I want to publish a few links that I’ve found useful for finding out things in Berlin:
A good start for Halloween. You have been warned.
See the link here:
http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=31&weekday=tue
Like London, Berlin is filled to the brim with history. What’s more interesting is the way that many of these historical sites are often inaccessible to the public, and for the most part, not even used by the city of Berlin itself. When our product owner, talked about the Tempelhof Airport being opened for the registration parts of the Berlin marathon, I thought it’d be a great time to see the interior the building and see what it was all about.
The building itself is normally closed during the operation, but its hangers are often used for big events such as the Berlin marathon that attracts more than 40, 000 registrants to run it it. It attracts a huge number of visitors even just as spectators, and of course, as a result, many sponsors who want to showcase their wares. In a clever arrangement, as a person picking up their kit, you have to walk through two huge hangers filled with sponsor’s stuff (and of course lots of sales and equipment to buy) before you can pick up your kit. And of course, you have to walk past more on the way out. As one would expect here in Germany, it was all very efficiently and effectively run.
It was great to see the interior to the airport itself. It felt surprisingly modern or not as outdated as I thought it would feel. It was also the easiest time I’ve had to get through any type of security, simply paying €2 to get entrance into the whole event.
Here’s a picture above of a marathon record holder who also beat my time for the half marathon, effectively doing more than half my pace. Insane!
I couldn’t really believe how big the entire event was either, with the entire registration area attracting several cafes and restaurants and working to fill two or three different airplane hangers with merchandising, advertising and basically everything a running enthusiast would care for.
I’m really glad that we could go inside and see what it was all about. I’d highly recommend you go if the opportunity arises as wel.
One of the reasons I picked the Budapest Half Marathon to run was to visit a city I was yet to actually visit. Budapest was a bit of a closer flight from Berlin and, if I ended up in London, also would have been quite an easy exercise to get there with several carriers including budget airlines like EasyJet going there more frequently.
Budapest is a beautiful city, of course, made up of the two very different sides, Buda and Pest that formed to turn into a single city sitting along the Danube River. We saw quite a lot of what there was to see, although pretty much just lazily walked around the entire city partly because the Sunday meant I wasn’t particularly energetic after the half marathon, and also because the weather was really hot.
One of the interesting things I found out about the city was how old many of the buildings and furnishings there were. Apparently, for example, the metro system was just as old as the London Underground and it kind of showed (in a good way) including the old signage to the leather straps one holds on to instead of the modern day plastic ones.
People are very patriotic about their city and you’ll often see national colours and flags in various places. I had to laugh at this particular one, with a mascot dog flying the Hungarian flag that we saw shortly after the half marathon finished.
We stayed on the Pest side of the river, where there is much more to do as a tourist, both in terms of places to walk around and just places to eat. Buda seemed to be a bit more where people lived although the stretch along the river offers much to the visitor such as their small furnicular that leads up to spectacular views over the Danube.
From the amazing vantage points you could really appreciate how many bridges Budapest had that criss-crossed the Danube back and forth.
One of the good things to do as well is to visit the Great Market Hall that offers an insight into what sort of things people eat (lots of meat!) and admittedly several touristy places where you can pick yourself up a souvenir or two. Popular things to buy include paprika, paprika paste, goulash spices, saffron and truffle oil or truffles.
Another great thing worth doing if you have a bit of time is to get to Margaret Island and enjoy the scenery or lie about in a park like many of the Hungarians would if you have the time.
Hire one of the great bikes and have fun navigating in a very old cycle for two. They are very similar to the ones you can rent in Rome for instance.
Done! One of my biggest goals for the year was finishing a half marathon. I was debating about where and when I should do one and settled upon the one in Budapest. It turned out to be a great choice with both London and Berlin averaging around twenty degrees and enough rain to make it worth it, we settled on a very hot (30 degrees) and wonderfully sunny Sunday morning with a running route that went along both sides of the Danube up and down the main streets of the city.
Although I’d been training all year, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to run the time in. My goal was to simply finish the race (the next one can be improvement) and given that I had a small knee injury leading up to, wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to be one of those people that get picked up by the trailing vans that carry people around.
Fortunately I finished the 21km in 2:02:48 a time I was very happy with. I was very impressed by how well organised everything was although the medal engraving coudl have done with some better organising (turning into a very random name calling section that doesn’t really scale well for the 8000 participants in the half marathon).
This made me laugh quite hard.
Something fun to smile at for today.
One of the hardest parts of of being a travelling consultant can be planning optimal holidays in advance. For example, I had a summer trip planned for Paris, although this meant a trip back from Berlin to London only to Eurostar it out to Paris first thing the next morning and then a reverse route to get back to Berlin on the Monday morning.
Nevertheless, it’s always great to visit the French capital, full of little boulevards, and winding streets, amazing pastries, reasonable coffee and just a great atmosphere.
I’ve noticed that when you travel for work and then go on holiday, I want to do just wander and relax rather than trying to see lots of different things and do plenty of activities. This is rather easy for nice cities that have heaps on offer that I’ve visited before.
The other great thing about Paris is knowing a few people and I got to catch up with Sat who’s living in Paris with his girlfriend telling me the whole low-down of life as an IT consultant in Paris and the difficulties of working in the rather hierarchical organisations.
Although the storm clouds threatened at times during the weekend, I was fortunate to have much better weather than both London and Berlin that had terrible storms for that weekend in particular.
