Italy and Berlin

On June 27, the day after Henny’s birthday, we left for our first trip. We’d organised a Eurail pass from Australia which gave us 7 days of first-class(!) rail travel in Europe. These passes are only available to non-residents of the European Union, and are great value, although you do need to pay a bit (and sometimes a lot) extra for special trains like the Thalys.
Christopher the train fanatic sure got his fix this trip, with lots of high-speed trains! It started with the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris, and the TGV to Geneva. We spent the night there and left early the next morning for Venice, on a beautiful train trip through the Swiss Alps.

After two days and nights in Venice we took the high-speed Italian EuroStar to Rome.
We’d booked a car in Rome to drive to Sorrento, on the beach near Naples. We had a hard time finding the car rental agency near Rome Central, so Doris and Annabelle stayed with the luggage while Christopher and I went to find the agency. It all took an enormous amount of time, while Doris and Annabelle were sitting in the heat at the large square in front of Rome Central – luckily in the shade of a tree…
In the rush to pack the car and get going, I left a small backpack next/under the car, so we lost some luggage. Luckily nothing irreplaceable but it definitely inconvenienced us, and I was beating myself up for being so stupid…
We had a nice one-room ‘apartment’ near Sorrento and had a lovely time there. We visited Capri, went into its Blue Grotto and saw Pompeii. There’s a lot of natural beauty in this part of Italy too, and excitement in the form of crazy Italian drivers…

When we were back in Rome a few days later we tried to recover the backpack from Lost and Found and tried to make a report at the police station, but to no avail. Things are done differently in Rome: despite mucking about for over an hour, we couldn’t make a police report: the police at the station just wouldn’t open the door!
Similar thing with getting train information: on a Sunday afternoon there was an hour’s line outside in the sun at the platform. Two people in a smallish room are all they have to serve all those people waiting for information… Compare this to Amsterdam CS where they have quite a few counters open at all times and use a numbering system so you can wait your turn while sitting in comfort.
Having said this – it just seems to be the relaxed Southern European way, and we did enjoy Rome. Being there for only two nights we used the hop-on, hop-off tourist bus system so we could see the main sites and get around relatively easily. Doris especially liked Rome and we’d love to visit it again in the future.

Our apartment in Rome was again only one room (in the owner’s own apartment) with part of it converted to a small bathroom and kitchenette. The high ceilings (it was in a huge, old apartment building) allowed for an extra bed above the bathroom and kitchenette, so they could advertise it as a 3-person apartment (and we even fit four…)

From Rome we flew to Berlin. We weren’t sure how the kids would go travelling by train, so we’d looked for cheap flights out of Rome. A good destination was Berlin, a city that neither of us had seen yet and would like to experience. Air travel has become very cheap in Europe: four one-way tickets with EasyJet (booked months in advance though) only set us back €170.
Berlin is a great city. It feels very alive and vibrant, with lots of interesting, sometimes quirky things to see. After the German reunification a lot of money was poured into Berlin, and it again became the seat of government. This must have attracted lots of interesting people, including artists and architects, which is visible everywhere. It’s an old city that feels really young.

From Berlin we took the German ICE in the direction of Holland – by far our favourite high-speed train. We only took it until Hannover, so we could go back to Amsterdam via Hengelo – crossing the railroad bridge on the Enschedesestraat, 50 meters from mama’s house!