Diary of Rob Szumlakowski

So I took a night train from Munich to Berlin. I successfully slept for a few hours on the train, but, since the beds/folded-down-seats weren't that comfortable, and it was a wierd experience, I did not sleep as much as I would have liked. As I woke up, the train was chugging through the suburbs of Berlin. We pulled into the station at 7:30 AM. I had a breakfast of currywurst from a food stall outside of the train station. Currywurst is a wierd little food... a sausage, cut up into small pieces, drowned in ketchup, and sprinkled with curry powder:


I walked around for a few hours before finally deciding on a hotel. Eventually I found a pretty nice place just off of Kurfürstemdamm, the posh shopping street in Berlin. Luckily enough, the staff of the hotel also spoke Polish (note: the staff at every hotel I went to spoke English), which would be an asset when my cousin showed up.

My room wouldn't be ready until 1 PM, so I had a few hours before I could have the shower and change of clothes I desperately wanted. I went back to the train station and did some minor sightseeing. I didn't want to see anything too important, since I didn't want my cousin (who would be showing up that night) wouldn't miss anything. So I rode around the transit for a while and walked around. I got a cool picture of a Ferrari parked on the Kurfürstemdamm!


Eventually I got my shower and change of clothes. I visited a neat museum very close to the hotel, The Story of Berlin, to entertain myself before dinner. Then I had some pizza and wheat beer, which I also found near my hotel:


All in all, today was a rest day, since I was pretty tired from my lack of solid sleep on the night train, and not wanting to spoil anything for my cousin. I was supposed to pick him up at the bus station at 2:00 AM. After dinner, I went back to my hotel to drop some stuff before going out again. Surprisingly, I passed out from exhaustion on my bed and didn't go out again! Luckily, I woke up around midnight, so I didn't miss my cousin... whew.........!

I then went to the bus station, and met my cousin from Poland, Andrzej. I invited him up to hang out with me in Berlin. Berlin is so close to the Polish border, that it wasn't that far for him. However, it was his first real trip outside of Poland, so it was a big deal for him!