Cologne to Berlin October 23, 2006

We walked from the Allegro Hotel to Cologne’s Central Train Station to catch the 10:46am to Berlin. The high speed train left the station heading east toward our destination. The countryside of northern Germany is flat and dotted with farms interspersed with villages and a few major towns or cities. We made six or seven stops along the way and then arrived at Berlin Hbf (central station) just 7 minutes behind our scheduled arrival time of 3:17 PM.

The Berlin station was bustling but we made our way through the crowds to find the ticket office for the S-Bahn for information about which city train to take in order to reach Charlottenburg, which is just west of Berlin Mitte, the central part of the city.

Ten minutes after boarding the S-Bahn we got off at the Charlottenburg station and followed the directions from the Art’appart Hotel’s web site to the hotel. This hotel has apartment style rooms and we feel like we are in a palace if only for the amount of room we have here. We have a bedroom, sitting room, bathroom and a small kitchenette.

The apartment is furnished IKEA style but suits our needs. It is in a residential neighborhood, not a tourist area and with the help of Frau Schneider at reception we have found a grocery store, bakery, post office and amazingly, a tailor that will alter a couple of trousers for me that I bought but the legs are too long. It appears this will be another nice place to stay and we are ready to start our exploration of Berlin tomorrow morning.