Berlin had been on our list for some time and we hadn’t taken one of these short city breaks for a while, so a late October slot ahead of the pre-Christmas madness seemed like an excellent idea. It was.
This was another job for “Auntie Janet” of Ultimate Travel fame. All done by e-mail – how wonderfully modern.
Further to our telephone conversations today, I confirm that Kirker Holidays could arrange a four night holiday to Berlin for you staying at the Brandenburger Hof Hotel in a de luxe room for four nights on a bed and buffet breakfast basis. They can also book the following British Airways flights for you:
26 October BA 982 Depart Heathrow: 08.55 Arrive Berlin: 11.40
30 October BA 985 Depart Berlin: 16.25 Arrive Heathrow: 17.20You will also be met at the airport and taken to the hotel and transferred from the hotel to the airport on 30th October.
Sounded good to me. Further correspondence booked a restaurant table and a chance to see a concert. Me to Janet:
Please confirm booking for hotel’s amazing restaurant 26 October as originally requested and please also book the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra concert for evening 27 October.
…but we’d left it too late for the Rattle/Berlin Phil. Me again:
Shame about the Rattle concert. Can you please instead book us for the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin concert at 16:00 on the Sunday, 28th October. Hopefully there’ll be good tickets remaining for that concert.
There were; it was wonderful to see them play at home. I’ll write up the concert when I get around to fleshing out my notes etc. from this short trip.
Interestingly, these phone calls and e-mail exchanges with Auntie Janet started about five weeks before dad’s demise (so indeed before we knew that anything was badly wrong with him) and concluded just a couple of weeks after he died. I don’t recall how I felt about this at the time, but Janie and I must have decided that we’d need the break by then and I’m sure that decision was the right one.
Here is the hand-written journal, with only some fairly duff scanning possible from that particular notebook, so good luck to you if you try to read this: Berlin October 2007 Journal Notes. There’ll be a few good yarns once I write these up.
Here is a link to photos on Flickr; some interesting, some wacky, some neither, some both.