Yup, it’s still day 1 of my Germany Trip.

Technically it’s the next day because I’ve crossed over multiple time zones into Europe but, for intents and purposes, it’s still my first day of travel.

Part one of this blog left me at the Vancouver airport waiting to board my flight so that’s where we’ll start this blog from…

Flying to Europe

The cheapest way to fly in and out of Europe is almost always through London.

Usually I’ll fly into London and then find a cheap flights in and out of there to and from the cities I’m visiting in Europe.

So, once again, I booked a return flight to London.

This time, however, there was an interesting twist to it.

The flight into London had a brief layover in Frankfurt.

You know what the beauty of not traveling with checked bags is?

You can just disembark in Frankfurt and not board the second flight to London.

So, that’s what I did today.

From there, the plan was to take a high speed ICE train across country to Berlin where I’m starting my trip.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s begin with my flight into Frankfurt…

Vancouver to Frankfurt

For long haul flights I’ll splurge to buy an assigned seat just in order to avoid the dreaded middle seat.

I did the same this time but a few days ago I got an email checking that I was okay with being in an exit row.

Hell ya I was.

You know what the exit row means?   Extra legroom!

Now, I know I didn’t fork out the exorbitant amount to get extra legroom so this was a nice little surprise.

When I got to the boarding area there were already multiple long lines for each group.

Naturally I was in the last group to board so I sat and watched everyone else board before me.

In the past I never cared whether I boarded at the end because I just had my carryon to put under my seat with my   main backpack checked in.

However now that I’m carrying on the big backpack that needs to go in the overhead compartment, I have this fear of boarding at the end and not finding any more room left in the compartments and then having to check in the bag instead.

With my plan to ditch the second plane on this trip, I was doubly worried.   Simply put, I could not check my bag in as it would end up in London while I wasn’t.

And then, the airline Gods stepped in…

As I was standing at the back of the last line, I heard my name called over the PA to come to the front desk.

I guess they didn’t get my email reply saying I was okay with sitting in the exit row because that’s why they called me up.   I said yes again and they let me board from there instead of going all the way back to the end of the line.

The hilarious kicker in all of this was my seat wasn’t even in the exit row.   It was literally the next row behind it.

So, while my dreams of exit leg room were crushed, I was able to skip the line so I guess that was a trade off.

As for the flight, there was nothing too eventful.   I watched some stuff on my laptop, had maybe an hours sleep, and ate a couple of preordered gluten free meals.

We landed at 10:30 local time which was 1:30 in the morning Vancouver time.

An hour later I was through security and boarding a train into downtown Frankfurt main railway station.

I had been up for 16 hours at this point but a bed was not in my near future…

Frankfurt to Berlin

The longer you wait to buy train tickets here in Germany, the more expensive they are.

Tickets that cost €20 a couple of months ago would cost €80-€100 if you bought them last minute.

So, with that in mind, I purchased all the train tickets for this trip a couple of months ago.

The disadvantage of buying them in advance is that you’re roped into that train.   If you miss it, you lose your ticket.   Oh, and if you want to leave on an earlier or later train, yeah, you can’t do that.

Now, that’s not entirely true.   You can actually buy an open-ended ticket for any train to that destination on that day but it costs about three times as much and I wasn’t willing to fork out that extra cash.

Anyway, that leads me to this train ticket from Frankfurt to Berlin.

I had bought a ticket for a 12:30 train which gave me a good 90 minutes to get through the airport down to the train station.

None of that mattered though as I got an email a few weeks ago telling me my train had been cancelled and that my ticket was now automatically an open-ended ticket.

So, what that meant was I could just take my sweet time and board whatever train going to Berlin I wanted to.

I got to the train station around 11:45 and the next train going to Berlin that was supposed to leave at 12:15 had been pushed back to 12:40.

How did I spend that extra time?

Well, I walked all over the damn station for a good 10 minutes looking for a bathroom which, of course, cost me €1 to use.

I also stopped at Frittenwerk which is a little restaurant inside the train station that serves gluten free fries with various toppings.   I went with the pulled pork and coleslaw combo.

Oh, and that 12:15 train that got pushed to 12:40.   Yeah, it got pushed again to 12:50, then 13:05, then 13:10 and finally to 13:15.

As I stood at the train platform waiting with everyone else, I’d keep refreshing my DB Navigator app on my phone and each time it would show a later and later time for departure.

But finally, at 13:15, the train arrived and we were soon on our way.

The trip cross country covers 550km and took just under 5 hours to get there.

At just before 6pm I had finally arrived in Berlin.

I exited the train station to a cold, grey sky and a light drizzle.   I won’t lie, I was not prepared for how cold it was at 7C but I trudged on.   My hostel and a nice bed were so close.

Finally, at 6:30pm, after almost a full 24 hours, I had checked in to my hostel.

A quick unpack and setup and I was out the door to the little sushi place across the street.

Yup, my first couple meals in Germany were an order of pulled pork fries and sushi.

Hey, don’t you judge me!

What?   You thought I was going to eat sausage and schnitzel every day for the next 23 days?

Are you crazy?!?

Anyway, at 8pm I was in for the night.

The first day getting to my starting destination on my trips is always the hardest but, now that I’m here, I can’t wait to get going.

Tomorrow I’ll be touring the city on a free walking tour followed by a little exploring on my own.

Germany Trip 2024 has officially started!