Weekend out in Berlin!

I thought that this week’s article would be the easiest to write after spending the weekend in Berlin, and then it dawned on me that you have probably read a dozen or so articles about the various trips’ to around Germany. Well, personally am not so much of a traveler but if the opportunity arises I prefer embarking on longer trips that last for at least a week, to give me enough room to learn more about the people and their way of life and not just to get a short preview of everything in a hurry due to limited time.

Well, despite being only a weekend trip, I decided not to miss the opportunity and so we set out on Friday evening after the language class with a group of 15 students drawn from different parts of the world; that’s the beauty of such trips, that you get to meet and know someone different from another part of the globe. We left the Bremen Hauptbahnhof at 19:18 hrs and arrived at Hannover for a change over at 20:38 hrs, there wasn’t much interesting apart from the chatting in the Zug and being that it was a Friday evening most of the students were either dosing or trying very hard to stay awake and I am not an exception. We arrived in Berlin at 22:55 hrs and it took us another one and half hours to arrive to our hostel after travelling in one of the longest Straßenbahn that I have ever seen in my life. We were accommodated at hostel ‘’comebackpackers’’ in Adalbertrstaße and from the name it sounded like a place worth coming back to until I saw the bed that was meant to usher me to slumber land. It was a short and slim bed and so for me to enjoy comfort I had to lower the mattress down on the floor and forget the comfort of the bed.

Come Saturday morning as the other students were going for their tour around the city, I decided to visit the local church in Berlin and had a wonderful service with the Ghanaian brethren for the whole day and therefore did not have much to share apart from the warmth and blessings of the worship. My main attraction in Berlin was the zoo and the aquarium visit on Sunday morning, in as much as the weather wasn’t that favorable it could not dampen my spirit. On entry we were first greeted by the sight of an Indian Rhino that is completely different from the Rhino that we have in Africa due to tier flexible skin and the presence of only one horn.

The other animals were quiet familiar to me such as the African lion, which looked bored in its cage, and the leopard which kept on treading up and down its cage perhaps uncomfortable due to the many uninvited guests who were trying to get a shot of it. The birds observed ranged from the hornbill the vultures and the crane birds, I did not have enough time to visit the ostrich stand but that would have been an interesting encounter.

We were ushered in the aquarium with this massive stature of what looked like a dinosaur, well I have never seen one before so I guess that if its not the one then it must be one of their relatives.

The aquarium located in the first floor offered a diverse sample of aquatic organisms from the different continents ranging from the fresh water and marine species such as the trout and the carp and the groupers just to name a few that were familiar and of course the unforgettable miniature coral reefs. The second floor had the reptiles ranging from the crocodiles the tortoise and the geckos and lizard family and the third floor had a sample of the insects and amphibians. However the highlight of the zoo was the white polar bears that I have only seen in the documentaries. We were lucky to get one of the playful cubs entertaining observers with its diving tricks and tossing a carton up and down as it splashes water amid the cheers it was a pity I could not get a shot of it but I guess the parents were not amused.

With only two hours to visit both the zoo and the aquarium I could not visit all the stands and the drizzling rain did not make it any better and off course we still had to check out of the hostel before 12:30 hrs. After the check out we did not have much time so we immediately left for the central station for the journey back home (Bremen) as the Zug was leaving at 13:09 hrs. This is the part of the journey that I don’t want to talk about, why? I had to bear three hours of standing; we had to take a longer route with a changeover at Schwerin and that was the only time I was actually seated from Berlin. However, from Schwerin to Hamburg and Hamburg to Bremen we had to stand, and being a weekend the Züge were filled to capacity and and getting even a place to lean on was a dream. Therefore when we finally arrived at the Bremen Hauptbahnhof at 19:30 hrs there wasn’t much to do apart from heading straight to the room, taking a hot shower and heading directly to bed hoping that it was all a bad dream! In my dream I dreamt that I was heading back to Berlin and this time not just for a weekend but at least a week.