Part 3!?! Look, I am just as surprised as you are, especially since Berlin was not as much of a tourist stop for me, but since this is the longest I stayed in any city outside of Vienna and because Part 2 was already pretty long, here we are.
This will be a shorter entry, because we really did a lot less on this day. Since we got home late, we didn’t really get around until almost 4 PM. Again, this is the vacation part of my trip, and I didn’t feel guilty about not maximizing my time.
While I was researching, I did come across the Carnival of Culture that was happening this weekend, and while I was going to miss the parade that was going to be on Sunday, I wanted to go check out the street festival. Being from Chicago, I am well versed in street festivals, because during the summer, there are multiple street festival happening every weekend from Memorial Day through really mid-October.
This festival purported to offer food from over 180 countries along with multiple stages of music covering the gamut of all the cultures found in Berlin. This was a GIGANTIC festival, and since it was pretty warm, it was overwhelming to my fragile, slightly hungover state.
While I certainly wanted to be adventurous with my food choices, I wasn’t going to risk it, and I stuck with something easy and German, but I did enjoy an iced Turkish coffee, that really got me together. One thing worth noting is just how affordable everything was. The one annoying thing about Chicago festivals is that costs are pretty out of control when it comes to food and beverage, but everything here was the same price as if you were to go into a restaurant or bar. It should also be no surprise that everything was well organized with even things like port-o-lets being plentiful and well maintained.
By this point of the trip, my feet were really feeling all the walking I had done, and after leaving the festival, we made our way back to Schöneberg to sit outside at a nice cafe, Romeo und Romeo, and people watch. While it was Saturday afternoon, it really felt like a quiet Sunday.
After stopping into a couple shops, we settled on Evin Pizza & Pasta for dinner. It was a short walk from where we were, and it was another great place to just people watch.
Though I had vowed that I didn’t want to really go out because I had a mid-morning flight back to London, bundled with horror stories I had heard about the Berlin airport AND still not really knowing of my biometrics were in the system. Of course, we ended up going out for bit at Prinzknecht, which was one of the places we wanted to go the night before. Again, it was shocking how cheap the drinks were, and we probably stayed out a bit later than we should. However, I was home at a reasonable hour.
While Jerrad lives pretty far from the city center, he lives fairly close to the airport. So, instead of taking transit, I just took a Bolt (Uber competitor) to the airport. Leaning into my American Airlines status, that transfers to British Airlines, the horror stories of the Berlin airport were a bit of an exaggeration. I was through security pretty quickly, though did have to go back to get my Apple Watch that I left in the bin. I hung out in the lounge until boarding, and I was on my way to London and the final night of my epic European adventure.
