Welcome To Berlin - Citadines

When Dave & Kate arrived at Citadines in the Kurfürstendamm area to check in the manager happened to be behind the desk and saw they had booked through a last minute website.  She revealed to them her amazement that she had only just put the offer up that morning when 5 mins later their booking came through.

The offer was so good and all the staff so welcoming it was 4 nights later before they could leave.  Each morning they went down to the lobby to check the internet and each time they saw the offer still on they booked again.  The woman behind the desk was amused by this and they joked about how they were the guests who wouldn't leave.

When the offer ran out and the time came to go, it was the first time Dave & Kate had felt a tinge of sadness at leaving a hotel.  The staff were the friendliest so far, they had Kaisers supermarket across the road and could go down to the lobby to make themselves a free cup of tea or coffee whenever they felt like it.  All of this felt like a real treat.  The Buddha also appeared 3 times within the area.

Before they departed they had a few things they had to do.  First of all, there was no longer any room for Jesus at the Inn and so he had travelled with them from Amsterdam to Hamburg and was now shipped off from Berlin via DHL to Edinburgh where he would eventually be told he didn't look like himself.  Secondly, Dave & Kate felt the time had come to finally abandon their backpacks and buy some suitcases.  They had spotted some in a luggage shop near Zoo Station.

Spending money on new suitcases at this time when they were almost out of cash seemed totally illogical and yet they had to do it.  They may be going back to Edinburgh with the cases but at that time they knew they couldn't go any further forward with the old backpacks, which increasingly represented a weight on their backs.  Why carry a load on your shoulders when you can let the earth take the weight?

The Rasta turtle from World Cafe in Hamburg seemed to think so, showing up next door to Citadines...

And funnily enough, the perfect place to dump their shells was round the corner from Citadines.  Kate had spotted this big charity bin that the backpacks could fit inside.  They zipped them up into their black body bags and disposed of them there.

Winter Wonderland

Arriving in Hamburg on Monday 22nd Nov 2010, Dave & Kate certainly didn't expect the Winter Wonderland scenes they were confronted by.  The Christmas markets were all up and running and after checking into their hotel near the train station, they went out for some food and passed a busker singing Bob Marley's "Roots Rock Reggae" song.

They weren't going to have much trouble getting meals here.  How did two people who don't even bother with Christmas end up in a Winter Wonderland, eating sausages for tea, drinking gluhwein and watching the Weihnachtsmann gliding above them on wires?  Only Jah knows.

They didn't mind staying in hotels but the only issue was food.  It meant being out most of the day and having to eat out and in places like Paris that became difficult to do cheaply.  Now they were in Germany at Christmas time there was plenty of reasonably priced food available.

Coffee was also more suited to them here.  In Paris they found mostly pompous over-priced table service cafes - not their scene.  In Germany they could get their own and just sit without all the fuss to keep out of the cold for an hour or so.  Their particular cafe of choice was called World Cafe and in it was a Rasta turtle painted on the walls.

From Paris To The Amsterdam Hilton...

Not quite but close enough.

It became clear with a few days left that Amsterdam was the next place to be.  They had no reason to go there and in fact, again, didn't really want to.  Their last visit to Amsterdam several years earlier had not been so great and although they didn't dislike the city, they had memories of a hard time in a bustling, slightly crazy place to burn.  Maybe that was as good a reason as any to go.

The signs had been presented... they stayed TWICE in the same hotel on Rue d'Amsterdam and while they were there, Dave remembered hearing the Lloyd Cole song "Lost Weekend" and feeling it was significant somehow - "I spent a lost weekend in a hotel in Amsterdam..."

When they arrived at the Truffaut apartment what did he find in the small CD collection but a Lloyd Cole album.  And then one day Kate put on a Beatles album from the collection and they heard John Lennon sing the lines "from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton..."

With a day or two to go, Kate managed to find and secure an apartment there for 11 nights.

During this period they were also feeling it was time to shed their shells (backpacks).  They were slowing them down and too inefficient for all this moving.  Nearby the apartment they would find a lot of luggage shops, looking in, knowing suitcases were the way.

They bought a train ticket the day before they checked out and said goodbye to Paris in the early hours of the morning.

The Empire Strikes Back

They hadn't been there a day before dark forces started to disrupt their plans.  The money goblins and their over-zealous security halted access to their bank accounts and so Dave & Kate's money was so secure even they couldn't get to it.

Back in Edinburgh the idea was to book an apartment for a month in Barcelona but the right one never showed up.  At the very last minute, on the day they left, they booked a hotel for the first night and would attempt to book further accomodation once they got to Barcelona.  Internet banking security soon put a halt to that.

So after checking out of their hotel the next morning, with nowhere to stay and backpacks strapped to their backs weighing close to 15kg each, not to mention their widescreen laptop raft, they wandered for a bit in the Spanish sun looking for somewhere with free wi-fi access.  They were standing outside Starbucks on La Ramblas, reluctant to give in and go there, when Dave realised he was staring straight across the road at the Citadines apart-hotel sign...  "How about we go there?"

It wasn't the cheapest option but looking like a couple of tired turtles and with limited means of getting to their money, it seemed the only option.  They checked in for 2 nights and laughed at the amazing views of Barcelona from their room - two people who aren't really interested in grand views. 

The stay gave them a perfect place to get back on their feet with free internet access so they could look up apartments and facilities for them to eat in and save money. 

 

Kate felt so at home that she got a job at Citadines...

All of this wasn't exactly what they had in mind when they landed in Barcelona.