Berlin Germany – Day 1

March 12, 2014 – Berlin Germany

My cousin Danielle, our host for our visit, picked us up at Berlin’s Tegel Airport mid-morning. She gave us a scenic tour of part of Berlin, and her neighborhood in East Berlin.

Danielle brought us to her home where we met their dogs, took a tour, got our bags unloaded and such.

Then we were off to get lunch and run errands. We wanted some Euros, so Danielle took us to a nearby bank where we were able to use our ATM to make a withdrawal. It worked well except we wanted to Euro coins too.

The bank was near a residential area and in someone’s back yard, I spotted this:

Next, Danielle drove us into the downtown area of her community. Parking was a bit scarce so we parked in a pay lot of a grocery store. Worked out well, though it cost 7.5 Euro to park. From there, we walked to lunch. We ate at a place called Kronprinz.

After lunch, we walked to a nearby store called Saturn. It’s similar to a Best Buy in the U.S. I was looking for a nano-SIM with some pre-paid data for my iPhone 5. No luck. We may try another location later. Another block later and we were at another bank branch where Danielle asked them to exchange some of our paper Euros for coins. Done 🙂

Then it was back home where Nancy and I decided to take a nap. We really hadn’t slept in over 24 hours, so it was time to crash for a bit. Not too much, but to regain enough energy to meet the rest of the family and have dinner later. A couple hour nap worked out perfect!

Our room at Danielle’s house is in a finished apartment in the basement. Very nice! After our nap, we walked upstairs to see what was’s going on. Some of the kids were home from school and work. We met Tiffani, Austin, Rocco and Tommy. Tiffani helped me get online with all my devices – thanks Tiffani! I started to download and synchronize mail and such.

While Nancy and Danielle talked tourist stuff, helping to plan our time here, Tommy asked me to play with him. First, we put a couple of puzzles together. When he said they were big, I was thinking 1000 pieces. Whew – I was relieved when he meant they were large in size with HUGE puzzle pieces. He and I did a smashing job on two puzzles.

While Tommy and I were doing puzzles, Amber and Squishy arrived home. Then Rocco brought out the Monopoly game. About the time we got it setup to play, Sean arrived home from work. Rocco left with Sean to run pickup dinner for all of us while Tommy, Amber, Squishy and I played an express game of Monopoly 🙂

Dinner was great. Some of us had chicken and fries and others had Gyro like sandwiches. All yum! Thanks Sean and Danielle! After dinner, we all shared a large bag of Chicago Mix Garrett’s Popcorn we had brought as a family gift. Everyone seemed to like it 🙂

After dinner, it was bath and bed time for the younger kids and Nancy and I retired downstairs to our apartment. I spent some time online and also knocked out yesterday’s blog post. I hit the rack around midnight.

A great first day in Berlin!