We have spent a week in Berlin and Dresden, our first visit to the latter. I tried to write about it in retrospect but it didn't work. So here it comes in diary form.
Tuesday 11 October: Out of bed at 0300 with scratchy eyes. Don’t think we slept a wink. Dress as quietly as we can. The dogs pretend to sleep but follow us anxiously to the front door. Sorry fellows, you can’t come! I've booked parking at Faro airport. Thence to Lisbon, Frankfurt and finally Berlin, where Cathy, Rolf and daughter Erica are waiting at Tegel airport.
My case arrives but there’s no sign of Barbara’s. Rolf leads us and a forlorn Greek girl to the lost luggage dept. Delivery tomorrow morning, says an official. Then home in a taxi to a warm welcome.
The newly converted guest apartment is 5-star – large, pristine, comfortable and fully-equipped – including a large bottle of Johnny Walker Double Black. It’s situated just below the Gohdes apartment on the first floor and the wifi connection from upstairs is lightning fast. What more could one ask?
Wednesday 12: We wake to eerie silence. The apartment overlooks a boat basin. No dogs come whining to go out or nosing under the blankets for a walk. We follow Cathy on a minor shopping expedition, looking for my Ecco boots and fancy socks. We find some books instead. Back for lunch.
Barbara’s case has been delivered. The contents are topsy turvy, with dried figs and other sweetmeats scattered amongst the clothes. No doubt the food aroused the suspicions of the customs men who turned the case upside down looking for drugs.
Rolf makes us his special brand of soup, thick enough to stand a spoon in. It’s delicious. To the cinema to see “The Guard”. Great film! The Berlin light festival has just started. Lights play up and down the facades of public buildings. Crowds throng the streets.
Thursday 13: Up at 7 to catch the train to Dresden. There’s a half hour delay due to sabotage of the line, the work of some new anti-establishment group. An oriental traveller opposite us falls into a deep sleep, blasting us with unrelenting snores for the rest of the journey.
Arrive Dresden and stroll a kilometre up the wide pedestrian mall, past hotels and stores, to the old town. We spy a glass edifice where VW assembles its luxury Phaeton model. Our hotel, the QF, which Cathy has booked online, is on the vast main square, much of which is still closed off for restoration.
Centre stage is the Lady Church, Dresden’s most famous attraction. We check in and find our rooms. They are stunning, the stuff of films. This is the life. After lunch a 90-minute bus tour brings us back to the centre just in time for our booked visit to the Green Vault, treasure house of August the Strong.
Like everything else in old Dresden, it has been painstakingly rebuilt following the razing of the city in 1945. After an hour of treasures our eyes start to glitter too. Unpack and try the hotel wifi. No luck. A receptionist gets me online but it’s a struggle. We find a busy restaurant for supper, then desert it for another when waiters ignore us.
Friday 14: Cathy texts me saying that she has booked 12.00 tour of the Phaeton assembly plant. I’m delighted. First to the Lady Church, which has arisen from the ruins to renewed glory. Can’t believe my eyes. I’ve never seen the likes. The interior is overpowering - part church, part Hollywood set and part Escher impossible building – and yet the most beautiful church I’ve ever been in. And I’ve been in a lot. For once visitors are hushed rather than engaged in a photographic scrum.
We walk 30 minutes across town to the VW plant, set among gardens, fish ponds and trees. A 16-storey glass tower houses the cars awaiting delivery. A VW guide leads us to a central raised platform overlooking the assembly area. Her English is good and so is her knowledge of Phaetons.
The main market is China, she tells us. 56 are produced a day, each to order and specified to the owner’s taste. The next biggest market is Germany.
The car is hand-made. Nothing is actually manufactured on site. All the parts are delivered to the plant for assembly, the body shells in trucks, the rest in special VW trams.
Beneath us the whole (polished wood) floor of the factory slowly revolves as spotless white-clad workers assemble each car. No pictures please - respecting the rights of the workers and any owners who may be on the floor! Parts arrive on driverless trolleys that whine downstairs for restocking. Every part is barcoded. The light is soft, there’s no noise to speak of.
Afterwards we’re taken down to examine a Phaeton. The car is understated, deliberately so says the guide. There are 18 adjustments possible to the driver’s seat. I try them all. Even so, I’m more comfortable in the luxury Touareg 4x4 beside it. The driver sits higher and there’s more headroom – not that I’m likely to buy either.
Phaetons start in Germany at €68,000, our guide informs us, although you can spend a million if you want to.
Wander back through park. Along the main avenue numerous mobile kiosks are selling produce. I try several shops for the special hiker’s socks that I like (short-cool, sizes 41-42) with some success.
Then to Augustinum gallery to brush up on our art. As ever, there’s lots we like and lots we don’t. Cathy talks knowledgeably about the artists, impressing a supervisor with her expertise. I hunt for a card of a Georg Kolbe painting that has so impressed me. No luck.
