Halbe; Sunday, 15 December, 2024

Checkout from the rooms was no later than 10am, though you could stay on in the park until late in the evening if you wanted, but I didn’t want to have to deal with wet swim gear in my luggage so after breakfast I packed (swimming trunks having dried successfully overnight on the heated towel rail in the bathroom), checked out and made the 09:55 shuttle bus back to the railway station where it connected with about 5 minutes to spare with the train back into Berlin.

The train was surprisingly busy for early on a Sunday morning, but I was able to get a seat and less than an hour later we were pulling into Ostkreuz station where I hopped off and caught the S-Bahn round the outer ring to Südkreuz station to use the left luggage lockers there.

From Südkreuz I caught a bus up through the city over to the Zoo. Despite coming to Berlin on multiple occasions, and it being one of the top sights, I’d never actually visited the zoo – in part as it is a large complex and requires a couple of hours to do it justice. But as I had nothing else planned for this trip, and a need to kill a few hours, it appeared to be the perfect time to visit.

The Zoologischer Garten Berlin is the original zoo of the city, opening in 1844, and during the separation of the city during the Cold War was the zoo for West Berlin, with the Tierpark opening in East Berlin in 1955. Both parks are still open in the city, now under the management of the one organisation and complementing rather than duplicating each other on animal species.

The zoo has two confusingly named gates. The Elefantentor (Elephant Gate) is located to the south of the park and is right by the Lion enclosure. The Löwentor (Lion Gate) is located opposite Zoo station and right next to the Elephant enclosure. I’d entered through the Lion Gate and so had pretty quickly ticked off a number of the big animals with Elephants, Rhinos and Hippos all located in this part of the zoo.

I spent several hours wandering round the park and was surprised by how many animals I was able to see, including the full house of Lions, Tigers, Jaguars and Leopards in the big cat house.

After leaving the zoo I headed over to Berlin Hauptbahnhof to grab a final currywurst of the trip before catching the train back down to Südkreuz to collect my luggage and catch the train out to the airport.

In the good old days of Tegel Airport I could have caught a bus from Zoo station and been out at the airport in less than 15 minutes, but today everything has been relocated to the new Brandenburg Airport on the site of the old Schönefeld airport, right at the far Southeastern corner of the city. There are multiple trains that run out to the airport from the centre of the city, but these all pass through the main central stations and are packed for most of the day. However, every 20 minutes an S45 train on the S-Bahn network runs between the airport and Südkreuz station. Whilst it takes about 10 minutes longer than using the services from the centre of town, picking it up at Südkreuz pretty much guarantees you a seat – which is why I’d chosen here to store my luggage and have a much more comfortable journey back to the airport than if I’d used either Zoo, Hauptbahnhof, Alexanderplatz or Ostbahnhof.

A comfortable journey with a full bay of four seats to myself for virtually the whole way and 40 minutes late I was at the airport and without the need to check luggage in and already in possession of my boarding pass I headed through security and over to the lounge, where I had about an hour before taking advantage of the passport control desk catering just for lounge customers to quickly get stamped out of Germany and walk the half mile or so the entire width of the airport to the gate my flight was leaving from to complete my journey home.