Zagreb to Berlin

Early morning today, up at 5:45am to go to the airport, about 30 minutes away, for our flight to Berlin.  Bye Bye Croatia - we had a wonderful time!  It was an unexpected surprise (that was redundant) how beautiful Croatia was and how much I enjoyed it.  I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone that they visit.

Zagreb, on the other hand, was a means to an end (not unlike Glasgow when we went to Scotland).  It was just a place to lay our heads for a night before a morning flight out of the airport.  There is graffiti everywhere, the buildings look like they're falling apart.  I would probably fly out of Zadar if I had the choice to book again, but we were limited on where we could fly out of to fly into Berlin on the cheap european airlines.  We ended up booking through Eurowings and our flight was operated by German Wings.

When we arrived in Berlin to the airport we were met by a Manulife representative for our transfer to the Hilton Berlin.  There was some confusion at the airport as Mark wasn't booked to transfer with us in the car they sent and there wasn't room for all of our luggage, so Mark had to wait for another flight to come in to transfer to the hotel with the next flight arriving 30 minutes later.  It was a bit of a pain, they did give us the option to have Mark come with us and leave his luggage on the limo bus with the driver, but then they said he would have to wait for it at the hotel as the driver wouldn't be responsible for removing it from the bus and leaving it at the hotel - so that didn't make any sense to do.

Our driver was very nice and pointed out some sites on the way to the hotel.  He had been born 3 months before the wall came down - which was 26 years ago, he said his family was split, which was very typical - that he had been born in West Berlin and lived there with his parents, brother and grandmother, but his Aunt and Uncle and cousins were in East Berlin.  He said the 28 years the wall was up felt much longer than the 26 years since it has been down.

When we arrived at the hotel our room wasn't quite ready, it was only 11:00am, but they said it would be ready in the next 30 minutes and in the meantime we could use the Executive Lounge, so we went in and had a snack and sat and waited for the room and for Mark. 

This is the view out our window.  We're at the end of the Square - tomorrow we'll do a tour and figure out what all these buildings are!

We met Mark for lunch just down at the other end of the Square  -  there are over 7300 restaurants in Berlin..#8 is a chocolate shop and cafe right beside the hotel!  We'll maybe hit that tomorrow.  Today we went to a German cafe called Aigner Gendarmenmarkt.  I noticed as we walked all the cafe's had a name and then Gendarmenmarkt..I think that's the name of the Square.

We have a cocktail reception between 6-7pm in the Square, across from the hotel front doors, as we arrive there are 3 rows of vintage cars, probably 40 of them, which are our transportation to the Reichstag Building (Berlin Parliament building) where we are having dinner.   Mark met us down there with Brandon, his son, who flew to Berlin 4 days ago to meet some friends and then is staying here for the conference.  His name tag says Brandon Jerry because Mark put his full name on the registration, so we've been calling him Jerry all night - or Jay will call him BJ.

We were the first group that the organizers told that its time to leave and we can go choose a car - this is the one Jay choses:

A '72 Charger with duct tape on the dashboard.  There were Mustangs, Jaguars, Mercedes, Volvo's, VW's..some very cool old cars, little cute sporty convertibles ...yup.  Duct tape. 

The guy who drove us was super nice, this was his car and he had owned it since 2001.  He did the matte black paint job himself.  lol.  His buddy had called him up because he had a vintage car and did he have time today to drive folks to the Reichstag.

We went in through security and then up the elevator to the roof where there is a walkway around the entire rooftop.  Within 2 minutes Brandon is chatting up a girl on the roof.  lol.  He'll turn 22 this week while we're here.

And then there is a dome in the middle where you walk up the ramp to the top and it is open to the sky and then back down the other side of the ramp so that traffic is always flowing one way and the ramps are on top of one another.

The restaurant was on the rooftop as well, and they were serving sparkling wine and some appetizers while we stood on the terrace.  Dinner was very good - the soup was delicious - it was 5 courses starting with a salad, then soup, then ravioli, then the main course of tenderloin or char, then dessert. I took a picture and sent it to my Mom - when she asked how dinner was I said "fancy schmancy"..

We were texting a bit and I got the news that Paige has chicken pox!  Great timing for us to be away!  When I got up this morning (tomorrow) Mom said Sophie had vomited after dinner too...poor Gram and Grampa.  My Mom was on her way to Newmarket with the girls to drop Sophie off at a friends birthday party when Paige told her that her tummy was really itchy and now was bleeding.  Mom pulled off and looked and said "I think you have the chicken pox" to which Paige then began wailing "I got chicken pox!!!" and Sophie began wailing that she was going to miss the birthday party.  Mom took Paige to the pharmacy and the guy there told Paige it was better to get them now and that the younger the better and then Mom said she was fine!  I texted Mom to let Aunt Jo-Anne and Uncle Dave know so that they don't go see their granddaughter today, she's too young to have been vaccinated yet, and then I texted Maria to see if her and Jim had both had chicken pox since the girls had been with them Friday afternoon.  The girls were supposed to have seen Olivia and Annabelle yesterday so I asked Mom if they had, but they hadn't gotten together.  I said "ok good".  Mom said its so different now from when Matthew and I were kids - if one kid got chicken pox all the neighbourhood kids would be sent over by their parents to see if they could catch it to get it over with!

After dinner we took the bus back to the hotel.  We had been sitting with the CEO of Manulife at dinner and she was on the first bus with us, she and her husband got on first and sat in the front - I said to her as I walked on "I whispered to Jay the same thing, sit in the front!"  She said, does it look bad that I'm the first on the bus?  I said - look at it this way, you're at the front and you can greet everyone as they enter the bus...good point!

We came back to the room and went to bed, its just after 11pm and we've been up since 5:45am.  No plans for the morning so we can sleep in!