Christmas Getaway: Germany Day 1 (Berlin)

On this trip, we are reunited with my family! My Mum, Dad and Bro have come to Europe to visit us over New Years/my birthday (which falls in January). Each time they visit, we spend some time in Europe while also spending some time in London. This time, it’s Germany, and we met in Berlin late last night. It is always so fantastic to be back with my family - we haven't seen them in person in about 9 months, so it's super nice to be able to hug them again! 

Having met at their airport, we got our transfer to the place we are staying! Rather than a hotel, we have a three bedroom apartment, which is quite nice. We pretty much fell straight into bed once we had arrived, particularly for my family as they have obviously flown a much longer distance!

That also meant we had a lazy day today, as Bro in particular didn't fly well, so we slept in and had a slow start. Parents went to properly check in and picked up some groceries and pastry for us to start our day, and we headed out not long before 12pm to go for a wander. We headed towards the radio tower, where we found a Christmas market! So we wandered through that for a few laps and started our German food experience with wurst! We all had wurst and really yummy apple cinnamon stuffed donuts, which we actually couldn't finished because they were so big. Mum and I also bought some lace work Christmas decorations which were apparently handmade in Saxony. Then we headed for a wander towards the cathedral, but in the end the others were rather freezing and we decided to return to the apartment. To be fair, the maximum for the next two day is only 2-3 degrees Celsius and that must be a shock after Canberra at 40!

So we've been chilling and catching up since then. At the moment the plan for tonight is to go check out the Christmas lights and market on Kurfürstendamm, but we'll see how that goes... And we did it. Left the apartment again around 5:30pm, walked to the S train station (only a 5 minute walk) and caught the train down to Kurfürstendamm. Actually it was also handy in that we went through the station we need to go to on Wednesday for our train to Munich, so we also know where that is. The lights weren't as impressive as we thought they would be, but the street is the "champs-elysees of Berlin" and I can see why. Full of higher end stops on both sides of a wide road. But not so much food, it turned out, and it was dinner time. We ended up at a German diner type place, which turned out to be exactly what people needed. Mum and Dad are light (soup and nachos, respectively), Bro had a burger, and Richard and I both had a schnitzel. Most of us didn't finish our food though, although it was good, and then we walked back through the Christmas markets on the way back to the train (we didn't buy anything from that market either time though). Back to the apartment, time for a quick tea and a little chocolate, and time for bed! The plan is to get going a little earlier tomorrow!!!