DAYS 13 THRU 16: A BREAK IN BERLIN
/BERLIN — Turns out that somewhere around Day 13, it hits you that this whole thing is more than just a fun little family vacation and it crosses your mind that you might be ready to head home...except you don't actually have a home and your furniture is still floating on the ocean, and when you do get home, it will be in a new country where you don't speak the language and have to start all over again anyway. And then you get really tired and realize you need a little mental, emotional, and physical break. Which, the depleted mother wrote gratefully, is exactly what Berlin has afforded so far.
We got to the city late on Monday night after a 50 minute flight from Copenhagen and two trains in from Schonefeld Airport. It was well past their bedtimes, but the kids got their fifteenth wind and way outpaced us on the trek in. Surrounded by a dozen humorless train passengers, Owen asked which country we were in, and upon receiving his answer, excitedly shrieked: "Germany! That's where HITLER is from!! Can we go see the Hitler statue?!" (Two fun facts about Owen: (1) he thinks everyone who dies turns into a statue that is on display somewhere in the world, (2) he is fairly certain Hitler is responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.) Needless to say, we put the kibosh on that pretty quick.
We checked into adjoining rooms at the Westin Grand (thank you, Starwood points), relieved to spend a few nights in a place where someone else would tidy up after us and we wouldn't have to worry about being publicly reviewed after our stay. The kids were happy about the change of scenery (Owen: "Since we're not in someone's apartment, does that mean we can mess everything up?"), and we took a little hiatus from touristing; Tuesday and Wednesday were Real Life Days, where we went shopping for car seats, had the screen on Aaron's iPhone replaced (because, as I conveniently omitted from the last post, I dropped and shattered it at Tivoli), and dealt with a suitcase full of dirty laundry. (Travel tip: if you're in Berlin, London, or Paris, there is an awesome service called ZipJet — the Uber of dirty clothes — that sends someone to your door to pick up your laundry, washes and folds it, and brings it back 2 days later.) Today we went on a bike tour of Berlin, and given the rainy forecast, are planning to spend tomorrow at a museum.
We found cheap Ryanair flights from Berlin to Bologna for Saturday and will spend a week in a Tuscan farmhouse outside of Florence (Eliza: "We're going to Hitaly!"). We're renting a car for the first time on the trip (hence the car seats, which we'll also need in Barcelona) and are hoping to do a little non-city exploration. It's hard to believe that we're not yet to the halfway mark of this trip, but after taking it easy in Berlin, we're excited and ready to tackle the next 3 weeks!
