Sept 21, 2015 - Arriving in Berlin

Please note that I'm writing this a few days after the 21st.  The past few days were too packed to blog.

We landed in Berlin at around 7:10 AM (CEST).  The weather was mostly sunny and cool (~57 Degrees F).  Due to Mom's wheelchair, we had a personal escort off the plane and to customs.  Because we landed on the tarmac, they brought an interesting vehicle to pick us up.  It was a mobile room that would jack up to the plane level, off load folks and then ratchet back to the ground and drive off.  I wish I got a photo.

Customs and baggage claim was completely easy and uneventful.  We still had our personal escort to assist us, which was a lifesaver.  He even helped us find a taxi large enough for the four of us and all of our things.

The taxi took us to our apartment in Prenzlauer Berg (See map below).  

For this trip we used AirBnb and found a great apartment for our three weeks here.  For less than the cost of most hotel rooms, we have an entire apartment.  It has a living room/bedroom, another bedroom, two bathrooms, a kitchen and a front hall.  Each bedroom has a TV (with cable).  We have a washing machine (a big must when traveling light) and a stove/fridge/toaster/coffee machine for easy and cheap eating.  Roni, our host, has been extremely helpful and the apartment is perfect so far.  Here is a photo of our inside courtyard.

The location is great because we're about ten minutes by foot from a major transportation hub.  We can catch either the U-Bahn or S-Bahn directly into the center of Berlin and be there in about 15 minutes or we can take the RingBahn, which goes around the entire center of Berlin and let's us access outside neighborhoods.  I'll go more into our transportation details in later posts.