Checking in

After returning from the UK last Monday it made a change to only have a four day work week so that the weekend come around around a bit quicker than usual! After the UK trip one of us was keen on picking up some Scott's porridge oats. Unfortunately that is not available in our regular grocery store but someone in work told us of a 'top' store in Berlin where we could buy some. The store is known as KaDeWe and is likened by some to Harrods. So after leisurely getting ready, we jumped on the trains to get to the Zoo stop and walked a little way down the Ku'Damm to the store. The magical sixth floor is the food hall although it seems to be more a collection of wine bars in many nooks and crannies with partitions of food shelves separating them. The number of people sipping wine and enjoying a light meal at 11am on a Saturday morning was quite surprising.
We seemed to explore every nook and cranny but could find no porridge
:-o(

though we did buy an English (Saturday) tabloid.
Resourceful as ever, we didn't give up but headed over to Dunkin Donuts! We knew they didn't sell porridge but we did know that as well as coffee and donuts (and a very nice bagel - well, it was now lunchtime) they also had an Internet cafe in the same donut store. After knocking back our coffees,donut and bagel, we invested in an hour of Internet time at a spare PC. We quickly tracked down the street address of the "English" shops in Berlin. We entered our current location and the shop addresses into http://www.bvg.de/ (the local transit website) and that gave us all the details we needed to get to the shop efficiently! We called the shop before setting off and confirmed that they were still open (a previous experience saw us at one of these shop locations that had actually closed a couple of YEARS before!) and they did sell the porridge. A little over thirty minutes later and we were in the store buying porridge, Fray Bentos pies, crisps and 'dead fly' biscuits to name just some of the goodies on offer!
Then it was back to base and nap time!
Sunday was somewhat deflated with a trip to church and a lack of knowing what else to do with the rest of the day except watch the Turkey F1 grand prix in which even Lewis Hamilton didn't have a spectacular day, finishing fifth after a tyre blow out.
Suddenly it was Monday morning and back to the routine cycle of five days works. Speaking of cycle, that is how I get to work some days recently. I 'invested' in a 21 speed city bike, pictured here.







It takes me a little under half an hour to cycle the 7km (4.5miles) to work without arriving too sweaty, at least no one has complained yet!
Now we look forward to our trip back to Canada in just a few short weeks...maybe we'll see you then.

Sunday stroll, east of the pond

Not wanting to spend an afternoon in the apartment, after church today I headed off to explore another piece of Berlin I had not yet visited.

I took the 'S' Bahn train up to Halemweg station and took a short walk up to Volkspark Jungfernheide in the west of the city. It seems similar to the much more popular (i.e. busy) Tiergarten park in central Berlin but by being in the burbs is much quieter. The park has lots of tree lined paths, criss-crossing in all directions, some large grassy BBQ areas and more....

The sky was overcast with some occasional very light misty rain but it was dry enough to sit on a tree stump overlooking the lake and a deserted beach opposite despite being mid-August. In between eating my sandwiches I threw pieces of bread into the lake to watch shoals of small (3-4") fish go crazy over them, flashing their silver bellies as they fought over the bread! They frequently jumped an inch or two out of the water, presumably to catch the mosquitoes that were also at lunch, feeding on me!

Strolling through the park I stumbled on a football game that I watched for about half an hour before coming across these very nice carvings etc......





























On the way out of the park I also came across a water tower...

Then I eventually made my way down to the Zoo S Bahn station to pick up my Sunday Daily Express with the football results and reports in. Speaking of that, I have some reading to do....

Read all about it, news! news!

Hello, perhaps you thought we'd disappeared for a while but we've been here and that's been the problem!
The last couple of weeks, the weather has not been so good on the weekends and we've not been motivated to do much and even less inclined to take pictures.
We have started to go into Berlin on a Saturday to.......buy an English newspaper or two.
So, after a bit of a lie-in this morning, we got the 10.30 train into Berlin. We ('royal we') decided not to head to get the paper first but instead do some touristy stuff first.
The first stop on our travels was the Gendarmenmarkt, a large square with a church on both the north and south sides and a Cultural / Concert Hall in between. According to our tourist book we could go up the tower of one of the churches but, like so many other sites, there was renovation going on and the tower was closed. It was relaxing though, just enjoying the sunshine and wandering around.
Here are the pictures of the one of churches and concert concert hall.




The north side church

The concert hall

I also spotted a familiar looking tourist browing her guidebook.

Leaving the square behind, we walked up Friedrickstrasse, an up and coming shopping street. We went into Lafayette, an upmarket French department store. The store was above our C&A price expectations so we didn't stay long though we were impressed with the large glass panels arranged in a circle running through the middle of the store from top to bottom.

We left by a different exit that led into a small mall food court, a picture of which appears here!




Having decided where to go next, with our tickets for unlimited travel, we jumped onto a bus heading in the right direction. Not knowing where the bus was actually going was not much of al risk. We only planned to go a couple of bus stops anyway. The bus stops were further apart than we anticipated so we did end up further than we planned from our target. That gave us the bonus of finding and visiting St. Mary's Church, not surprisingly undergoing renovation. It has a nice organ even if you can see the protective plastic sheeting on the balcony edge!



The church also houses quite an art collection and also holds English language services on Sunday evenings as far as we could understand it.



From outside, it was quite a contrast to see the old and new towers 'side-by-side'. The church dates from the late 13th century though the tower is 18th century after a fire destroyed an older tower. The modern tower is at Alexanderplatz and is a TV broadcasting tower.


We made a stop at the National Gallery, though didn't enter in and found an unusual place to photograph Berlin Cathedral from.


A glimpse of the Cathedral

The National Gallery

Fitting in a bite to eat and drink, we headed for the train station to buy our newspapers and found a benefit to buying them in mid afternoon rather than the morning. By the time we got to the store, Saturday's delivery of the Saturday's papers had arrived, rather than reading Friday's or even older papers.

So I think the papers deserves a picture also!