Goodbye Friends, Hello Berlin

June 26th—Our train left Warsaw about 11:30 a.m. today so we needed to leave the apartment about 10:00 to give us plenty of time to get to the train station. Before leaving though, we had several things to take care of. I went to the grocery store downstairs and picked up some snacks and drinks for the train ride. Domininka had brought us eggs and sausage this morning before leaving for work so I cooked the sausage in the oven to take on the train with us. She had also put hot dogs in the refrigerator so I cooked those as well. I wrapped all that up in aluminum foil to stay warm for a while. We also went to say thank you to the nice lady that let us use her apartment. When I asked Michael what her name was, he told me that he didn’t know, he just calls her Mrs. So, we said thank you to Mrs. and were informed by her that Michael Jackson had died. We talked to her for a little while about that and about her time in the United States. She was a very nice and generous lady. In fact, she even gave the kids some wonderful Polish chocolate. Here we were thanking her and she was graciously giving us stuff. Anyway, we loaded up the car and headed to Warsaw. Thankfully the traffic wasn’t too bad today and we arrived at the train station by 11:00. We would have been fine if Michael would have let us off at the curb, but that’s not his style. He parked the car and walked us all the way to our platform. It was so nice of him to help with our luggage and to make sure we were getting on the right train. After he helped us get on the train, he stood outside waving at us as our train pulled away. They were very hospitable for our entire stay and we are very grateful for their kindness. It was a lot of fun to get to experience Poland with some local friends. Our 6 hour train ride was uneventful for the most part. It just got a little long, but we arrived in Berlin around 5:30. Luckily, making public transportation connections in Berlin is pretty simple. We just walked to a different platform and got on the subway. 10 minutes later we were at our stop and walked to our hotel. We stayed at Hecker’s Hotel and it was very nice. It was a good change to be staying in a hotel versus apartment. After getting settled into the hotel, we went to eat at a pub close by. I believe Austin ordered the biggest hamburger ever, especially for a 3 year old. It was funny seeing him try to eat it. After dinner, we went back to the hotel. In order to get the kids to go to asleep, we turned all the lights off in the room. I was on the computer and before I knew it, Mike was asleep too. I spent the rest of the night talking to my mom on SKYPE while sitting in the bathroom so I wouldn’t wake anybody up.