Not Yet in Berlin

I am back in Germany, though not yet in Berlin, and it has been almost 10 years since my first visit.

We left Amsterdam Grand Central at 7:59 AM (ICC 292727—the ticket said 7:58 AM).

Our seats were in first class (Seats 7A and 7B), which reminded me so much of the train scenes from the Harry Potter books.

My breakfast was a Frikandel, which I grabbed from the train station café after spending too much time figuring out where our train was departing from. I’ve decided it’s my favorite snack—it competes with bitterballen, poffertjes, and deep-fried Gouda.

Those joys were hours ago.

We passed Amsterdam, left the Netherlands, and entered Germany some time ago.

The German countryside is filled with cornfields. Compared to the Netherlands, Germany’s countryside is different: bigger roads, more highways, drier land, less greenery, and no parks or farm animals in sight.

When we arrive in Berlin, it will be the final European city I’ve revisited (a déjà vu moment), aside from Amsterdam, which has always been my port of entry for convenience.

We got off the train at a random station called Handorf, which ended up delaying our trip by two hours.

Fafa asked whether I still wanted to go to the Thai restaurant, Tossakan. I told him we’d need to move the reservation to another day and maybe just get something near the hotel because I was tired, hungry, and a bit grumpy.

So he went off to get me some food and came back with a few snacks, promising a glass of wine soon.

The snack of choice was a pretzel. It was filled with salted butter and was delicious.

Fittingly, the first thing I ate upon entering Germany was a pretzel—just like on my first visit to Berlin a decade ago.

I’m typing this on our second train, sitting in the opposite direction, which is giving me a slight headache, so I need to wrap up my writing.

I hope we reach our destination in about an hour.

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