The selection of fried stuff is getting narrower every day. Yesterday there was no bacon. Today there are no meat balls, either. Still plenty of fruit.
As I get tucked into my fruit, I start to speak, but Dolores interrupts me.
“I know, the fruit means you can drink more beer. You say that every morning, Ronald.”
Sorry for being so predictable.
Dolores takes pity on me and lets me lie in bed while she goes off shopping. While she’s gone I get stuck into the remaining beers. Though, come to think of it, I took back quite a few beers from Berlin last year. In fact, it’s only a few weeks ago I drank the last couple of bottles of Maisel & Friends.
She’s gone to the supermarket for some stuff to take home with us. And the second-hand clothes shop she looked around on Saturday. She’s been regretting not buying the dirt-cheap dirndl she spotted. Fingers crossed that it’s still there.
I’m three bottles into my stash when Dolores returns.
She immediately tries to switch channels.
“I was watching that.”
“But it’s rubbish.”
“I know. That’s why I was watching it.”
Die Trovatos, if you’re wondering. Quality stuff that you’ll only find on TV on a weekday morning.
We spend the next hour packing up all our shit, while do my best to reduce the weight of beer I’ll have to carry. Yet does Dolores thank me for my consideration?
Once we’ve checked out and dropped off our luggage, we head over to east of Warschauerstrasse again. It’s surprisingly busy for 12:15 on a Monday. There are quite a few people hanging around the bars and restaurants. Doesn’t anyone have to work around here? Though I wouldn’t personally be sat outside eating on the bits of the street with the bad drain smell. As some are.
Avoiding the stinky parts of the street, we have a quick pre-prandial beer. I’m trying to work out what the place is called. The sign is pretty cryptic:
Can you guess what it’s called? I couldn’t. It’s Plusminusnull. Not sure about that one. I am sure what I’m drinking: a half litre of Staropramen. Never my favourite. In fact the Czech beer I liked the least, back in the good old days.
We were thinking of dining in a Sudanese place. We spotted a couple yesterday. But the first one we come to is pretty small and cramped. So we troll a bit further down the street to a Vietnamese place, bizarrely called Soup & Rolls.
Unfortunately, they’re out of Hanoi beer. So I have to make do with a Saigon.
“Shouldn’t it really be a Ho Chi Minh City beer?”
“Very funny, Ronald.”
We kick off with a spring and a summer roll each. The spring rolls are dead good. The summer rolls not quite as good as on Saturday. My main course, crispy duck on fried noodles, is ace. Even though there’s quite a pile, I shovel it down. Dolores has a beef noodle salad that’s also pretty damn good.
Bags picked up, we face the long trek to Tegel. There are several possible routes, none perfect. The one with the fewest stairs isn’t practical. The M10 tram, as we discovered on Friday, doesn’t run all the way through due to works on the track. So we plump for the U-Bahn/S-Bahn route again. Despite all the stairs.
It’s all going well. Until there’s an announcement saying the train won’t go any further than Wedding, due to a Polizei Einsatz (police operation). Great. I quickly consult the network map. If we take the U6, we can connect with the 128 bus. More stairs. Just what we needed.
We squeeze onto the bus. And have to stand. There’s a bloke sitting nearby with a nose the size, shape and colour of a half-pound strawberry. It waves from side to side every time he moves his head.
We check in dead quickly. It helps that I can use the short queue because of my Sky Elite status.
We’ve still some time. The terminal we’re leaving from is a bit shit. An obviously temporary shed. So best be airside. Inside is pretty grim. Doesn’t look like they’ve changed anything since the 1970’s.
Luckily, there’s a little pub just outside our terminal. In an old S-Bahn carriage. I get myself a Kindl Jubiläums Pils. It isn’t great. But it is wet.
Our flight starts boarding early. And is ready to leave early. But we have to wait for 30 minutes for a air traffic control slot.
It is cheese in the sandwich on the way back. It looks just like the egg one. As is traditional, I wash it down with red wine.
The house is still in one piece. Unlike my Guinness. Alexei has drunk a couple of bottles. It could have been worse. He could have got stuck my Abt stash.
Plusminusnull (+-0)
Grünberger Str. 61,
10245 Berlin
+49 30 21239624
http://www.plusminusnull-berlin.de/
Soup & Rolls
Kopernikusstraße 11,
10243 Berlin.
Tel.: +49 30 80923253
EsS-Bahn Imbiss
Tunnel Flughafen Tegel,
13405 Berlin.
Tel.: +49 30 41014441
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1 comment:
Phở and Bánh mì?
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