Summer travel log, part 3: Summer tourism
It’s been a few days since last travel log entry. We’ve spent the time in the Berlin suburbs with my partner’s family, with a selection of expeditions.
Prague
Prior to Berlin, we spent a day in Prague. We arrived around noon on Thursday and were immiediately greeted with a warm summer day. We initially walked the wrong direction, only to be greeted by the beauty of the old central station.
Prague Central Station’s old building is beautiful
Our apartment was in the Old Town, and walking towards it made me realize how much of the city is covered in cobblestone. Dragging suitcases — even with their decently sized wheels — was not a pleasant expericence. However, it was quickly mitigated with the scenery of old buildings and fascinating towers.
One of the many towers spotted throughout Prague’s old town
While waiting for our apartment to be ready, I bought the most expensive vegan ice cream in a kiosk. Note to future self: Kiosks are ridiculously expensive in Prague. Four vegan Magnum came to 400 CZK — a ludicrous price even for Norwegian standards.
When the apartment was ready, we went there and cooled down before going out to explore the city. We initially wanted to go into Prague castle and cathedral, but the sheer amount of people and the heat made us settle for visiting the castle grounds. The climb uphill feels steeper when it’s 30+°C and a burning sun.
The front of the Cathedral of St. Vitus is a mesmerizing sight
After further sightseeing, we found ourselves vegan dumplings from Dim Sum Shop. This was phenomenal; decent prices, great staff, and the food was delicious. We got the recommendation from Veggie Visa’s “Vegan Food in Prague”.
After the food, we returned to the apartment to find that the “quiet after 22:00” rule was merely hypothetically applied. There were horses, shouting, and partying with a high “untz-untz-untz” factor until late in the evening. Then at 05:30, the construction workers figured out they’d start demolishing the house across the street.
Sleep deprived, we packed our things and walked out to see the closeby sightseeing, such as the Old Town Square with the astronomical clock before we delivered the apartment keys and found our way to Share Sweetbar; a vegan café providing a proper vegan breakfast. The kids had vegan crêpe with apricot jam and vanilla yoghurt, while I and my partner shared the breakfast share platter. They served what might have been the best vegan sausage we’ve tried to date!
After this, we found our way to the train station and the train towards Berlin. This went chiefly uneventful, but the train fell behind the plan as we approached Berlin. We discovered that our original connection was canceled due to railworks, and found backups. Multiple, in fact. We found backup but had to resort to the backup of the backup for the backup plan. This caused us to run from one side to the other of Berlin Südkreuz before discovering that the train we were catching was — as has been a theme — delayed. We caught it and eventually found the family.
The days in the Berlin area
The next day there was a large family party, where we were the “local houseband”. It was nice and my fingers were happy I had hardened them through playing extra guitar the prior weeks. The Sunday was spent to reenergize ourselves after the week of travel and events, but we managed to go out into the forest for a mushroom tour in the afternoon. There weren’t many finds apart from a few large chanterelles and a couple of orange-brown ringless amanitas.
A cobblestone covered forest path leading to mushrooms
On Monday we first went visiting a friend of my partner’s and her 6 weeks old daughter. This was nice, and we all melted in awws from her. After that we split up, as my partner wanted to visit an acquaintance while the kids wanted to explore the town. We took the tourist’s route from Brandenburger Tor, via Berliner Dom, and towards Alexanderplatz and the Fernsehturm. On the way we dropped by SEALIFE Berlin and enjoyed looking at the various sea animals, and especially the sharks! There was a crossover event with Animal Crossing, and we tracked down villagers, answered questions, and found Gulliver throughout the aquarium.
We found Gulliver!
The youngest had unfortunately forgotten his old headphones in the Prague apartment, and wanted to spend part of his savings new ones. We had looked around for good, budget buys and landed on the Soundcore Space One. After buying them MediaMarkt, we went via Elbenwald, and then to Brammibral’s Donuts for vegan donuts to go and bring home to the family.
The next day we needed a break; we enjoyed the weather and didn’t do a whole lot.
On Wednesday we ticked off another country: Poland. It’s around 45 minutes of drive from where my partner’s family lives. We drove through a few cute looking towns, and across the river Oder before we ended up in a border-trading town. It was both intriguing and horrifying to see the sheer amount of knock-off brands being sold there. We saw adldas (notice the l), Locaste, and my favorite: Hugo Boos (scary!). There were kids toys Happy Pig (Peppa Pig), Iceprincess (Frozen), Myworld or Mineeraft (Minecraft). On top of this there were tons of cigarette and alchohol outlets. We didn’t go for the expected haul, but ended up with a candy and a couple of untested Monster flavors.
In many of the evenings, we had enjoyed our Erdinger Alkoholfrei with guitar playing and singing. Last year, we bought a travel-sized Harley Benton guitar which packs a great sound and playability for its 3/4 size. This year we got a B-product Thomann Cajon to add to our houseband setup.
On Thursday we went to a mushroom exhibition in Wandlitz. The exhibition showed cleverly crafted life-sized food mushrooms, non-food mushrooms, and poisonous ones. This was part of the larger foraging focus for the museum. Be aware that it was all presented in German, but the visuals were good.
As fascinating as these may be, these are various selections of poisonous mushrooms, most notably the Satan’s Bolete (Rubroboletus satanas) and Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) in the front.
Friday marked the end of our stay with the family, and we traveled to Berlin for the last night, where we slept over at my partner’s sister and her partner. This reduced our travel time to Berlin Hauptbahnhof by a few hours on the travel day, which allowed for a calmer morning. On the Friday evening, we played board games: 6 Nimmt and The Isle of Cats.
It’s now Saturday and I’m writing this from a train towards Amsterdam. We’re meeting up with two great friends of ours (who I mentioned in part 1) for the first time in two years. I’m looking forward to seeing the city again. One of our stops later tonight will be the Vegan Junk Food Bar, which is one of the staples of vegan (junk) food in Amsterdam!
Our view driving out of Berlin towards Amsterdam