Paul & Lauren’s Travels

While in Berlin for seven days, Paul and I used the rail as a system of travel.  While very efficient and perfectly engineered, the maze of walkways and change overs can be quite confusing.  Buy the end of the week we mastered the rail system, and could bend it to our will.

At AlexanderPlatz Paul and I enjoyed visiting “Galeries Lafayete”.   On entering the store we discover that the whole gallery is divided into gastronomic centres.  Cheese, wine, bread (you get the picture). Of particular interest for Lauren was the Lint chocolate section.   Check out Lauren Swanson’s blog for more detail.

Welcome to Germany! Our first stop is of course Berlin, Germany. We came here for Christmas and absolutely loved it and now we are back for more. Lauren has family here so we have a lovely place to stay close to all the action. We are planning to spend a week here and then will fly out Wednesday for Paris. The order and precision of Berlin is a nice contrast to the chaos of Kiev and we are lapping it up. Stay tuned for more updates and remember to also check our personal blogs (see the links to the right) for our more stories and pictures.

You know all the clichés about how terrible airline food is supposed to be, well I generally disagree. Sure it’s not sophisticated, but it’s usually tasty enough for me to order two or three servings … it is, after all, included in the price! So this is where I introduce Ukraine International Airlines, our only option for flying from Kiev to Berlin. Let’s just say that their taste in cuisine is … nostaglic. On our last flight to Berlin we were served a dry white bread roll containing only a solitary slice of pet food grade sausage meat, a bit pathetic when you’re forking out $400 a ticket for a two hour flight. But now UIA have turned a corner in in-flight cuisine, they opened the sandwich. I wonder if I can expect this gastronomic innovation next time I visit McDonalds, “… sir, may I interest you in our new Cheeseburger Ala Carte?”.

Tuesday, what a day! Weeks of planning, set backs and anticipation finally led us to UIA flight PS403. Of course there was the passport (Paul’s) that needed to be reissued from the Australian Embassy in Moscow, VIA THE POST, two internal European flights to book, two house sits for friends and family to coordinate, five hotels to book, one hire car, a scenic train trip through Switzerland to research and fist full of papers so as to acquire new visas for Ukraine whilst in Berlin. Not to mention the last minute blood test, complementary fines at passport control for being in breach of some pointless piece of Ukrain legislation or another … you get the idea! But hey, we made it to the plane, which was fortunately delayed, and enjoyed an overpriced yet sparsely populated flight to beautiful Berlin.

Whats round plump and red? You guessed it- Berries.  They are in abundance at the moment.  The best part is we bought half a kilo of raspberries for the same price as a tiny half punnet back home.  You might just be lead into thinking that we would be happy with this arrangement.  Well we are.