It's Sunday morning. We have a plan, but we have plenty of time before our 10:50 visit starts at Schloss Charlottenburg. We get up a bit later, have a leisurely breakfast at the hotel's vunder-buffet, then wander off with plenty of time to spare to the U-bahn (metro) station. We find a ticket machine, select the language we wish to use, need to type in our starting station (easy) then our destination station (difficult, it doesn't appear in the alphabetic listings). We re-check everything, repeat, and get re-baffled before cancelling the transaction to go looking for assistance, then realise that even at quite a major City landmark there are no staff present anywhere. Jan points out a uniformed man with red cap watching the trains come and go. Eureka, assistance! Nein! He pulls out a transit map, shakes his head, and shrugs his shoulders.
Since we are only a couple of blocks from our hotel, we go back and seek advice from the reception staff. Armed with instructions, we return to the U-bahn station to try again, this time on another ticket machine. Once again we go through language and ticket options, select the ticket option we think we should be using from the zillion available options (most of which leave us mystified), eventually get the machine to understand there are actually two of us travelling, then try to pay using the only available method - a credit card. In goes the Brit card once, twice, three times with card removal fast, medium and 'will it notice?'. The same 'card not acceptable' message appears each time, so we try a US card with the same result, then a Lloyds debit card. By this time we realise that what started out as a leisurely journey has got us precisely nowhere and time is now running low. Abandoning the U-bahn we walk back to the hotel, walk through the sea of black BMWs and Mercedes that are lined up outside at all hours and get a taxi from the line that is always there and are whisked away on a much simpler but much more expensive journey to the Schloss.
En route we have an interesting conversation with our driver (zero German on our part, pretty good English on his) about the sizes of the massive palace we are off to visit and the relatively puny Bellevue where the German president lives - "If I was president I'd live in the huge fancy Palace, not the itsy-bitsy white one". We also ask his opinion of Angel Merkel and for the second time this trip were surprised to get a less than enthusiastic response. Our driver's opinion was "if you say a lot, but don't do anything, you don't do anything wrong. But you still don't do anything".
After our initial travel hassles we arrived with plenty of time to spare and strolled around the front of the Schloss taking photographs. As our scheduled visit time neared, we headed to the entrance and Mike waved his phone for the ticket bar codes to be scanned. The attendant tried a few times without success, stared at his scanner, wiped it on his sleeve, flashed the pulsing red light across the back of his hand a few times then, with typical German efficiency, said the equivalent of "bugger this for a game of soldiers" and waved us through into the house.
We wandered through room after opulent room listening to our audio guides, fascinated by what was a genuinely interesting tour, even though almost everything of the building and its contents was replicated as a consequence (like everywhere else in Berlin) of almost 90% of the City having been destroyed in the war. We snapped away on our cameras until we got to one amazingly ornate room and first Mike, then Jan, was advised photography was not permitted without purchase of a pass. This was news to us, so we stopped taking photographs. Until the next room, when first Mike, then Jan, had the same lady come after us with an "I've already told you once" message. She also followed us into a third room, but we were being good by that time!
The After lunch we went back to do battle with the U-bahn. This time the machine also rejected the card we had just used without problem to pay for lunch, but gave us the option to pay with cash. Amazingly, we walked away with two tickets! On the train we were approached by two ticket inspectors. A moment of panic arose that we had purchased the wrong tickets so we were relieved when they merely glanced and moved on.
After changing trains twice, we successfully navigated our way from the west side of Berlin to the northeastern section where we wanted to visit the Markisches Museum; part of which comprised a series of historic boats of all sizes which are now permanently moored on one part of the river, the second part was an exhibition on three floors of a state-owned building describing the various stages of Berlin's growth and development over the ages. Neither of us had realised until our City bike tour with Alistair a few days ago that, unlike many other European cities that have existed in some form for 5,000 to 20,000 years, Berlin is only 900 years old.
We paid our admission charge, were given our English tri-fold leaflet, and descended to the basement to start our tour. In minutes we looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders, and walked back upstairs. It was obviously nobody else's fault that, as we walked from exhibit to exhibit and room to room where nothing but long detailed descriptions in German were offered, we had never taken the time to learn the German language. However, it did seem strange to be in a museum in a large European city and not be offered at least half a dozen language options. Perhaps that might partially explain how the two of us on a damp Sunday afternoon could represent maybe 25% of the museum's attendance. We valiantly decided to walk through the other two floors, disturbing slumbering or bored attendants in each room as we entered, before leaving completely unenlightened about the City's history.
Having had enough U-bahn challenges for one day, we decided to make our way back to the hotel on foot. A pot of tea and an internet catch-up were later followed by dinner at the hotel for our final night in the capital. A different type of adventure starts tomorrow.
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