Travel from Boston to Berlin, May 1 and 2

 What a long travel day and a half!

  We hung around with Alec and JuliAnn in the morning. JuliAnn and Barbara took a nice two-mile walk with Lettie, their dog. They left for a first Communion. We got an Uber to Logan where we waited for 3 hours to get on a Delta flight (Airbus 330) to Charles de Gaulle. We sat an extra 45 minutes on the runway as the airport was very busy. But, the whole process was very easy as we had done so much on-line prechecking by uploading our Covid cards etc etc.

    The flight was smooth and we had extra legroom with footrests. After the rather decent dinner, we both were able to sleep. We think we slept at least 3 hours which was excellent.

 

     We had almost 7 hours to wait between that flight and our flight to Berlin. We had purchased day passes to the new AirFrance, 2-story lounge and, wow, was it worth it. We headed immediately for the "sleep pods" and got ones across from each other. And, we definitely slept, probably 2-3 hours. Then we each took a refreshing shower and washed our hair and changed. This was a luxury we have never had before and it made us feel so refreshed.  

      Then we flew to Berlin on a much smaller and cramped aircraft. While Barbara's bag was of carry-on size, the plane was so full that they pulled some to go into luggage and Barbara's was chosen which meant we couldn't just grab and go when we arrived. The "extra" legroom was pretty meagre, probably what the normal space used to be. Nevertheless, it was an easy flight and we arrived at Brandenburg Airport around 5:30 p.m. on a beautiful day.  We then got a cab into the city. ($52)  Adam, who we called, was waiting to let us into the 7th floor flat which is owned by an Italian woman. Our address is Schultzenstrasse 70.

View from our little flat looking down at Checkpoint Charlie

It is a small flat but completely adequate for us. The futon couch is not particularly comfortable, but the bed and shower are great.

      We walked a bit around our neighborhood to get our bearings. We are just 200 feet from Checkpoint Charlie. We are barely in what was West Berlin. We found a little market and bought some fixings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (our dinner) and some coffee etc. It seems nice neighborhood.