On the road

My trip to Berlin and Krakow in 2023 took all of a week, but the backstory and the side stories that came with it made it seem much longer and left some lessons for travel.

At that time, I wrestled with the decision to take a trip abroad, mainly out of guilt that I was leaving behind family responsibilities and that any time away seemed undeserved and selfish. But I had work commitments to fulfill, among them travels out of the country. Family members convinced me I deserved a break and that I actually wouldn’t be missed, since, as one of them liked to say, things had been set up with “automaticity” in mind. Point taken. It simply meant worrying was useless since the family had already arranged to address all its needs, whether I was home or away. 

That was the backstory. So I left for Berlin and arrived just before noon after more than 14 hours of flight. I had with me only the hotel address, a few instructions from the organizers of the conference I was attending, and a print-out of a ticket purchased long before the flight for what I thought would be the bus ride into the city, to stop near the hotel. 

Or so I thought. I walked around the Berlin Brandenburg airport arrival area, pulling my luggage around, looking for the bus terminal that my ticket referred to, but no one knew where it was or how I could find it. The people at the information counter said they had never heard of it and that it was best for me to inquire at the train counter for a way into the city. Thankfully, the train personnel were also very helpful, telling me which train to take, what time it would leave, and at which station I was to get off, to reach my hotel. I bought my train ticket and was soon off. 

The train arrived at the designated station, Potsdamerplatz, on the dot but getting from there to the hotel was another matter. It was some blocks away, but either I couldn’t understand the map, underestimated/overestimated its scale, or the orientation was somehow wrong! I found myself trekking all over that part of the city, with heavy luggage in tow. I walked this way and that, through this mall and that side street, by this building and into an alley, all the while asking random people for directions. My feet ached from all the walking and my arms and fingers sore from the bag-heaving and pulling. Eventually I found myself in a quiet street and hoped to find a bench. I did see taxis parked but the drivers were on a break and not taking passengers. 

I then saw a bus stop, and was trying to figure out what to do, when a young woman arrived. I asked her if she was familiar with the street on which my hotel was located and she said she was, that she was taking the bus that would pass near it, and that I should come along and she would point it out. What an angel! The bus arrived within minutes, she told me where to get off, and I was in my hotel in no time. 

After that long trip and the misadventure of a side story, I rewarded myself with pasta from the hotel restaurant. Later in the afternoon, I decided to go off walking to the city center. 

This time I could situate myself in the map and had no difficulty finding the place I needed to go to, which was a mall where I needed to buy a wall socket adaptor since I had forgotten to bring one. It was drizzling and the walk was long, and soon enough I could feel the soles of my boots starting to get drenched and look like they were about to give up. The soles felt like they were about to go flapping on me. I knew I brought the wrong pair of boots and kept chiding myself for not being better prepared. 

To make a long story short, I found the mall, went straight to a shoe store and bought myself a pair of boots to replace the one I bought from home which were apparently not made for walking European streets. That’s side story #2.

The lessons:

1. When traveling and needing airport transfers, it’s best to ask someone who knows their way around a city, preferably long before departure date. This is a “Duh!” kind of lesson, I know, but I became too dependent on the internet, realizing only later that human wisdom can sometimes be more reliable and more detailed than internet wisdom. A friend had lived there many years before but it slipped my mind to consult her about transportation. That visit to Berlin was actually my second, and both were work-related trips that don’t really teach you much about public transportation. 
2. Check the weather and pack well-chosen clothes and shoes. Another “Duh!” but we often ignore/forget/dismiss common sense when packing. Cheap boots, the kind you buy online in Third World countries, I discovered, are not meant for walking European streets in the rain. I did possess a pair of European-made boots which for some reason I passed over for the lighter-made Asian footwear. I can only say I made the wrong choice probably because I had too much on my mind.
3. Careful packing includes bringing the right electrical adaptor which I normally always have in my luggage when travelling. The name for it is universal adaptor, as if you didn’t know. Triple “Duh!” I possess universal adaptors of different shapes, sizes and colors but to my chagrin, none of them found their way into my bag. Again, my preoccupation with many other things made me forgetful and hasty in packing.

In my defense, by no means was my experience getting from airport to hotel an isolated one. It was exactly what happened to another panelist in the session at which I was supposed to make a presentation. She said she too had to make a long walk before eventually deciding to take a cab for the hotel, and she lamented that the organizers failed to provide more detailed instructions for those of us attending the event who were not diplomats or government functionaries traveling with transport provisions.

I am thankful to the many German angels who were solicitously patient as I tried to make my way from the airport to my destination. About that bus ticket, I did get a refund, so it became a minor hassle, all things considered.  Taking a deep breath in the middle of a strange place helped me relax and take it all in stride. I mused that in a foreign land, I have to shed my Third World assumptions because the scales are much larger, blocks are bigger, locals walk faster and have longer legs therefore the pace, area and distance covered are much different from what we Asians are used to. Anyway, I’m beginning to ramble so I have to stop. I will leave the other side stories for another time. Tschussi!