Berlin

Berlin

Day 1: Drive to Berlin (Aug 1)
Shelby started his day at 0430 this morning when he headed into work for a few hours. Colin and I finished packing and met him on base when he was done with work so we could hit the road. Finally after some errands and a few speed bumps we were on our way. According to Google Maps the drive from Ramstein to Berlin is about 5.5 hours. Clearly they are not referring to those travelling with a potty training, almost three year old. Our drive was more like 7 something hours and I was more than ready to get there and be out of the car when we finally arrived at our hotel around 11 PM that night.

Day 2: Berlin City Tour (Aug 2)
After waking up and getting around our first order of business was to hit Starbucks…always a priority when travelling in big cities! We decided to book tickets for a “hop on, hop off” type bus tour since there were so many things to see and we didn’t really have a “must see” list planned out yet. We figured it would take us to all the major important sites and we’d see a little bit of everything that way. We went to the stop to board the bus with our email confirmation/purchase receipt on the iphone (how did we live before this thing?) and the stupid not-so-nice woman at the desk said that the receipt had to be printed and was not valid on my phone. (Which it clearly said was acceptable right there on the phone but arguing with her wasn’t going to get me on the bus). We spent the next hour trying to find an internet café with a printer, no luck. Then we found another stop for the same bus tour and I decided to ask that guy, who barely glanced at my phone and told me to go to the bus stop and get on. So we went to where he said, showed another lady at that ticket booth the phone and she gladly handed over our tickets. I told her about our experience with the bitchy woman up the road and that we wasted an hour of our time trying to find a printer that we didn’t need. She apologized and FINALLY we boarded the bus.
Colin was super excited about riding the bus and at every stop he would tell us it was not time to get off yet. The only downside to a tour bus like that is that it is difficult to take good pictures from inside the bus, you just don’t get the photo ops you get while walking. Speaking of photos, I’ll apologize in advance for mine. A couple months back my Panasonic got a dirty spot on the lens and needed cleaning. Since it was 2 years old and a newer model was out I just decided to upgrade and buy the newer Panasonic Lumix because we’ve had previous models and the quality and capability for the money are outstanding. I bought it right before vacation and didn’t have a ton of time to play with it before leaving. Well the latest model does not stand up to the reputation and I do not care for it at all. Sadly I am stuck with it because I can’t return it to stupid Aafes after 30 days and we will be on vacation longer than that. I left my Canon at home so I am stuck with what I have for now. Hmph.
Back to the bus…we saw a lot of major points of interest on the tour. The tour bus had headphones that gave little tidbits about places, but trying to listen to an audio guide while keeping tabs on Colin does not work out so well. I don’t remember very much of what I “learned” on that tour. We also buy books from every city we visit to reference and read about the places we stop to see so we can get little factoids about the buildings and history. Again, reading while trying to keep Colin from running off/spitting on things/chasing pigeons/peeing in public/touching things and/or people/picking up trash/eating said trash (pick any of the aforementioned) is basically impossible. So again, I saw a lot of really cool stuff in Berlin…but I can’t tell you a whole lot about it. I’ll be visiting wiki pages for places when I caption photos for you, lol!
Potty training while on vacation is fun too, especially when public toilets are spread out and you have to pay to use them. Colin will tell you when he has to go to the bathroom, but you often don’t have a lot of time once he lets you know to get him there. Then if there is something he’d rather be doing, you can forget him telling you at all. For example on the way to Berlin we stopped at a McD’s to eat and let him play. While playing he pooped his pants, even though I asked him numerous times while playing and reminded him over and over that if he went in the toilet he could go back and play after. He was too excited to stop and pooped a horrible nasty poop all over himself. We had to strip him down in the parking lot in front of everyone and go through a case of wipes to clean him off. He really doesn’t care too much about going on himself, so we had to come up with a way to express to him how bad this was. He LOVES to stay in hotels, so we told him that we were not going to the hotel anymore, that we had to go home now because the hotel does not allow kids that potty in their pants to stay there. That got his attention! He cried and bawled and hysterically claimed he’d go in the potty from now on. He even told us that he didn’t poop his pants, the other kids on the playground pooped in them! LOL I don’t think so kiddo! We let him think we were driving home for a long time and he was beside himself upset. He didn’t have another accident that day though, lol. On our first day in Berlin he had two accidents first, in the Concert/Opera house. We had to pull him around the side of the building and duck into a corner to change his clothes and rinse out his shoes…thank God for Crocs! Then that night at dinner he drank a lot and had already been to the bathroom. Shelby took him before we were ready to leave and he screamed and protested and did not want to go (making him ”try” to potty is torture apparently). He sat on the toilet fussing but refused to go. He came back to the table and a two minutes later said he had to potty and so I got to take him this time. Well he didn’t make it to the bathroom before he peed all over my hip where I was carrying him! YOU WERE JUST ON THE DAMN TOILET AND WOULDN’T PEE AND THEN YOU PEE ON ME?!?! I now understand why some animals eat their young. Thankfully we were close to the hotel , which he cried all the way back to because we told him we were going to pack up and leave because they would kick us out when they saw the pee pee on his clothes. We pretended to have a little conversation with the reception about how he will not have any more accidents if he can stay at the hotel and not leave. He was quite relieved to be “allowed” to stay at the hotel.

Day 3: Colin fun day Berlin (Aug 3)
Today was Colin’s day. After the Starbucks stop we headed to the Berlin Zoo for the day. Colin’s favorite part of the zoo was the goats in the petting area. We wound up there first thing in the morning on a toilet hunt and he didn’t want to leave. It was great because no one else was really back there yet and the goats were hungry. Colin fed and loved on them and told me one in particular was “Colin’s goat” and we were taking him home. We eventually talked him into leaving the goats and got to see some other animals too. The other highlight of his day was getting to feed all the little begging birds on the terrace at the zoo restaurant. He was talking to them and making sure they each got some and would have fed them all day long if we’d have let him. After the zoo we hit up the aquarium next to the zoo, but by that time he was pretty tired and only half interested in the fish.