have climate control breakdowns, so nobody was too surprised at this point. However, when our replacement train arrived, everybody was stunned when the doors opened and a wave of passengers emerged, only to head across the platform to board the train that we had just exited! You should have heard the comments at that point!

You can't see my brother's place but the two inflatables on the right denote his dock

Eventually we arrived at Berlin Südkreuz, only about 20 minutes late. My brother, Bux, was waiting for me on the platform, and after not having seen one another for going on two years it was a warm and cordial reunion. Once we got out of the station the masks finally came off, not a second too early in the immensely torrid afternoon conditions in the middle of the city. (Germany requires KN-95 masks in pretty much all public settings, and those masks are much hotter and less breathable than the blue surgical masks that we've been seeing in the US.)

Bux and his son Jannick readying the boat

Because of the heatwave Bux had decided we would spend the weekend not in his apartment (no AC, no fans, no airflow, on the fourth floor without a lift in the middle of the built-up city) but rather in his small weekend dacha on the river Spree. Good choice! The small parcel of land he owns is located just a few kilometers from the new Tesla factory in Grünheide, an immense complex of new construction that will bring 10,000 jobs to the area but will also cause traffic jams, housing shortages, and other infrastructure problems. We passed by the Tesla factory before ending up in Köpenick where we stopped by the local Lidl to pick up some goodies for the weekend.

Jannick tending to the boats; the right one is his

Bux' little place is nothing extravagant; the small house (which is not equipped for winter-time stays) has appeared on the verge of collapse for as long as I can remember, and the garden is rather tiny (yet very private). But the property has access to the water, with a narrow dock for small craft. The trees provide shade, and the grass regulates temperature so much better than Berlin's asphalt and concrete landscape. In other words, it's an unpretentious oasis for a city denizen. There are two bedrooms, a tiny bathroom with a functioning toilet (just don't throw the paper in the commode), and a kitchen with a fridge, oven, and the basics one needs for a week or longer. The roof doesn't appear to leak, and the strange scratching noise in one of the walls stopped shortly after our arrival. There is comfortable garden furniture, a real gas grill, and a ladder to get in and out of the Spree. What else could one want?

Bux and his older son, Dennis

Friday night, over grilled goods and lots of beers, we caught up with each other's lives. On Saturday morning, Bux procured fresh bread from the bakery while I took a swim in the Spree before our leisurely breakfast. The property is located maybe 150 meters from the main channel, in a small sidearm that has much less traffic than the actual river. Early in the morning, very few motor craft putter by and only an occasional SUP or kayak will glide through the smooth waters. It appears that clothing is optional, and swimming in the soft-yet-tannic water in the buff is rather liberating. Bonus point: Just like in Austria, my hip liked the gentle sideways movement that accompanies the breaststroke, so more rehab work. Over the weekend I spent quite bit of time in the refreshing water and never took an actual shower.

Around noon, my two nephews, Jannick and Dennis arrived. Especially Jannick, who lives with Prader Willi Syndrome, gets very excited when his Onkel aus Amerika shows up. All four of us piled into Bux' inflatable that is powered by a 15-hp engine and, with Jannick at the helm, we spent several hours slowly cruising the numerous canals, lakes, and the river Spree proper. One of the highlights was stopping at the fishmonger's (official name is Müggelseefischerei) in the tiny village of Rahnsdorf and eating some freshly smoked. Damn, life can be so good.

The boys left after our excursion, and we spent another evening just hanging out. Thunderstorms had moved in, but under a pop-up canopy we were quite content and decimated more beer and wine. On Sunday, Bux took me on a longer excursion to several lakes that I had never seen. When I grew up in the late '50s, our family owned a tiny plot of land with a weekend dacha just a few hundred meters from where Bux now owns his place. (Bux wasn't born until after we had moved away from West Berlin about half a year before the wall was built and had settled in Schleiden, west of Cologne.) That was during the time that this part of Berlin was part of the DDR, better known as East Germany. We were very much limited in how far we could take our paddle boat since the Russian sector began just a few kilometers to the east, and even after the reunification of Germany I had never been to those areas when I had been in Berlin (at least not on the water; I had often ridden my bike in that general area when I visited my dad). Anyhow, it was really an interesting excursion that we took, and I had a great time.

On Monday morning Bux took me back to Bahnhof Südkreuz and I took another reliability-challenged ICE back to Munich and then the super-hot regional train that had been baking all day in the sun to Freising. No AC, none of the windows can be opened, and the KN-95 doing its best to suffocate you.... 

My time in Europe was coming to a close. I was able to snag a free COVID test that was needed for my transit in London and to reenter the US, got all my paperwork together, went on a few more rides, enjoyed a pig knuckle in Weihenstephan's Bräu-Stüberl, and had a last nice evening snack at one of the lakes around Freising. Sabine had started back at work on Monday after a weekend of sailing a race with friends on Lake Constance, and life started to normalize once again. On Thursday she took a break during her home office day and took me to the airport, and my 48-hour journey back to Texas started in earnest.

Pullinger Weiher from ground level ....

... and Pullinger Weiher from the air

Normally, it is a one-day trip from Munich to Lubbock, but with severely reduced airline schedules I had to spend the night somewhere along the way. The best alternative had been to book a direct flight from London to Los Angeles where I had secured a room close to the airport. (Of course, first there was the two-hour hop to London on British Airways, with better service and amenities than on the business class Flagship flight on AA across the Atlantic.) Friday morning it was time for LAX to DFW and then the final puddle jumper to Lubbock, where I arrived a little bit before six in the evening. I don't know how all of this would have played out in economy as even biz wasn't a cakewalk. My first post-pandemic trip to Europe as a non-citizen was in the books.

Leaving LA

Approaching home

And now I've been home for six days and have re-acclimated myself to the South Plains, just in time to jet up to Colorado on July 4 to work USAC's National Mountain Bike Championships next week. In the morning, I'll go for a ride with Smitty and David. Life continues to normalize itself.

Jürgen