Katies do Euro Summer

[Katie]

AY132 Thurs 24 July SIN-HEL
Finally, we can say we've flown from sin to hell. Groan.

The Finnair amenity kit is a bit underwhelming. You can ask for socks if you want them. I think I used the eye mask and ear plugs and that was it.
I really liked the seats. The only downside as a side sleeper was one side worked with my body conforming to the contours around the table area, and the other side didn't work.






Blueberry juice pre-takeoff!


Progress on my knitting so far ... bad mistake to bring a lace pattern shawl.


Getting ready to go.


Pre-dinner champers, water and nuts


As I hate mushrooms (these flights were really mushroom heavy in the meal options!!), I had the prawns followed by the toffee tart.



The meals were tasty. The toffee tart was more chocolatey than I hoped for.


I had some wine after dinner and did some more knitting. The AY IFE choices were more limited than the QF offerings, somewhat surprisingly. Lately I normally hunker down with some trashy reality TV show (Real Housewives or similar), especially if I'm knitting as I don't need to pay much attention to the show.

I think I watched Gossip Girl (xoxo), which I've never seen. I got some knitting done and slept a bit. We landed in HEL a little bit early, maybe 10 mins, which we appreciated as we had a 60 min connection.
To our relief, despite what the information video on connections at HEL stated, we only needed to go through passport control to get into the Schengen zone, not security as well.
Passport control had no lines and was efficient and direct. The Finnish guy was cheerily Finnish (that is, not cheery at all) and wanted to know about every country we were visiting and when we were leaving. I ended up showing him the printed TripIt itinerary.
Mr Katie was behind me and when he was called forward, he just said "the same as her".

 

[Katie]

OOPS

Breakfast before arrival in HEL:

Knitting progress


Flight path - away from hotspots in the ME and RU (mostly)

Coming in to land in HEL!


OK, back to our transfer time in HEL.

In the Schengen zone, we stopped by the Moomin store and bought the Teen some Moomin Papa socks. She loves the actor who voices Moomin Papa.


We popped into the AY lounge for a quick loo break and to set up our eSims. We'd bought multi country Europe data-only eSims from SimCorner.
Some faffing about with Mr Katie's Android phone, but overall they were set up pretty quickly. We spent maybe 10 mins in the lounge; I had a quick look at the meals, but really wasn't hungry.

AY1431 HEL-BER
Off to the gate to board. AY intra-Europe J is basically Y seats with a spare seat in the middle and I guess a bit more leg room. There were something like 8-10 rows of J, we were in 2A, 2C. J was lightly loaded.
Some of the pax boarding seemed to be going to a steampunk convention in Berlin.

My view during boarding.
The crew were really pleasant on this short flight down to Berlin.

Breakfast was a potato waffle with sausages and a corn sauce.


I used my 30 mins of free wifi to check email ...

I was both happy to see a proactive email alerting us to baggage that didn't make the flight and saddened to know that baggage didn't make the flight.
I checked my Air Tags, and suspected it was my clothing bag and Mr Katie's bicycle that didn't make it. I was correct. I had a second suitcase that was basically full of a friend's belongings that she's had stored at our house for the past year. She lives outside Potsdam, so it was perfect to deliver this to her. Luckily, her suitcase arrived.

When we got to Berlin and the luggage carousel, yup, Mr Katie's bike and my suitcase were missing. Thank goodness I always have a spare change of clothes in my carryon, given I was wearing all merino clothing heading into a summer's day in Berlin.

So, my first exercise of my German was dealing with Swissport at BER to report the delayed luggage, even though AY knew it was delayed. I had luckily taken photos of our bags at BNE checkin, so I could show the Swissport agent exactly what the bags looked like rather than use their big sheet of similar bags to identify mine. I gave our hotel details and they were going to deliver the bags to our hotel. Yay!
Except the bags arrived on the next flight to BER, by maybe lunchtime, and they weren't delivered until well into the afternoon the next day.

We caught the train to Zoo station; I think it was an RE or semi-express train. When we got on the train, we got into the first carriage and ending up standing with our luggage in the bicycle area. The train was chockers (so we were happy we didn't have the other duffle bag and bike bag!). We could not move down the carriage with our bags to try to find a better spot.

A ticket collector came through checking tickets, luckily I remembered to validate our tickets with the machine after we boarded - I hopped off and validated them. She scored a few fines and tried to stop more bicycle riders from boarding. I was amused to listen to the exchanges with the bike riders asserting their rights to board the train and getting grumpy at people they could see with suitcases on seats.

It was about an hour ride to Zoo station (Zoologischer Garten station), the closest station to our hotel.

