I got up just before my 07:20 alarm, and got ready for running. I started off by running to the ruins of the Anhalter Bahnhof, but didn’t expect to be stopping quite so often for traffic lights. This was something we’d passed in the dark a couple of nights ago, but I wanted to photograph in daylight. It was one of the buildings that suffered major damage during Allied air raids on the city, but before that it'd been one of the most important stations in the area. It was also used in the atrocities, where Berlin Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

From there I ran to the Holocaust tower, and then in the direction of Alexanderplatz, using the Fernsehturm as an indicator of the direction to run in. Before I got there, I had to make a small diversion for roadworks, and then found my way to part of the old Berlin city wall, and some ruins of Franziskaner-Klosterkirche.

The run back I found to be much slower, as I was stopping for more and more traffic lights as rush hour impacted my route. Eventually I got back to the ibis not that long before 09:00 and had a shower. We then packed a little before heading out for breakfast. It took some doing, but we eventually decided on getting a bacon and egg sandwich from Starbucks, which we ate outside by the Brigitte und Martin Matschinsky-Denninghoff sculpture.

We’d then got about an hour to finish packing, and check out. Unfortunately Carmen’s Totoro necklace didn’t turn up. On our way to the Zoologischer Garten station I checked the trains and everything was running smoothly, but by the time we got there it’d changed to significant delays again. If we missed this train it’d be over an hour until the next. Fortunately it was easy to find the right platform, and we’d still got about fifteen minutes to spare.

As it would soon be lunchtime, I left the luggage with Carmen, and went looking for somewhere to get Bretzels from. They’re the most common snack in the area, so knew I’d find some somewhere. Two flights of stairs down, I found a bakery in the station that sold them, so got us one each, and was back in plenty of time for the train.

We had to stand for the journey to the airport, but fortunately it’s not that long. However, Carmen realised she’d left her water flask behind at the hotel so would now need to buy a drink from the airport. Finding the right part of Terminal 1 to check-in for our flight was also fairly simple. Considering how new Berlin Brandenburg airport is, I found it surprising that I had to remove my laptop from its sleeve, and not just from my bag. Even though my DSLR was in a tray by itself, it still got flagged and they decided to swab it. Eventually I got through to meet Carmen on the seats the other side.

The airport has a LEGO store with different stamps to the two stores we’d visited in Berlin, so we got our passports stamped with these too. In order to reach our C gate, we had to go through border control which was a little better than immigration had been, but still slow. It seemed fortunate that our gate was opposite the entrance, but thirty minutes before our flight was due to leave there was a last minute change that sent us to a D gate, as far away from where we were as was possible. There’s a few shops in this part of the terminal, but choices are limited. They do however have a water fountain for refilling bottles.

At 15:40 our flight was then on its way to London City airport. Due to a strong easterly wind, the aircraft had to take a different approach to normal which meant we got to see more of London on the way in, and landed ten minutes early. Twenty minutes later we were through immigration, had collected our luggage, and was on the way to the DLR. The speediness is always the best bit about returning home.