Half term and time for a trip...
We arrive at the airport at the appointed time, terminal 3 Manchester. I look for the flight details on the check in board, Leanne says "I've already checked in we don't need to check in." That's fine, but I can't see the flight on the board. Leanne says it won't be there as the gate won't be displayed yet. I insist it should still be on the board. We repeat this conversation maybe more times than was strictly necessary. Eventually, I ask a nice British Airways woman, who says, no that's terminal 1 you will be needing... off we potter. The stress of getting up at 3 a.m. was starting to show. We find the departure gate without much difficulty, it's amazing how being at the correct terminal can help with this.
We fly, we get train tickets, we arrive at the rented apartment; all good.
Trying out my best German to buy pretzels and a ham and cheese thing for Maisie, words were flowing, Bitter, Danke, Schinken (ham), anyone would think I was fluent. Unfortunately, I then blow it by trying to pay the guy the time it was displaying on the till, not the Euros #doh! I didn't retrieve the situation by saying some random numbers in German, it was all too late. The guy was, however, fairly understanding.
We had a few other language challenges, particularly when going to pay for stuff. The lovely check out person would say something, we would stare blankly like rabbits in headlights, checkout person would repeat incomprehensible sentence. Eventually we managed to mumble out the word 'English' and they would repeat the sentence in perfect English. One bloke even sorted out my change for me, bless!
Back to the trip...We walk to Alexander Platz and catch a tourist bus to get our bearings. We all loved seeing the East Side gallery, the longest remaining stretch of wall with painting by various artists (with some amendments by graffiti artists). The sun was setting, the light was beautiful, it was all quite moving.
My Grandmother comes from Berlin so it felt like I was getting in touch with my roots. I was looking forward to exploring and discovering over the next few days.
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