27th – 28th of September – Berlin, pre-race

As my parents wanted to join me on my trip to Berlin, in part to socialize and cheer, and in part to do their own tourist-y thing. I was picked up around 0900 and we were off southbound towards Germany. Taking the ferry from Gedser to Rostock gave a break on the drive, and here we also met a very sociable golden retriever that wanted to greet everyone who passed by, but being kept on a very short leash by its owner it spent most of the time sulking and looking sad on the floor. Reaching the German coast, we continued and reached Berlin just to end up in the middle of rush hour with traffic as heavy as the rain that had started coming down.

When arriving we started passing by Tempelhof Airport where the run expo was held. Here I walked through multiple hangars and ID checks and past multiple stalls selling anything running related and large crowds before reaching the bib-number pickup. Having survived the chaos I returned to the car, and a short drive later we arrived at our hotel at around 1800. A few minutes later we met up with my sister, brother-in-law, sister and niece who had arrived a few hours earlier and went out to a nearby restaurant that made some delicious schnitzels.

You entered the Expo through the check-in area (on the right) and left past the luggage claim on the right.

Saturday morning I joined the breakfast run with about 10.000 others. We ran a short 6km route from Charlottenburg Palace to the Olympic stadium. The run was with everyone together in one large group, both tomorrow’s runners, any supporters wanting to join an anyone else feeling for a morning run. This meant that the running pace was gentle – so gentle that in the beginning we were moving on the narrow line between walking fast or running slowly, neither feeling comfortable. The distance was run in almost 43 minutes and being among the first arriving turned out to be a huge advantage; there was no queue when picking up fruit, snacks and drinks but the queues quickly increased in length when the main part of the group arrived.

Checkpoint Charlie.

The Olympic Stadium.

The Olympic Stadium from the outside.

The Olympic Pool.

Coming back to the hotel I had an hour’s rest before heading out for dinner. I ended up at a nearby Italian sports bar/restaurant that served an acceptable pasta and an absolutely fantastic cannoli. When wanting to pay she looked at me and said “sorry – only cash”. What is this? The 18^th century? Oh well, we Danes are getting close to barely having any cash due to most transactions being done by card, while the Germans do tend to still prefer cash, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Took my card, left my wallet, went down to an ATM not even 100 meters down the street to get some cash, return to pay and retrieve my wallet, and return back to the hotel.