 

[Katie]

Hotel: Hampton by Hilton Berlin City West
1 Queen room interconnecting with 1 twin room

Roughly between Zoo station and Savignyplatz SBahn station. I chose this one due to Hilton loyalty and it was cheaper than the Hilton at Gendarmenmarkt, where we stayed 11 years ago. The Teen wished we were at the Hilton, as the Hampton brekky didn't have an egg/omelette station, and omelettes are her go-to. With her sensory issues and aversion to new foods, coupled with being gluten-free, breakfasts during this week were a bit stressful as I didn't book hotels with that kind of breakfast. Going to cafes is even more fraught with new foods. Lesson for Mumma Bear!
(Please don't tell me she'll have to learn, that's just not how her neurospicy brain works and she will go without food rather than attempt non-safe foods).

We walk to the hotel from Zoo station, arriving around 9:30am. The lovely Sandra at the front desk is able to check us in to one of our rooms, and as it would happen, it was the Queen room for Mr Katie and me. We were delighted to be able to shower and change clothes before meeting our friend whose belongings we had brought with us.




The room backed on the s-Bahn line between Zoo and Savignyplatz. I'd read comments about the train noise in hotel reviews, but with the window shut, we really didn't notice the train noise at all. The room was well designed, though the bed felt a touch more like a Double than a Queen.
The cupboard door doubled as the bathroom door.

This hotel is barely a block away from Ku Damm, so a great location if you want to do some shopping. There's a number of restaurants near Savignyplatz, which is about 5-10 mins walk away.

After showering, etc, we went to Ku Damm for a wander while waiting for our friend to make her way into town to meet us. I went into the Deutsche Bank branch on Ku Damm to withdraw some cash (Westpac card and Deutsche Bank and Postbank are DE partners, so no ATM fees). We had about EUR 160 in cash, but I wanted some extra as some places in Germany are still cash-only and I knew I'd need some tip money/Trinkgeld for tours on the cruise.

Cue the next pain point of the morning. The AMT ate my card. I tried to withdraw cash, everything seemed fine until I got a message saying something like "We can't complete this transaction". That was it.
I spoke to the customer service person in the branch, told her what happened. "Oh, that's bad" she said. (My brain had more swear words in it than that !!!) then she asked if I was a customer of Deutsche Bank, "No" I replied. She said "That's even worse then". She explained that branch staff don't have access to the ATMs at all. As I had no other debit card, but multiple credit cards, my only other option would be to withdraw cash from a credit card and take the hit on interest/pay the CC to avoid interest or something like that.
After that experience, we were reluctant to use Mr Katie's ATM card in any ATM.
I tried adding my debit card to my Apple Wallet, but couldn't find any ATMs in Germany that would accept contactless options - they only had card slots. There were some in Amsterdam, but none of them worked with the card in my Apple Wallet. I've used that card without issue to withdraw cash in the USA before, and probably back in 2018 on our last EU trip, but for whatever reason, this didn't work.

We met our friend at Zoo and wandered up to KaDeWe. It was strange going past the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedaechtniskirche without it having a Christmas market around it!
We were surprised to find Tim Tams in KaDeWe - our friend is now going to get her wife to buy them there! But maybe not the Penfold's Grange.

We ate lunch at a German restaurant in the top of KaDeWe. I had a fancy Currywurst mit Pommes. We confused our server with our mixture of German and English (Mr Katie is English-only and myself and our friend can do either)


We wandered some more, walked back to our hotel, gave our friend her suitcase to take home and unpack. Then Mr Katie and I caught the train back to the airport to pick up Mumma Katie and the Teen. I should have tried calling Swissport about our luggage, as it had arrived in BER. When we got to the airport and we were waiting for them to come out, I could see the bags were within 100m of us, but they were on the other side of security.

Mumma Katie and the Teen flew AF Y from CDG to BER. They'd caught the train to CDG from Republique - but the ticket seller sold them tickets that weren't valid for CDG despite Mumma Katie and the Teen asking for that. They both copped a EUR35 fine on the train, which the Teen was livid about. Their flight was due to arrive at 16:30 ish and eventually arrived closer to 17:30, there were delays due to weather and they sat on the tarmac in CDG for at least an hour.

Luckily, the train back to Zoo was nowhere near as crowded as the one in the morning. I pointed out the little garden and various sights to Mumma Katie.

We arrived at the hotel, Swissport had called and said they would deliver the luggage tomorrow. We ended up having dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe on Ku Damm, not our idea of a yummy German meal, but safe for the Teen and we were getting pretty tired by this time. There was an Edeka up the road, we stopped by on our way home (though it's in the opposite side of Ku Damm to the hotel) to grab tissues and some things I needed that were in my suitcase. I contemplate a Tschibo nightie or t-shirt and decided I didn't need to buy supermarket/coffee shop clothes.
We crashed and slept well that night.

 

[VPS]

I still remember my card had been eaten by a ATM in France and if I can, I always choose contactless and have more than one debit card