Workouts I Did During My Vacation in Germany

Brezhnev/Honecker kiss mural - Berlin Wall

Let me see if I remember most of what happened last June. Packed luggage, exchanged dollars to euros, picked up by Shuttle2LAX, dropped at LAX, flew to Charles De Gaulle Airport, connected to Bremen, Germany, picked up by Emy at the airport, took the train to Bremen Central Train Station where Emy told me that if I had to remember anything, remember the Hauptbahnhof because the practically all look alike everywhere, then took another train to Bremerhaven. So far, so good.

Hannover Hauptbahnhof

Wait, I left something out. While at CDG, in order for me not to miss my daily workout, I walked for 30 minutes in a crowded terminal while pulling my carry on luggage. So how did I manage to do my requisite at least 30 minutes of exercise a day while I was on my German vacation? Actually it doesn’t take much provided you are able to make some adjustments like for example the aforementioned walk through the airport terminal.

Germany Workouts

June 22: 30 minute walk in Charles De Gaulle domestic terminal – Well this one didn’t elevate my heart rate much or at all because it was like an obstacle course in a terminal where people didn’t keep right in the hallway.

June 23: 30 minute jog in a farm town in the outskirts of Bremen – upon being woken up by horses neighing and cows mooing, I ventured out in a slight drizzle in my Northface jacket, found a loop and the main street and ran beside farm houses. It was a struggle finishing the 30 minutes probably due to jet lag. This was my only run in Germany. The moving van arrived, belongings were loaded, and my friend Emy moved to her new apartment in Hannover.

June 24: 30 minute walk from Emy's new apartment – Amid all the boxes in the living room, I woke up early and got ready to venture out for a walk in a strange neighborhood. Did I tell you that in the summer, it gets bright early at 4 p.m. then doesn’t get dark until past 10 p.m.? I walked several laps around a block until I finished 30 minutes.

June 25: 50 minute walk from Emy’s apartment. Instead of the loops, I found an out and back street course which took me over a bridge with a river which name I don’t know ran under.

June 26: 45 minute walk in Hannover from Michael’s (Emy’s son) apartment. After having dinner the previous night with family and friends of Emy, we stayed with Michael. This course involved a loop and going up and down side streets. Later in the day, Emy and I left for Berlin via train.

Berlin City Tour bus

June 27: 40 minute walk from B&B Tiergarten. This is a hotel right beside a lesser known gate in Berlin called the Charlottenburg Gate. I walked out and back on the main street for 20 minutes starting from the gate.

June 28: 30 minute walk in B&B Tiergarten river path. I found a paved and unpaved river path near the Charlottenburg Gate and walked out and back for 15 minutes, and saw a few runners and walkers. We left Berlin for Hamburg in the mid afternoon.

Right side of Charlottensburg Gate

June 29: 32 minute walk in Hamburg. We checked in at Hotel Condor yesterday which was very near the Hamburg Hauptbahnhof and I walked from there. I chose an out and back course along what looked like a main street, and on the way I found myself among shops and a business area. I saw some polizei removing some sheets from a naked statue. I guess someone dressed the statue during the night. I also walked by a huge building old building and on the way back, I asked some polizei who were standing nearby what building it was and they said it was the Town Hall. We went back to visit it later during our tour of the city. We left Hamburg and returned to Hannover later that day.

Hamburg Town Hall

June 30: 45 minute walk in Hannover from Emy’s apartment. This day, I found another out and back course on another street. So far I haven’t found any hills in this area and the terrain is very flat other than the bridge I mentioned earlier.

July 1: 60 minute walk in Hannover from Emy’s apartment. I walked towards the other side of yesterday’s street and found the end of the train line which traverses the area. I made a right turn and continued on until I reached 30 minutes, then turned back. Good thing I was able to do an hour this day because we had a heavy dinner and beers later at the Hannover location of Hofbrau Munchen.

Michael & I at Hannover Hofbrau Munchen

July 2: 30 minute walk in Hannover from Michael’s apartment. We stayed here overnight and I managed a 30 minute walk at 4 a.m. before we went back to Emy’s place. Later, Emy and her friend took me to the Hannover Hauptbahnhof for my trip to Kassel where I visited her sister Bernie and her husband. I was able to do an additional walk that afternoon when Bernie and her husband took me to a lake with some hilly trails. I didn’t even time that walk anymore, but it lasted more than an hour.

