{"id":259,"date":"2016-06-14T13:38:03","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T17:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/?p=259"},"modified":"2016-08-07T02:10:29","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T06:10:29","slug":"june-13-flight-to-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/2016\/06\/14\/june-13-flight-to-berlin\/","title":{"rendered":"June 13: Flight to Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Radisson
Radisson Blue Hotel, Berlin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Warning:<\/strong> This post is about luggage and long lines, which you might find extremely boring, but it is what traveling is really like, in between all the glorious sightseeing!<\/p>\n

Even before we left Boston, anticipating how to manage the luggage for this particular\u00a0flight from Edinburgh to Berlin seemed like the\u00a0most confronting obstacle of\u00a0our entire trip. Packing for 50 days with such a wide variety of weather and types of travel was difficult enough, but the restrictive carry-on rules for EasyJet (the budget airline my friend Nancy says people call\u00a0\u201cSleezy Jet\u201d)\u00a0put the most pressure on how to pack for the whole trip.<\/p>\n

But in the end, it wasn\u2019t so bad. First of all, I shipped my largest bag to our friends in Rotterdam, where we will be going after Berlin. Then I paid\u00a0to check in two bags, which ended up only costing about $20 apiece rather than the huge fees charged by other airlines. The major obstacle there was that each bag could weigh no more than 20 kg (or about\u00a044 pounds). Thank goodness, once I was all packed, it turned out everything I had with me weighed way less than I thought and I was well inside the limits. Finally,\u00a0I deconstructed my pocketbook and shoved it inside one of my suitcases. That left one bag for carry-on, because only first class passengers are allowed a personal item in addition to a carry-on bag on EasyJet!<\/p>\n

With the luggage nightmare taken care of, we rolled our bags down Cockburn Street in Edinburgh to the AirLink bus stop near Waverley station. Luckily, we were some of the first people to queue up\u00a0and it didn\u2019t rain! Although very crowded, the bus transported us to the airport in about\u00a030 minutes for only\u00a0\u00a34.50\u2014a real bargain. Security at the airport involved long lines, but the lines moved fairly quickly. The bin system worked better than in the U.S., because the bins are larger, they pop up in front of you on the belt, and two bins ride under the scanner side by side.<\/p>\n

We had a long wait at the gate, because our plane was delayed, but eventually, the plane got loaded, the whole rear of the plane filled with very noisy Scottish teenagers on a school trip or something. Luckily, it was a short flight, and we arrived in Berlin on time.<\/p>\n

The wait for German passport control involved another long line, but unlike our entry into the UK, this time there was no separation between EU and non-EU passengers until the last minute, so we all had to agonize together.<\/p>\n

Arjan and I struggled with the decision whether to take public transportation or a taxi. In the end, we took a taxi, and I am glad we did. Arjan\u2019s post tells you about our interesting taxi driver and our guided tour through Berlin in a mixture of German and English. Too bad I could only understand some of it.<\/p>\n

\"Radisson
Radisson Blu Hotel Fishtank<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our hotel is the Radisson Blu in the center of Berlin, opposite the Berliner Dom. There is a monster fish tank a couple stories high in the lobby and glass elevators running up and down the side walls. Our room is modern and spacious. It will be nice to settle in and not to have to drag luggage around for a while.<\/p>\n

\"Radison
Radison Blu Hotel Lifts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dinner was at a restaurant called Oxymoron, which served beautifully prepared food, in an open-air courtyard called Hackesche H\u00f6fe. Arjan\u2019s friend Peter Cohen recommended the square to Arjan when Arjan\u00a0came to Berlin three years ago on his way to Warsaw. Peter was a playwright who had plays produced in the adjacent theatre.<\/p>\n

\"Hackesche
Hackesche H\u00f6fe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Photographs \u00a9 2016 P.J. Gardner<\/a>. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warning: This post is about luggage and long lines, which you might find extremely boring, but it is what traveling is really like, in between all the glorious sightseeing! Even before we left Boston, anticipating how to manage the luggage for this particular\u00a0flight from Edinburgh to Berlin seemed like the\u00a0most confronting obstacle of\u00a0our entire trip. … Continue reading “June 13: Flight to Berlin”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pjgardner.com\/travel3\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}