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Berlin Trip : Berlin Hauptbahnhof

I’m not sure how I’ve managed to miss Berlin Hauptbahnhof on my previous trips to the city, but it’s one of the most architecturally impressive stations that I’ve seen. It’s not a new building either, this design is from when it reopened in May 2006, but it feels modern and current.

The station was opened in 1871 as the terminus for the Berlin-Lehrte railway line, known as Lehrter Bahnhof it quickly grew into a major hub. Its grand architecture, designed in the French Neo-Renaissance style, earned it the nickname ‘palace among stations’ although it got a bit smashed up during the Second World War. Services came back to the railway station after the end of the war, but were suspended again in 1951 and bits of the station started to fall down. With the arrival of the Stadtbahn (city railway) in 1882, Lehrter Bahnhof became even more crucial to Berlin’s transport network.

However, the station suffered significant damage during World War II. Though services resumed after the war, they were eventually suspended in 1951, and the station fell into disrepair. Then Berlin got split up and it ended up in Western Sector, near to the Berlin Wall. Not much happened until Germany was unified (with the station I mean, quite a lot happened in general) and they decided that Lehrter Bahnhof would be the site for a new central station. So they knocked down the rickety old one and built a lovely new one which was designed by architects Gerkan, Marg and Partners. It took ten years to build this but it was completed just in time for the football World Cup.

It was the multi-level nature of the railway station that impressed me, that’s a track at the top as well.

It has something of a shopping vibe feel to it, but that’s what funds these buildings.

The signage here was one of the best I’ve seen at a railway station and it’s helped by the transport system avoiding using complex line names, they just go with letters and numbers which makes things much easier. Well, for me anyway.

And a train going by.

A model of the railway station.

December 10, 2024
Berlin Trip : Manchester Airport to Berlin Brandenburg (Ryanair)

Although I had enjoyed the Escape Lounge, I was quite pleased to be leaving Manchester’s Terminal 3 as it was all a little cramped. The same was true waiting for the gate, there was minimal seating and the queue wrapped around the corridor trying not to get in the way of passengers walking by. The Ryanair staff were friendly and the whole boarding process was gloriously uneventful.

It was a wet and windy evening in Manchester.

That’s handy, I was able to note the registration number although I’m not entirely sure why I’m collecting these. Then again, I’m not sure why I do a lot of things, yet here we are. It’s EI-DWE and I don’t think it’s an aircraft that I’ve been on, although Ryanair have had it for 17 years. It’s a Boeing 737 from back in the day when they actually had a good reputation. I was fortunate to randomly be given an aisle seat and the whole flight was comfortable and without any issues. The cabin crew were professional, the aircraft was clean and it arrived on time, so for the £21 I paid for the flight (a little more than usual) I was entirely content.

I could claim that it’s blurry for artistic reasons. But it isn’t, so I won’t.

This was my first visit to Berlin Brandenburg and it’s already the laughing stock of airports across Europe, but I’ll save my moaning about this confused mess of a building in a later post. I miss Berlin Tegel.

There were long queues with poor signage leaving plenty of passengers in the wrong place.

Those who can use the left-hand queue are very fortunate and save a lot of time…. But, I won’t go on about that.

December 9, 2024
Little Thameslink Debacle

I like to break into proceedings for a little complaint, it makes me feel better.

Here I am with a rail ticket to board the 15:36 at London St. Pancras to Bedford and two Thameslink gateline staff have rejected the ticket saying it’s invalid with their service, refusing me access to the platforms. The Thameslink staff said that my ticket wasn’t valid on their service, only the EMR service. The details on my ticket read:

“Board the 15:36 service to Bedford (Thameslink). (G50426 service details)”

Now, I always fear I’ve made a mistake, as I do that quite a lot, so I thought I’d better check first with the ticketing company, Trainsplit. They’ve already checked for me and they’ve told me that Thameslink are in breach of the National Rail Conditions of Travel and the information they were supplying was wrong.

Here’s the details of the 15:36 train that the gateline staff said wasn’t an actual service. After claiming the 15:36 was definitely an EMR service, the gateline staff did let me through in the end (I think one of the staff had a moment of realisation that the only 15:36 service departing the station was their Thameslink service) but warned me that my ticket wasn’t valid and I might be asked to buy another one. I haven’t heard so much piffle since listening to Liz Truss prattling on about something she didn’t understand, but the railway wonders why people get confused. If I had followed the instructions of the gateline staff I would have been liable for a fine from EMR for travelling on a service that I didn’t have a ticket for which feels very sub-optimal given all the confusion over ticket prosecutions at the moment.

