A new friend and a trip to Spreepark

Today was a really great Monday – not only because it was Pfingstmontag and we didn't have to go to work – but I did so many nice things that it felt like a day and a half.

First we had breakfast on the balcony, with some cherries as dessert. I rushed off to meet A, a friend of a friend from Dublin, who's moving to Berlin to do her PhD in autumn. She is very interesting and we had a lot of fun comparing notes on Ireland and the Irish while having coffees and Club Mates – first at Strudel Manufaktur, then Cassiopeia. A has studied architecture and so it was extra fun to walk her around Friedrichshain a little bit – she was very excited about Berlin.

In the afternoon we cycled to Plänterwald where the formerly abandoned amusement park had a "Pfingstfest". When we got there, our friends F and A had just joined the two-hour walking tour (€15, in German only, two tours daily: 1 and 4 pm), and the only other way for us to pass the time was to queue for the little train that takes you around the perimeters of the park in about 10 minutes (€2). A man in a yellow vest told us that the Spreepark will now be open every Saturday, Sunday and holiday, with tours twice a day, so it definitively isn't abandoned anymore. It also has lost it's magic: the area where you are allowed to walk around without paying is tiny, and it's taken over by a biergarten filled with plastic chairs, a children's hoppety-bouncy-gadget and a few amusement park toys dragged to the middle. The staff is bored and slightly annoyed by the guests. The two ways of exploring the grounds are to take the little train where you don't see much, or two pay €15 for a two hour guided walk with up to 50 other participants – nothing in between. Pay or go home.

 

 

 

 

 

We walked back to F'hain with F and A (who hadn't brought their bikes) and had a well deserved beer, dinner and an ice-cream. Now I go to bed, also well deserved. The next seven days will be really tough at work.