Aug 21 2025

When Lori has trouble sleeping one trick/tool she uses is to listen to the “I Can’t Sleep” podcast which consists of a Benjamin Boster, who has the prefect voice for the task, reading random pages from Wikipedia. To quote Lori, “Bulgaria is a banger”. Having listened to it repeatedly it piqued her curiosity about the country and thus she expressed interest in visiting there.

Also, during the pandemic, a Facebook group sprung up called “What Do You See from Your Window?” During the peak of the public health interventions, people were posting pictures of, well the title says it. Except there was one person posting stunning pictures of hiking in Romania. Therefore Paul was intrigued about also visiting Romania to do some hiking.

Thus a seed was planted. 

It also presented a few other opportunities. When we lived in the UK, Lori was sent to Berlin for work so she had  had a very brief visit there. Paul had never been. Also during our time in the UK, we made our ill-fated visit to Krakow, and we were keen to get back and see how much it had changed in 30 years as, back then, it was only just starting to emerge from communism. In the end we couldn’t really find a hiking option (akin to our Offa’s Dyke hike last year) and so we ended up booked on a tour through Romania and Bulgaria and we added some bits on before and at the end in Istanbul.

What better way to start a trip than on a train? We journeyed from  Frankfurt airport to Berlin to arrive at our hotel near to the train station but also a modest walk from the Reichstag and Brandenberg Gate. 

Somewhat paradoxically, in an effort to stay awake, we went for a walk through the nearby university grounds amongst such luminaries as Planck, Koch, Virchow and Langerhans and finished the evening with schnitzel and spatzle. What better introduction to Berlin?