Merrily on board the 15:36 (albeit delayed).

December 9, 2024
Berlin Trip : Manchester Airport – Escape Lounge T3

With just my usual element of incompetence I didn’t get many photos of this lounge as it was so busy, so I’m using a promotional photo to add just a little colour to arrangements. I got into the lounge earlier than the three hours they allow before the flight and I noticed that there was a sign saying the lounge was full, but you could join their on-line waiting list. This has worked well for me at Stansted Airport and so I signed up to patiently wait and as there wasn’t an estimated waiting time I went to ask at the reception desk, but she kindly said I could come in immediately as I was on my own. Most lovely and there were no issues with using my Priority Pass card.

Another promotional photo…. There’s no charge for alcoholic drinks, other than a surcharge for Prosecco, but it’s all bar service.

I found a power point that worked to charge my ailing phone and it might be evident that this isn’t a promotional photo taken by the lounge. The food selection was actually surprisingly good, there were a range of different sandwiches and I very much liked the stew and dumplings. The beer is the John Smiths Extra Smooth and my friend James would have been proud of me for choosing that. The stew had a depth of flavour and the dumplings had just the right firmness to them, they were the best part of my airport visit to be fair.

More stew and dumplings with some rice added to the mix, alongside a Guinness this time as well as a coffee.

The lounge remained very busy and for about twenty minutes the entire Manchester United youth team came in, although they didn’t eat or drink much, so I’m not sure if there was much value to that. And this lounge is expensive, just shy of £40 for walk-ins, although cheaper rates are available for advance purchase. Despite how busy it was, I thought that the staff were doing really very well to keep up and they remained friendly throughout. The lounge is unusually highly rated, so there must be an element of the excellent customer service shining through there.

When writing about the terminal in my last enthralling post, I mentioned that it was used nearly entirely for Ryanair and British Airways passengers. Most of the angry reviews are from customers of the latter, not least this:

“In thirty years of traveling and using lounges all over the world, tonight I encountered something for the first time: no seats. Not just crowded but not one single seat available. A small, shabby looking lounge to begin with has outdone itself. So ahead of an 11-hour flight, I now have to stand around until boarding. Shame, BA.”

There are a few angry BA passengers out there…. The signage is initially just a little unclear as it points two ways for the Escape Lounge, but it appears that they have a second area. It was all closed off when I was there, but I suspect it’s opened up during busier periods of the year, as otherwise this lounge must be regularly at near capacity. Anyway, I was very pleased with this lounge visit, I left with sufficient power in my devices, a couple of beers and more than enough food. What more could I want from life?

December 9, 2024
Berlin Trip : Manchester Airport

After a very lovely weekend of six of us celebrating my birthday early in Manchester (I’ll get to posting about that soon enough….), Liam kindly dropped me off at Manchester Airport. He didn’t offer to pay £5 to drop me off in front of the terminal (mind you, he wouldn’t pay £5 to drop himself off, hence the famous walking incident he took his wife on at Stansted many years, but I digress), so I had to make do with the free bus shuttle that runs every fifteen minutes.

Seventeen minutes after being dropped off the shuttle arrived and I was the only person on it. I was departing from Terminal 3 and although I wasn’t asked this, I proffered this information to the friendly driver anyway. We get to Terminal 1 and he calls down the bus that this is where I can get off. That was actually very helpful, I hadn’t realised Terminal 1 and 3 are next to each other so I might have been sitting on a shuttle bus going around and around before realising what was happening. Terminal 3 is a very odd mix, it’s effectively only used by Ryanair and British Airways.

And here we are at Manchester Airport Terminal 3, the first time I’ve flown from here.

I always try and be positive, but this is a bloody dreadful airport terminal. Looking at surveys, Manchester Airport regularly appears at the bottom of the lists and this terminal is the worst rated. There was no seating available before security so I tried to go through. My boarding pass was rejected at the automatic gate and a staff member came over to check and he suggested trying again later. That’s not overly helpful in terms of I didn’t know when “later” would be, although it transpired that you can only go through 3 hours and 40 minutes before the flight. That doesn’t feel like a time that anyone might actually guess, it might have been useful for them to mention this in signage as some airports do. Anyway, I’m then stuck waiting there for the 15 minutes (I was just under 4 hours early, as some things never change) trying not to get in the way of other passengers and unsure where to wait for the best.

