Day Three (26 April) - Through Places I've Heard About

It's a travel day.  I need to get from Munich up to Berlin, so I'm taking an ICE up - a relaxing way to spend the day.  I get up early, quickly pack, pay my bills and wend my way to the Bahnhof.  In my desire to be punctual, I now have over an hour on my hands.  There's a nice restaurant where I have a Farmer Frühstuck, and it is quite good - two eggs (yellow, yellow yokes) over easy with wonderful speck, delicious potatoes fried in butter with herbs, a roll and a chunk of butter and orange juice.  I slowly savor the meal...and find that I still have a great deal of time to wait.  

My ticket, which I purchased on-line and printed out on A2 paper, specifies not only time, wagon, and sea number, but gleis as well - 23.  Luckily I look at the board and find that the train is coming in at gleis 17.  The first leg is a quick jaunt to Nurnberg, where I have 9 minutes to run from gleis 7 to gleis 5, and make it with a minute to spare.  I can't find my wagen so I have to drag my baggage the full length of the train to find my seat.  From Nurnberg we go up to Erlangen (famous for its University, originally established in Bayreuth, and the Max Planck Institute).  Then to Bamberg, with its wonderful 11th Century Cathedral, and up past Coburg, and up into the mountains (perhaps too grand a phrase) that form the Saale River, which I was able to see form from streams into a rather sizable river.  Somewhere in there, I noticed a small town that announced Grenze! - a former boarder town on the East/West divide.  From there on it was quite interesting.  Heavily industrial, with large abandoned infrastructure.  We passed through Jena (also famous for its university) then up into Leipzig.  The last time I was in Leipzig they were working on a huge public works project, putting the trains underground before they reach the huge Hauptbahnhof - the largest in Europe.  And then there's Bach!

From Leipzig it's a straight shot up to Berlin after passing through Wittenburg - at which I look longingly as we speed by.  The trains dumps us off in the lowest levels of the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin (a marvelous thing, really).  One must make one's way up through five levels of trains, shops, tourists, natives, and ticket vending to reach the SBahn.  Finally at the last escalator, I notice that it's not working so I try one of the very slow, but stunningly beautiful elevators.  I catch the S75 to Tiergarten, jump off and painfully make my way the short distance to Hansablick on Flatowstraße.

I catch Arthur in the midst of a well-earned nap, having just flown in from SFO by way of Heathrow.  We go down to a rainy beer garden and have dinner, and then collapse.