Kickin' About

And so the Estonia drama starts! We clear passport control on the Russian side of the river, easily, walk across the bridge to Estonia and to their passport control 👎. First it seems we had no Visa! Kiwis don’t need visas to enter Europe but their senior didn’t seem to know that. After much investigation as to how long we were staying, checking tickets back to Sydney etc etc, with extremely limited english and calls to her superiors, we get moved aside to a waiting area. After a good long wait, another chap comes to ask why we were there, where we were going etc, see airline ticket documents, decided to take all my ticket printouts for verification. When challenged on the rigmarole and that we don’t need visas to enter, he said they needed to know WHY we were there! Seems the fact that 2 Kiwis went to their son’s wedding in Russia and would then want to holiday in Europe was just too strange for them and too difficult for them to reconcile! Whilst those on Russian passports just waltz on through! Luckily I have all our tickets, reservations and itineraries printed out and available otherwise we might still be there! After 20 more minutes he returned and said “All good, we can go!” To where you might ask? Customs now had to have their go, all our bags had to be searched as well, you know, in case we were carrying nuclear waste, spy cameras or whatever they thought. Then we can FINALLY go into Europe!

Maybe we can go, but where to?? The pre-paid ‘Lux’ Express coach to Tallinn sure as didn’t wait for us, and no one spoke english to provide much assistance. After a while, we did make our way 1km+ by foot with cases to the bus depot and picked up the Tallinn shuttle. A 3-hour scenic route trip through all the towns on the way, we saw more of Estonia than we had planned to. It’s a very flat country and no hills were sighted, bar 1 (see pic). We hit the hotel after 10, kitchen closed, spa closed! At least there was an OK food shop across the way where we were able to get a couple of rolls.

Monday started early as we had to be at the airport mid avo to fly to Berlin. So we wandered through the Old Town before the hordes of tourist groups joined in. The streets are typical old European with plenty of character and plenty of ancient towers and walls amongst the more modern buildings. Once the tourist groups arrived, some of the charm and atmosphere was gone. The hotel at least gave us a late check out after last night’s fiasco so we were able to relax in their spa pools and recover before time to head to the airport.

But Estonia hadn’t finished with us yet! We’re sitting in the plane, wondering why we weren’t taking off, when 2 burly Polizei come on board. Angie had forgotten to …………

No, Angie was fine 😆. It took the cops a good 15 minutes to manhandle a chap out of his seat further back and remove him from the plane. So 40 minutes late, we departed.

We arrived in Berlin early evening and the plan was to take public transport to the hotel. This required 2 trains and a bit of a walk. Trains here are not like elsewhere, seems that German precision and technical expertise forgot to match platforms with train doors! There was fun manhandling cases into and out off the trains that also had steps to negotiate. But we eventually made it to Potsdamer Platz and then a 15+ minute walk to the hotel. Nice paths but these decorative cobble driveways across the footpaths don’t help the cases rolling! The hotel is, however, very nice, even an upgraded room. It has highlighted that we are just too far past it with leg issues to try this again, will need to use taxis for such transfers.

Tuesday dawned a bright and sunny day. We booked a hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus trip for the day and went around the main Berlin sights that way. We first spent some time in Alexander Platz and St.Mary’s church. In the church, there are the remains of a 20m mural from the 15th century. The Dance of Death mural has almost life-size figures in pairs, a person led by a prancing figure of death, a skeleton. Reference to wars and the plague.

Most of our time was spent in the Tiergarten area, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, to the Victory Column. Inside the column is a museum and stairs to the base level of the column. The stairs also lead to the top of the column but there was no way we would achieve that! It was a great sightseeing day and a very full day.

After 3 weeks of intensive ‘exercise’, our legs were just about shot! So today ended up as a rest up day and whatever we had planned for today went to file 13. Luckily the hotel is a 2-minute walk from Check Point Charlie in one direction and a 3-minute walk to the remains of the Berlin Wall in the other direction. I went out early in the morning for a couple of snaps of Charlie whilst there was no one around, during normal hours till dark, there are multitudes. At the Wall, there’s a display on the history of Berlin during the 20th century, after resting up for most of the day, we visited that.

Now it’s our last day in Berlin! Just a short stopover but it’s been most enjoyable. Due to fly out later in the afternoon so we had the morning to go walking, the Mall of Berlin is 2 blocks away. We finally had some German food. Our hotel street has restaurants from Central America, Spain, Italy, Indian, Irish, but not German. At the mall, we had Apple Strudel with our coffee, the best Strudel I’ve ever had!

So after a pleasant morning, it was time to head off. We chose a compromise to keep the cost down with a taxi to the Berlin Central Station and a metro train to the airport. As compared to the direct regional trains, these have platform height doors. The only disadvantage is that they stop at every station along the way but we had heaps of time, and our legs thanked us. We get to the airport to find our EasyJet flight is delayed, leaving 1-1/2 hours late.

An uneventful flight and we arrive in Edinburgh, Our time in the UK is for the next issue.