Mon, 01 Sep 2003

author Tim	location Hotel Remter, Berlin, Deutschland
posted 10:06 CEST 02/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 2 ( all photos )

Rosie Goes to Meet Her Maker ( No photos )
No, not that sort of maker - she's been taken to a proper Volkswagen dealer and mechanic at the expense of our Travel Insurance.
After speaking to the Melbourne couple, we decided to get ourselves organised while we were still in an interesting city (the capital of the country Volkswagens come from, no less), just in case the repairs take a few days.
First on the agenda was getting into town, back to the Czech embassy and finding out whether my Visa was ready again. Infact, it was, so I handed over a reasonable sum of cash for my one-entry thirty-day Visa. Liz pays nothing for her much greater freedom (on a British passport), the trade-off being that she doesn't get a pretty little sticker thing in her passport.
We then rang the insurance company to set some wheels in motion, before heading back to the caravan park to drive rosie a couple of suburbs in to the VW dealer at Zehlendorf, Auto Mann. Luckily there was someone there who spoke English, and poked and prodded at her as if he had worked on these old things since he could walk. We'll call back soon to find out what the situation is.
So, this left us without somewhere to stay for the night, and yet again our insurance has proved it was worth the expense. Since the British pound is so strong at the moment, when we are given a fixed number of pounds for hotel and dinner, that means plenty of Euros. We elected to find our own hotel, which we pay for and then claim back.
A room-finding service (hey, why not? We're not paying for it) at Berlin-Zooligischer Garten station pointed us to a very central hotel, quoting a price which he expected us to balk at. "No worries" we said, for it was still quite a way under our allowance. We tottered off to dump our stuff at the Hotel Remter, about thirty seconds off the main drag in this part of town in Marburger Straße. The place is nice, quite old but spotless and with good service.
We dumped our things, before heading off to an Internet Café where we had no chance of plugging the laptop in, instead just checking our emails (we will reply soon!) and doing a bit of research into some flights from Amsterdam to London.
Next, we needed to look more into flights so went in search of an STA Travel office. Eventually finding it, we waited for quite a while before being told that they can only book Air New Zealand from London to Sydney (but anything from Hamburg to Sydney), which is fine, but there are very limited seats available. Prices aren't bad, but we are going to look around a bit more first.
Now it was dinner time, and with someone else still paying, we ate in style at the very nice Joe's Mirtshaus Zum Löwen, a branch of the big Löwenbrau chain (there's one in The Rocks in Sydney called Löwenbrau Keller). A couple of nice steaks washed down with a couple of great beers and it was time to head back to the hotel.
We originally planned to head back out for coffee, but the lure of big beds we didn't have to fold out, mind-numbing TV and hot showers put rest to that plan.

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