Hamburg and a few days in Berlin

This blog post is about a month late. After Gothenburg I essentially switched to "find a flat" mode and focused on my apartment search, getting ready for work, and settling in.

The trip from Gothenburg to Berlin would be broken up in Hamburg, where I'd spent the night before taking a train to Berlin. From Gothenburg I took a train to Copenhagen and went back to Germany over the same railway and ferry that I took going to Scandinavia. This time I took more pictures on the ferry and posted the pictures to Flickr.

Train from Copenhagen to Hamburg!

The ferry was nice, I was able to sit in the cafeteria at the front of the ship and have really great views. The train was also much less packed than the previous trip across.

Train at Hamburg Hbf

Hamburg Hbf

I didn't really do much in Hamburg. I ate at the station and went to my hotel, which was another Motel One but by the Hamburg Airport. The Motel One chain is very nice, the hotels all look quite a like and the room was nice, as expected. The next day I had breakfast at the hotel and headed back to the station to catch a train to Berlin.

Train arriving

Sleek ICE, bringing me to Berlin!

The ride to Berlin was uneventful, it takes less than 2 hours.

My train at Berlin Hbf

I love this station

My hotel for this stay in Berlin was near the Hecker's Hotel where I had stayed before for my interviews. This hotel was quite fancy, modern, and comfortable.

The room

Bathroom

Shower

Bed

View on the trains

Sound wasn't bad, got to see some ICE trains go by

I was there to look up and view flats. I think I only saw like two flats, and one of them wasn't really in the best area. The other was a great location near work, but unfortunately had just been delisted and was through an agency that charged the renter a high commission. I did get a prepaid SIM card during this stay to be able to make/take phone calls and send SMS if I needed to. I didn't stay too long because that weekend I was heading back to Brussels to catch the flower carpet and to swap out some of the stuff I was carrying (I still had my suit from the interviews with me!).

S-Bahn station (Savignyplatz)

S-Bahn train

In the next post I'll write about my weekend in Brussels. To give some context, following this short stay in Berlin I returned to Brussels for a weekend, took the train back to Berlin to continue apartment hunting (where I did find an apartment!), went back to Brussels to get things in order and then took a flight from Brussels to Berlin with all my stuff. After just a few days of getting settled in I got on another plane to Dublin for a weekend, came back, and started working. Now that I have internet and I'm mostly settled in, I'll try to have more frequent updates on the past adventures and try to also post some updates on life in Berlin!