I have huge amounts of sympathy for airport security staff, it’s a thankless task in very many ways. They were always polite here, but some of them looked worn down and there was no shortage of rude passengers. The queueing system was a bit illogical, crammed into too small a space and just uncomfortable, it made things feel a little too much like a cattle pen. The signage in the airport was muddled to say the least and the airport management hadn’t overly troubled themselves with having the airport terminal cleaned. I think much of this is that they simply don’t have enough space, there are too many passengers in the space that they have and there’s not enough seating. I don’t need to sit down (being young and strapping, or something like that….) but many people do, with the set-up here feeling sub-optimal. There is though a massive investment going in to improve the space, so matters might improve somewhat over the next couple of years.

Anyway, after 25 minutes getting through security, which seemed longer than it actually was, I thought I’d try and get into a lounge a little early to escape the chaos and limited facilities. More on which in the next post….

December 9, 2024
Wizz Air (Poznan to Luton Airport)

Back to Poznan Airport and this is a sculpture by Henryk Gida Bakalarczyk, it makes quite an impact in the departures area just before security.

There’s my flight to Luton Airport, using the Wizz Air all you can fly pass that I decided to get to try it out, so that means it’s £8.99 for the flight.

After visiting the lounge and going through border control, the non-Schengen area of the airport is quite sizeable with plenty of seating.

They were boarding the aircraft early and, as ever, it was all efficient and organised.

And boarding.

I take these photos in the hope of capturing the registration of the aircraft, otherwise I have to look it up. And it isn’t visible, so I did have to go and look it up, it’s G-WUNA, I don’t think it’s an aircraft I’ve been on before. By chance, it was the first anniversary of Wizz Air bringing this aircraft into service, but they didn’t provide us with cake or anything to mark that milestone.

And safely back into Luton Airport. It wasn’t the most comfortable journeys as I was in the middle seat and felt a little cramped on this journey, but it’s a relatively short flight and I amused myself watching stuff on my phone. There were some winds from Storm Darragh which added some extra excitement in terms of the landing, although it was otherwise uneventful. There was absolutely no delay at all with getting through border control as there was no queue, so plenty of staffing once again at Luton Airport.

It was very lovely, thank you Wizz Air. I still like this all you can fly pass, it wasn’t the longest stay in Poznan, but there seemed to be a suitable choice of destinations that I could go to. I’m already occupied with other things this week, but hopefully I’ll get to use the pass again in December and perhaps quite a lot in the new year.

December 8, 2024
Poznan – Poznan Airport Business Executive Lounge

With a couple of hours to kill, I popped into the airport’s business lounge using my Priority Pass card.

It wasn’t overly busy by any means, there was a couple in the lounge who were sitting at the far end. There’s a range of seating areas with a choice of high and low seating, although some areas of the lounge felt just a little dark. There were plenty of power points and since it was so quiet, I opted to sit near the food. I do that quite a lot actually….

It’s not a hugely decadent selection, primarily a few baguettes, some slightly unexciting cold cuts and quite a lot of chocolate.

And biscuits. Those chocolates are lovely incidentally, they appear a lot in Polish lounges.

Even I wasn’t going to have a beer at 08:00 in the morning (well, not today), I instead went for coffee and orange juice. And an overly sweet, but still tasty cookie type thing, and a fair few chocolates alongside a yoghurt.

For walk-ins there would be a charge of just under £20 for entry and that’s towards the lower end for what lounges charge. That’s not actually that bad compared to restaurants at the airport, you could have had a few drinks, some light snacks, coffees and the like for that money, so it’s not unreasonable. I’m not sure it’s worth that in the morning, which explains perhaps why it was nearly empty during my visit, but since I’ve got an unlimited pass it doesn’t make much difference.

The reviews are broadly quite poor, people aren’t thrilled by the lack of food choice, but the lounge isn’t really ever offering anything like that, they describe their offering as:

“Passengers will be able to take advantage of the catering offer, which includes hot and cold drinks, sandwiches, sweet and salty snacks, and a wide selection of alcoholic beverages.”

And I thought that the lounge delivered on that.

One customer a few weeks ago was far from impressed….