Supper in another restaurant leaves Cathy feeling ill. Hurry back to the hotel where she spends an up and down night. I enjoy a couple of fine whiskies in the bar and whistle at the bill! Silly fellow. Trouble is that Rolf has accustomed to me such luxuries.
Saturday 15: Cathy misses breakfast (a pity as the hotel breakfasts are superb). I get a supply of Imodium from a pharmacist to dose her. She spends a recovering morning in her room while I visit the Transport Museum next door and Jones goes for a walk along the river. The great square is occupied by dozens of groups, being lectured in several languages by guides holding flags or brollies. They couldn’t ask for better weather.
We decide on an afternoon boat trip up the Elbe to the summer palace of the ruling Wettin family at Pillnitz. So do hundreds of other people. The boat, the Dresden, is a 100-metre long paddle steamer built in 1926 and revamped after the war. She’s in fine condition.
The engine room is open for all to view the great pistons driving the twin paddles. The banks are lined with cyclists and walkers. A bride and groom pose for photographs. Out of the wind and in the sun I nod off. We stop twice to let passengers off and on. The return journey, downstream, takes half the time.
We rescue our cases from the hotel. I try to revisit the Lady Church briefly but it’s closed for a concert. So it’s back to the station, pulling our cases behind us, clickety clack across the cobbles. We return to Berlin on a Hungarian train with uncomfortable seats. At least no one is snoring.
Cathy leads us expertly up several flights of stairs to the S-Bahn track that will take us home. The wifi connection at the apartment has slowed to a trickle. Rolf explains that he has a limited highspeed download allocation each month, a limitation with which his daughter is still coming to terms.
Sunday 16: Up early to visit the Pergamon special exhibition. Rolf has obtained the last tickets for 09.30 entry. We have previously visited the adjoining Pergamon museum, home to many of the exhibits from the ruins of the ancient city in Turkey. I have no idea what to expect. Up 5 flights of thigh-punishing stairs to a metal platform in the centre of a circular hall.
A vast canvas forms the perimeter of the hall, with fine detail of the city of Pergamon as it must have been at its height. Dogs bark and birds call. There are thousands of figures in the temples, halls, stadia and steps of the city. It’s impossible to know how the gigantic image has been created or cast on to the walls. The lights fade to reflect the scene by night before an artificial sun rises again. This is magic.
Rolf cooks us a splendid Sunday lunch. Since retiring he has taken over the cooking from Cathy, an arrangement that suits them both. And an excellent cook he makes. Younger daughter, Anita, who is moving from Berlin to Mannheim to further her PhD studies, brings us up to date on her life. Afterwards, I go for a walk with Erica and Rolf. Erica is a born-again Christian. We have a lot to talk about.
Monday 17: Sleep in. So nice. One could get used to living like this. We join Rolf on a lazy foot tour of our favourite places in Berlin. Up past the Dom and the great buildings on Museum Island. Then down along Unter den Linden to the chocolate shop, where we retire upstairs to drink rich chocolate coffee.
Then it’s back home via twists and turns that emerge on the boat basin beneath the Gohdes apartment. After lunch and a snooze, we set out on foot to visit the apartment several kilometres away that Anita shares with two friends. It’s four floors up and there’s no lift. On the other hand, the building is set among wide leafy streets, close to a park and a canal. Location, location!
We sit down to cakes that we chose en route from one of Berlin's many cake shops. Jones has a weakness for Mohnkuchen - poppyseed cake - so do I. Anita shows us around the apartment and introduces us to a flatmate. An hour later we emerge to catch the U-Bahn into west Berlin on a shopping cum light-festival viewing expedition.
We gawk at the Meissner porcelain in the smart Ka De We store – Berlin’s Harrods. Statuettes are priced in four figures. Not today, thank you. Down the road, my clothes shopping, jeans and undies, is successful; so is supper in the busy stube overlooking the Sony Plaza. I really like the 1912 special brew. It comes in small (half-litre) and large (one-litre) measures. This is Germany, the waiter reminds us. The light festival doesn’t amount to much. It doesn’t matter.
Tuesday 18: Shower, pack and prepare to catch the bus to Tegel airport after lunch. Cathy prints off our boarding cards. We try to leave the bathroom and apartment in the same immaculate condition that we have found them. Lucky the people who will follow in our footsteps because there is no finer accommodation in Berlin.
Wednesday 19: We're home. The dogs gave us an hysterical welcome. We gave them an early walk. I needed to be back for the electrician who was due to connect the solar panels to the national grid. No sign of him. Natasha arrived to clean and Natalia for her English lesson. Later emerged that the electrician had called while we were out and completed the connection. I was delighted to watch our home grown electricity flowing down into the village. Anne and Ian have taken themselves off for a few days. They did a grand job of looking after hearth, zoo, garden and home. Thank you.
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