Lake near Kassel

July 3: 1 hour walk in Baunatal/Kassel from Bernie’s house. Bernie showed me a walking path near her house which had a fork in the end. I took the right side and walked by some wheat fields until I reached a street. I turned around and went back home. Another hour walk that helped because I went to lunch & dinner at Lisa (another of Emy’s sisters) and her husband’s house in Kassel, where I met up with their mother Becca and another sister, Irene and her husband. Later in the evening we went to another beer garden where I had a beer tasting consisting of 4 kinds of beer in 11 ounce glasses. Yikes!

The fork in the road

July 4: 1 hour walk in Baunatal from Bernie’s house. Today I took the left turn at the fork in the road and saw some small parks and dirt trails that veered off from the main path, but which I didn’t dare explore for fear of getting lost. At noontime, a cab took me to Kassel Bahnhof where I took the train to Bremen where I was going to fly from the next day, to go back home. And then this adventure happened: Last 2 days Germany adventure - part 1

July 5: 40 minute walk from and around Bremen Airport Holiday Inn Express. I found a park right across the airport, walked around it and along some adjoining streets. A couple of hours later, I walked from the hotel to the airport for my trip back home, and then this next adventure happened: Last 2 days in Germany - part 2 and Last 2 days in Germany - part 3.

So that one run and all the walking workouts I managed to do satisfied my need or maybe compulsion to exercise every day despite being in far flung places, and I’ve been doing a daily exercise for more than 30 years without skipping one.

Why a Vacation in Germany?

Brandenburg Gate, Berlin

For someone who doesn’t go on vacations much and so far the only two countries I’ve been in are the Philippines and USA, other than layovers in South Korea, China, and Canada, how on earth did I end up taking a vacation in Germany? Well, that took more than a year in the making. Early in 2016, my friend Emy who lives in Germany was planning on having a grand 60^th birthday party, inviting friends near and far. The party’s theme was supposed to be the hippie culture of the 1960’s, so I started checking out costumes on the internet, you know: bell bottoms, flower power, long hair, LSD, and the like. Well, OK, not LSD. I also started looking into airline flights, but the websites were unable to show me anything more than a year in advance. When that cutoff time finally came, I immediately booked a flight on Air France from Los Angeles to Bremen (the closest airport to where Emy lives), with a connecting flight in Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. Having had a bad experience with very long layovers during last year’s trip to the Philippines (8 hours in Guangzhou!), I found a flight with the least amount of layover time. Little did I know that it would end up biting me in the butt later. Another lesson learned with that one: book a flight with a layover time that accommodates for delays.

Well, about two months before my trip, and after the invitation arrived, Emy calls me tearfully saying that the birthday party is cancelled due to a drastic change in her life. She had to find a job, sell her house in the suburbs, separate from her husband, and find a new place to move in. Additionally, she had to sell her excess but valuable items and find storage space for all her possessions. Since I hadn’t seen her since 1992 when she stopped by briefly in my home, I told her that I wasn’t going to Germany for the party, but rather to visit her after all these years. Prior to 1992, the last time I saw her was in 1979 when we worked together as physical fitness instructors in a gym called The Sweat Shop in Makati, Philippines. I suggested that I could make other plans for my vacation, but she said it was ok for me to come to Germany anyway.

Luggage packing test before trip

As the day of my flight approached, I did several suitcase packing trials taking into account that the July weather in Germany was similar to winter weather in California. I tried packing 6 microfleece long sleeved shirts and 3 pairs of jeans along with my packable North Face jacket which I bought specifically for this trip. I ended up packing 3 microfleece shirts and a couple of thinner shirts and had to ditch the jeans for regular slacks because they wouldn’t fit in my carry on suitcase. Having done that, my other checked luggage was for presents. I also bought some Euro currency from Travelex and with that, I was good to go other than not knowing the language. So I downloaded a German/English translation app, as well as Google Translate, none of which I ended up using, or barely anyway.

The rest of the trip to follow.

Germany – The Adventure of the Last Two Days (Part 3) Paris to San Francisco to Los Angeles

Shackled in Germany

I had requested the customer service attendant for an aisle seat.  Unfortunately the only seat available was a middle one, so I was sandwiched between an Armenian lady on the aisle side and a Greek man who liked to manspread on the window side. However they were very pleasant people so it wasn’t a difficult trip in that regard. The Armenian lady noted that at least I was good natured about missing my connection. And I said that’s because I couldn’t really do anything about it since it was beyond my control. The flight felt longer than it was and despite watching a couple of movies and imbibing two glasses of wine, I couldn’t sleep. So when I started feeling antsy because I don’t like sitting for long periods of time, I got up and hanged out near the galley for a couple of hours. It was then when I noticed the difference between the other airlines I had flown with and Air France. Air France had a pretty much unlimited supply of snacks and drinks that they just left in their two galleys in coach class for any passenger to partake in and one particular woman kept coming back for more. That kind of perk was indeed very nice for coach class.