“It really is one of the worst if not the worst lounge I have ever visited. Basically there is nearly nothing there, no food, some candies, nothing is replenished by the staff who just walks around and pretends there is nothing to be done. Coffee machine was broken, wine tap broken, sandwiches ran out, toilets were dirty and wet. I could hear people paying for the at the exit and seriously they paid for nothing. This place demands a clear fix from the bottom up to the staff itself”

I wouldn’t go that far, I liked that it was very clean if nothing else. The team members looked a little bored, but they were friendly and I can’t imagine that they had a great deal to do. And they would have had to get up very early to come here to work, so they were probably exhausted already. I think there has to be some recognition that Poznan isn’t that busy an airport, so a lounge here is inevitably going to have limitations in what it can offer. Anyway, a positive experience and I appreciated having a little quiet spot to sit for a couple of hours.

December 8, 2024
Poznan – Hotel ibis Poznan Polnoc

I’m restarting my project to start visiting every Accor hotel in Poland (I mean, everyone has to have a hobby?), something which I was half-way through, and I might bring back my little Accor web-site that got a little bit lost in a server upgrade. Here’s the list that needs updating about which Accor hotels I’ve got to in Poland (which I accept isn’t riveting for anyone, but it’s handy for me to know). Or server downgrade as it evidently became. This hotel is located around six miles from the centre of Poznan and cost £34 for the night, although I got it free with rewards points from previous stays. I didn’t eat at KFC, but it’s certainly got a handy takeaway option nearby for those who want it.

The check-in process was a bit convoluted as it took a little while to be welcomed, but the team members were friendly and helpful. Unusually I didn’t get a keycard wallet, they just put a small post-it note with the room number on the keycard which seems an interesting way of going about matters. The room is the older style of Ibis design, but it’s one that I don’t dislike and it’s better than some of the newer designs in my mind. It was clean and organised, everything worked and there were no noise disturbances either internally or externally.

I had to ask about the welcome drink as although I wasn’t overly in need of one, I’m interested to see what the options there are. As expected as this is now commonplace, they’re using the app to do this, which makes matters easier. I noticed this list at reception which seems to be implemented at a few Accor hotels in Poland, which is odd as I thought they were all operated by Orbis, which limits the choice that others offer.

I went for the Żywiec Białe, which is a very agreeable wheat beer that I’ve had on a few occasions. For a small beer there was quite a faff about the procedure to get one, involving me signing a bit of paper, getting a receipt from reception and one from the till.

The reviews for the hotel generally are positive and I thought it represented a suitable and lower priced stay in Poznan. It’s not the easiest hotel to get to as it’s not located in the centre of Poznan, and it’s perhaps better for people with cars, but there is public transport there for those who want it although it requires a tram and a bus (or a tram, three buses and a walk if you decide to do things differently like me). And that’s another Accor Hotel ticked off the list, a list which I’ll get updated and fixed so my two loyal blog readers can follow along. Anyway, all suitably uneventful and a pleasant evening.

December 8, 2024
Poznan – Thali Indian Restaurant

I very much like Indian food and have enjoyed tracking how it is served in countries around the world. I mean, it’s fairly obvious to say that the best Indian food that I’ve had is in India, but the service style and quality varies enormously by country and watching that evolution is interesting. There are some locations, such as when I went to Carcassonne with my friend Liam earlier this year, where there were no Indian restaurants at all (there had been one but it shut), but the situation has been improving in Poland for the years that I’ve been coming here.

It was a welcoming and cosy environment, some effort has been made here to do something nice without needing to spend a fortune. I was initially surprised that the English spoken by the staff was fluent, but then I realised that the staff actually don’t really speak a great deal of Polish. Three Polish groups came in during my time there and they switched to speaking English, with a number of reviews commenting on this. It’s an interesting dynamic, I know there is concern from some people in the UK that the British culture is being eroded through migration. I don’t happen to agree with that, but I don’t want to dwell on that here, but in Poznan it surprises me just how much is in English.

This is the chicken Kadai, with peshwari naan and rice, alongside a small Cobra. It was served quickly, after five minutes, which is usually not really a good sign but it was relatively quiet when I visited so it makes that more understandable. The chicken was tender, the sauce had some depth of flavour and the portion size was generous. The rice clumped slightly which is marginally sub-optimal, but tasted fine, whilst the naan was a little bit drab if I’m being honest although again served as a generous portion.

