I love going back to cities I’ve been to before. It always gives me a completely different perspective. The first time around I’ll usually tick off a bunch of particularly touristy things, immerse myself in more of the history, go to a particular monument or climb that well known hill. The second time around is usually a bit different. I use it as a chance to actually properly get to know a city; where people go to eat, how they spend their lazy days, which bars or parks are best for relaxing or which markets give you the best stalls. I went to Berlin a couple of years ago and when I decided to head back that was exactly what I did. Last time I went I stayed on my friend’s couch, and while staying with a friend did give me a different view into Berlin, I still ended up doing a lot of the normal tourist things, from walking tours to museums. This trip, well lets just say it involved my body weight in food, hardly any central Berlin, hammocks and quite a lot of wine…
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Gardening Leave: A last minute trip to Berlin
Tube strikes. They’re the bane of many people’s lives (whether you support them or not they are disruptive) and when the last one was announced it fell across my last couple of days in my old job. This chucked up the issue of “working from home” which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t have happened. So my old job put me on gardening leave for the last couple of days and I suddenly had a whole week off between jobs. I jokingly tweeted about taking the chance to sleep on twitter and my friend Rae of Love From Berlin intervened:
@BeardedBakery … OR you could come to Berlin. *nudge nudge*
— rae tashman (@lovefromberlin) August 18, 2015
I quickly checked some flight costs and made sure she wasn’t actually joking and booked a last minute flight to Berlin to hang out with Rae her cats, eat loads of food and explore a city I’ve heard a million good things about. So that’s how I found myself on a coach at 4am on a Sunday morning on my way to Stansted airport (I can get the coach from basically outside my front door, that’s dangerous for me to know) and an adventure in Germany.