Berlin - Day One

After a short three hour hop from Athens to Berlin on my least favourite airline, Olympic I was met by my cousin, who I hadn’t seen in 9 years. At that time he and his wife came on a three week visit to Canada.

I almost missed my plane (traffic) and if it hadn’t been for the very kind Olympic ground staff and a wonderful porter who helped me get through security, I’d still be in Athens. One thing I can say about this flight, the breakfast was way better than what we got on the overnight flight from Toronto, go figure…

It was decided that we would do a tour of Berlin before heading on to Greifswald, a town of 50,000 inhabitants, where my mother was born.

We did a three hour boat tour down the river Spree which divided east and west in part and offered a relaxed tour. There were so many things to see it will take me a while to digest. I hadn’t realized that there are so many canals and bridges in this city. I was pretty hyper so the water had a calming effect on me.



After the tour we headed out on the Autobahn for the 236 km trip to my cousins home. That managed to get me hyper again, he drove 200 km an hour most of the way. Those are speeds I’ve only heard not experienced. Kind of unnerving…

There are many differences between Germany and Greece but the first thing one notices is that it is relatively quiet. The drivers don’t honk their horns constantly which immediately brings down the noise level. As I sit here in my room in my cousins home, there is no noise coming from outside at all, nothing. In fact it’s so quiet I may have trouble sleeping. No ear plugs needed.