While waiting for our connecting flight from Singapore to Frankfurt, I checked the departures and found that it had been delayed by 35 minutes. I hoped that this didn’t presage another 25-hour delay like when we travelled to Frankfurt three years ago! An announcement came over the PA system, that our flight was delayed because they changed the plane, presumably for mechanical reasons. So with the early arrival into Singapore and the late departure, we had about an hour more time here than we expected.
There were no further delays, and at the appointed time we left for the departure gate, cleared through another security screening, and boarded the plane.
Our flight from Singapore was half an hour longer than the scheduled flight time, because of having to route around various conflict zones such as Iran and Ukraine. Apparently Donald Trump decided to bomb Iran while we were flying right past it, so that might have complicated matters. Added to the half hour late departure, we arrived in Frankfurt almost an hour later than scheduled, touching down at exactly 08:00.
We got off the plane very quickly, and it looked like everyone ahead of us was either continuing on the same flight to New York or transiting elsewhere, as we were the first ones to go up the escalators to the customs and exit areas. However we weren’t the only flight to arrive at this time and there was a long queue for the border control checks for non-EU citizens. The EU passport holders whizzed through automated gates while we had to wait with everyone else in a long queue to be manually processed. The border officers took their time with some people so the queue moved very slowly.
While we were waiting a few passengers came through behind us, desperately waving boarding passes for connecting international flights, which meant they had to clear immigration and get to their gates for flights leaving very soon. Staff ushered them through, jumping the queue ahead of the res of us, meaning even more waiting time. Eventually we got to the front and the official didn’t even ask us anything, but merely stamped our passports and waved us through. We’d seen them ask previous people detailed questions about there they were travelling and staying and so on, and having to show them things on their phones – presumably hotel bookings or something. Once through there was more walking. Frankfurt Airport is huge and there’s a lot of distance to be covered. We went through customs and ignored the badge claim area, heading to the train station.
There I used a machine to buy tickets to Berlin. It was 09:15 by this time. There was a departure available quite soon, but I selected a later one, departing at 09:45, to give us time to buy some food and drinks. I also made sure to book seat reservations, so we wouldn’t have to stand up for over four hours to Berlin. The machine printed four dockets: a fare ticket from Frankfurt Airport to Berlin Hauptbahnhof, a credit card receipt for my payment, and two sets of seat reservations, one for a train from Frankfurt to Erfurt, and one for a connecting train from Erfurt to Berlin. I looked at the seat reservations and they seemed to say that the train leaving Frankfurt departed at 10:14, not 09:45 as I’d expected. I thought that was weird, but it seemed like we had more time than I thought.
We relaxed a bit and went to go get some food, going to a chain bakery that we’ve used before at Frankfurt Airport station. We sat down and ate some sandwiches, and also got some extra food in paper bags to take with us. While we were eating, I puzzled over the tickets. I decided to check the route on the Deutsche Bahn app. I searched for trips from Frankfurt Airport to Berlin and found our journey… and discovered that it did indeed leave Frankfurt Airport at 09:45, catching a regional train service to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, to connect there to the ICE service departing for Erfurt at 10:14!
So all of a sudden we realised that we only had 15 minutes to get from the Frankfurt Airport long distance train station to the Frankfurt Airport regional train station to make the regional train in time to get our express train! I realised this while my wife was buying drinks, and waved her over hurriedly so we could race over to the other train station. She’d only bought a bottle of water and hadn’t had time to get some coffee like she wanted. We ruched across to the regional train station, which fortunately is only a few minutes walk away, but we wanted to make sure we didn’t miss the train as then we’d also miss our express train. We had just enough time for my wife to grab a cup of coffee at a place adjacent to the platform before we went down to get the train.
We caught the regional train, which took 15 minutes to get to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, giving us an easy 14 minutes to find the long distance platforms and where we needed to be. Along the way, on older Chinese couple asked us in English if they were on the right platform for the train to Leipzig. I looked at the ticket the woman was holding and saw it was the same train as ours, and in the adjacent carriage, so I assured them they were on the right platform and showed them how to find where their car would stop. It turned out our train was a few minutes late, and departed about 10 minutes late.
This was a problem, because our connection in Erfurt gave us only 6 minutes to change trains before the other one departed. So there was a chance we’d miss our connection. But strangely, the train we were on was also going to Berlin! Just by a different route. I’m not sure why the ticket machine decided to have us change trains in Erfurt if the first train was going to Berlin anyway. The only thing I can think of is that beyond Erfurt it didn’t have any seat reservations free, so had to switch us to another train.