I thought that this was all quite agreeable, and it came to a total of £12 which is hardly unreasonable for curry, rice, naan and a beer. The service was polite without being over-attentive, which isn’t something that I particularly enjoy, although my friend Richard loves that kind of attention. The curry could have had a greater depth of flavour perhaps, but the chicken had some taste and it all came together well. The restaurant is one of a small chain across Poland, I’m not sure whether it’s a franchise type arrangement or they’re managed restaurants, but they’ve got a fair number of these.

Anyway, it was a welcoming and comfortable experience, good value for the money and everything felt efficient. The restaurant was clean and organised, with the thalis themselves looking interesting but it appeared that the curries they served as part of that were random and I try and avoid lamb. The reviews for restaurants are all generally positive and they seemed to be serving a fair few meals that were going out to takeaway drivers (to take to customers I mean, not eat themselves), so they seem to be doing well.

After that I popped to the Christmas market in Poznan, but my phone hasn’t dealt with this very well, but it was raining. I’m not really one for Christmas markets, so I didn’t linger for very long. Poznan isn’t far from the German border, so there was something of a degree of authenticity to this arrangement that I didn’t see in Preston last week…..

December 8, 2024
Wizz Air (Luton Airport to Poznan)

The sun was shining and Luton Airport glistened once again with its raw beauty and charm. I find this one of the better airports to fly through, it’s not necessarily the most decadent in many ways, but it does tend to have sufficient staff. It took just four minutes to get through security, although as ever I’d allowed for it to take an hour. The flight was the first one that I had booked with the All You Can Fly pass.

A quick visit to Big Smoke using my Priority Pass card, it’s a handy place to charge devices and sit in relative comfort and peace. The card really is a useful little thing and I like that they’re generous with how it can be used at a number of restaurants at some airports. The staff at Big Smoke are helpful, although they don’t like card holders sitting in the bar area which is where I’d naturally default to, just because it’s QR code only ordering there. Card holders get £18 to spend there, which covers these chicken tenders and this time I went for the Medicine Man IPA, which is hoppy, juicy and with a taste of pineapple. It was better than I remember it being a few weeks ago, but maybe I was just in a good mood. This location is very fast paced, but the staff never give the appearance of being panicked, even when they have some customers who seem to be quite challenging.

When the server came along, I mentioned that I would wait ten minutes for the lunch menu to start, but the server mentioned he’d take the order immediately and send it through to the kitchen and the chicken tenders arrived promptly. They taste decent and along with some craft beer, it’s a comfortable place to wait.

Then off to Avalon to use the Priority Pass card again. I could have also gone to the lounge and the Italian Nolito, but I felt this was more than enough. They stack the amount up to the full £18, but it was handy to have a sandwich for later on. Always friendly staff at Avalon and the coffee tastes good. Incidentally, I always thought that Cawston Press had some sort of presence in Norfolk, but reading the can (I don’t get out much) its Head Office and centre of operations is Kettering. Now, I know Kettering (permanently linked with James Acaster now) is perfectly acceptable as being the home of a drinks company, but it’s just not quite what I expected. If not Cawston, I’m sure they could have opened a little place in Aylsham.

Mine was the 12:25 to Poznan, so I meandered off to the gate content that I’d had a coffee, beer and chicken tenders. This seems to me to be the very basis of a balanced diet.

A view of the area in front of the airport that I’ve never much noticed when walking to the gate. I can’t say that this is exactly riveting, but it amused me for about three seconds.

And safely at the gate. Even though I did work for British Airways for a long time and so have a natural bias, they never really sorted out the efficiency of their check-in process, it varied enormously even within the same airport. Wizz Air are very precise, timely and it works for me to stay seated until the queue has nearly gone through and I join the back. No stress, no faffing about in groups and just easy boarding.

The aircraft sitting there ready. It’s G-WUKO, the same aircraft that took me to Belgrade a few weeks ago.

Boarding, again all efficient and most passengers worked out which door they had to board through.

I’m a little cheap and so I refuse to pay for seat selection, but the airline Gods smiled upon me and I ended up with a window seat anyway which was handy.

Safely in Poznan and it was raining, which made my decision for me, I wasn’t going to walk to the hotel. I rarely have much to write about these flights, partly because I fall asleep and partly because they’re so standard because they’ve got the processes sorted. The crew are welcoming, they do their swoop down the aircraft selling food and drink, then they have a go at selling other things and then we land. They’re very alert to safety issues and manage the take-off and landing processes well, they never really give me any cause for concern or annoyance.

December 8, 2024