Gaming area in Charles de Gaulle Airport

When we landed in San Francisco, we went to the baggage claim area, but since I wasn’t sure if my baggage was going to be transferred by Air France to Delta, I asked customer service and the man said yes. So I proceeded to Customs and asked the officer to direct me to my connecting flight. He did, but asked me first where I was coming from. I told him about how I missed my flight to L.A., and he said that I should wait for my baggage because it would not be forwarded to L.A. Thank goodness that customs officer gave me the correct information which was not part of his job, and was very nice because some of them can be surly. I found my baggage and went through the same officer and thanked him profusely. Much to my surprise, even though the zipper of the front pocket of my checked baggage was slightly open, none of my belongings were missing!

I proceeded to my proper domestic terminal, checked in the correct baggage this time, then went through TSA inspection again. Oh boy, it looked like the majority of TSA agents I saw in that terminal were Filipinos!

The 55 minute flight to L.A. was uneventful, however it was already 10 p.m. when we arrived. My original arrival time if I hadn’t missed my connection would have been about 3 p.m. We went to baggage claim again and it took a while for mine to appear. As soon as I picked it up, I exited the building and started looking for the Prime Time Shuttle stop. The first lectern I found had no agent and a note directed me to the next stop. Upon getting there, there was no agent either but there was a touch screen computer which asked me to enter my reservation number or phone number. The computer system did not find me. I found Super Shuttle and the next van happened to be going to my direction, so I boarded it even though I had to pay again because the Prime Time reservation was prepaid. There were only three stops but I was the last one, and by the time I got home it was already 11:30 at night. It had been a very arduous trip that lasted almost a day and a half, but I was very relieved to make it back home with me and my luggage intact and safe. All it took were trains, a car, planes, and a van to reach my final destination.

Germany – The Adventure of the Last Two Days (Part 1) Kassel to Bremen

View from Kassel's Hercules monument

Did you know that it costs a Euro to use the WC/toilette/bathroom in a train station? Well, anyway…

My last couple of days in Germany was quite an adventure due to unforeseen circumstances. What should have been an uneventful train ride from Kassel to Bremen turned out to be otherwise. Taking the taxi from my friend Bernadette’s house, it was easy enough to find the correct platform from the eingang (entrance), the correct train number, and the correct seat (platz) reservation on the Deutch Bahn ICE train (an express train) because the bahnhof (train station) in Kassel was small enough. Hauptbahnhofs or Grand Central Stations were more confusing for me because of numerous platforms and floors. Next, the train was delayed and instead of arriving at the original platform in front of me, it arrived at the one behind me. Fortunately I had been talking to a woman minutes before, who happened to work for Deutsch Bahn, who told me about the change. When we got going, sometime in the middle of the trip, there was an announcement that we would be getting off at Hannover Hauptbahnhof to transfer to a regional train which has more stops. Initially, we were informed that it would be the regional train on track 11, but as we were about to get off, another announcement in German said we would be taking the train from track 12 instead. Fortunately, some Germans nearby translated to announcement for me, and I told one of them that I would be following her and her kids. However, they stopped by a snack shop to buy some food. Being in unfamiliar situations and the thought of being lost especially in a foreign country gives me high anxiety. I told my friend Emy about that before I left for Germany and that my life was in her hands when I got there.

Beer tasting near Kassel

I then proceeded to track 12, looked at the posted schedule, and it turned out that the train that was waiting at the track was the one I was supposed to take. I entered it and asked a gentleman if I was on the right train and he said that I was. However, I didn’t have a seat reservation on this one even though I had a reservation on the original train. The same gentleman told me that reserved seats were indicated by an LED sign just above the seat. Fortunately, the immediate area I was in had a vacant one.

When we arrived in Bremen Hauptbahnhof, I looked for the ausgang (exit) towards the front of the building and started looking for the taxi stand. I found a taxi easily and told the driver I wanted to go to the Holiday Inn Express near Bremen Flughafen (airport). He said “no problem”. A few short miles later, I arrived at my destination for the day. I checked in and explored the area so I could easily find my way to the airport the next day. It was only about a block away by U.S. standards. I found a Chinese food restaurant, ate a light dinner, then found myself buying an apple strudel in McDonalds which I took back to the hotel and ate it in my room with yet another mug of beer which the bartender downstairs allowed me to take. And thus ended the first day.