As we passed through the other stops, Fulda and Eisenach, the train began making up time. It was a close run thing, and by the time we left Eisenach, the projected arrival time in Erfurt was just 4 minutes late, giving us 2 minutes to make our connection. We were arriving on platform 10 and our connecting train was departing from platform 9, so we were hoping that they would be opposite sides of the same platform and we could dash across and hop on. If we had to race down the length of platform 10 to the end to move across to 9, we might not have had time – assuming they didn’t hold the train for us. As it happened, we pulled in and could see ICE 800, our train, waiting across the platform with doors open. When we stopped, we jumped off and dashed over and into the nearest door. We had to walk down one car to find ours and our seats, and the train had begun moving before we got there. Phew!
While on the trains we I did some sketching, using photos we’d taken on our phones as references. We both drew scenes at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, and my wife added in some drawings of pretzels and the bread rolls we’d bought for lunch. Here’s my sketch:
This train stopped at Halle, Bitterfeld, and Berlin Sudkreuz, before reaching Berlin Hauptbahnhof on time at 14:22. From here we went up I think four flights of escalators to the S-bahn tracks, where we bought short trip tickets (good for trips of 3 stations or fewer) and hopped on the next train heading west, to Zoologischer Garten station. There we finally left our transport and resorted to good old foot power for the final few minutes of our long journey. We walked the few blocks to the Crowne Plaza Berlin City Centre Ku’damm, our hotel for the week.
After checking in we had showers and cleaned up after the long journey. All told it took us just over 32 hours from the time our flight left Sydney to reach our hotel. Reception gave us a voucher for a free drink in the hotel bar, so we went down there and sat for a bit to think about what to do with the remainder of the day while we had our drinks, a rosé wine for my wife and a Bitburger beer for me. We also got some corn chips and salsa as a snack, since we were a little hungry and it was a while before dinner time.
While sitting, she did some sketching and I did some researching to find any sort of tourist attractions within a short walk, and also any restaurants with decent vegetarian options. It seemed that everything that Happy Cow listed was either Indian, East Asian, or Middle Eastern – nothing like a place with traditional German food with vegetarian options. In the end we selected a mid-range looking Italian place, something classier than a cheap pizza or pasta bar, called Il Sorriso (“the smile” in Italian).
Before then we decided to go and get my camera and take a short walk around the block to go past the entrance gates of the Berlin Zoo, which has a couple of photo-worthy sights: a fountain made of fossil-bearing shale, and concrete elephant statues supporting the main gates of the zoo. We also went past the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, or Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, originally built in the 1890s but partially destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943. The damaged shell of the foyer of the original church still stands, with a truncated part of the spire above it, but the main body of the church is gone. A new church was built in front of the old one from 1959, with a bell tower around the back, in the space formerly occupied by the old church. The new church is a striking modernist design, with an almost brutalist concrete exterior made of small square panels. It’s only when you go inside that you realise the panels are a brilliant deep blue stained glass, which flood the interior with blue light, contrasting a giant almost-Art-Deco gold statue of Christ above the altar and multi-coloured, multi-sized circular floor tiles. We went into the new and old churches to look around, before heading back to the hotel.
We had a brief rest, during which we both drew sketches of the church. I finished mine:
Then we emerged again for dinner at Il Sorriso. It looked like a very nice place, and we were hoping to have dinner inside a nicely air conditioned restaurant, as the day was very hot and we’d had enough of the heat. But like last time we were in Germany on a very hot day, we were frustrated by the fact that restaurants here just don’t seem to have air conditioning. We were offered a table outside, but chose one under the roof, although the windows were wide open and it was just as hot as outside.
The food was excellent though. My wife had tagliatelle pesto, and I had ravioli filled with salmon in a lobster sauce with salmon roe. The pasta and sauces were all obviously hand made and were delicious. For dessert I asked with the flavours of the “selection of sorbets of the day” were, and the waiter answered just “lemon”. But that was fine with me and I chose that, while my wife had a caffe latte.
After this we went back to our hotel to turn in for the night and hopefully get a solid sleep and wake up just before breakfast. My wife finished off her sketch with some watercolour. Hers was done from a reference photo from a different angle to mine.
