Day 5 - Berlin

Berlin Day 5
First things first, Clint is feeling better today. Not 100%, but good enough that we got out and about today. Last breakfast buffet at the hotel before checkout. We walked to the train station at Alxanderplatz (das bahnhof) and deposited our packs into a locker for the day. €6 for the big locker for 24 hours. Not bad!
So we head off to Fat Tire City Bike Tours (name, font and cruiser bike logo exactly the same as Fat Tire amber ale from New Belgium, apparently on purpose) for our much anticipated bike tour of Potsdam Gartens and Palais. We arrive and are "greeted" with a grunt, as our tour left at 10:00 and not 10:30 as I had thought. Shit, we're now really pissed off. We were REALLY looking forward to that, especially because yesterday had been a wasted day with Clint getting food poisoning. So we take 5 min. to be angry, then we decide to transfer our tour to the All In One city bike tour. We'll see a lot of what we saw on our walking tour, only this time by bike. At least we're out doing something fun.
Were in a group of about 20, and I volunteer to be the "bum babe," someone to bring up the rear and make sure nobody gets left behind. We get our cruiser bikes, mine named "Hamburg" and Clint's named "Al Green." They were all named places, celebrities, rock bands, etc. Our guide Kevin is from Pennsylvania. So anyhow, most of the same sights as the walking tour we took before. The weather was cold but clear and sunny today, so it was nice to be moving on the bikes, although we were anything but quick. The highlight of the bike tour was cruising through the Tiergarten, and hanging out at the biergarten. We biked through much of the Tiergarten, which used to be the King's hunting grounds. By hunting, it is meant that the King was too busy to hunt, so he gathered the animals in the Tiergarten (translates to animal garden) so he could then shoot them.
But it was beautiful, shady, cold, windy, and thoroughly enjoyable. 
We then went to an outdoor biergarten, which might be redundant, as I think biergarten implies that it it out doors. For lunch we had a Flammkuchen Alsace (in the Alsacian style, from Alsace, as is Alsace Lorraine, which means with onions and bacon) and a dark bier. Delicious. And while sitting there, we were joined by a couple of our age from Puyallup; small world. And then we're back on our bikes through the city and back to Alexanderplatz to end the tour. As a "thank you" for being the "bum babe," I get a souvenir piece of the Berlin wall. Um, yay?
After the tour (now almost 4:00), we head to the Neus Museum on Museuminsel. There they have the bust of Nefertiti and the statue of Helios. Both were impressive and well worth the visit. Other than those two items, the most interesting part of the museum was the old Roman antiquities; coins, sarcophagi, armor. Lots of antiquities here, but most were, to us, boring. 
Now we're having coffee outside by the river, freezing. I have goosebumps and frozen fingers typing this. It's about 60° F. I'm wearing a 3/4 sleeve dress and leggings, Clint is in pants and a golf shirt. Burrrr. Is it worth €6 to get our packs out of the locker to retrieve our jackets? Time will tell. We have 6 hours until our night train to Amsterdam. Until then, let's eat dinner, get warm, and figure out the train system to get us to the Hoptbahnhof.
OK, we've had our dinner at a Spanish tapas restaurant. Our most expensive dinner yet, ringing in at €56, which is about $73. This was for 2 x 1/2 liters of wine, 3 items from the tapas menu (of which the pork medallion with figs in a rosemary balsamic reduction was by far the best) and flan. All in all, a great meal and nicer than what we expected to find a block away from the train station (the smaller Alexanderplatz station, not our big DeutscheBahn station for the big passenger trains. More like an inner-city transit center.)
So we hopped an S-Bahn, which I'm not sure is different from the U-Bahn that we have been taking. Maybe U-Bahn is like U-boat and goes underground, while the S-Bahn maybe is for surface? No idea. Anyway, we're now at the Hoptbahnhof waiting for our train to Amsterdam, which leaves at 12:32 am. That is 2:02 from now. No Wi-Fi, so Clint's reading and I'll soon likely do the same.
The Hoptbahnhof is nice, like the airport. On one of our tours, we heard that some 300,000 people travel through here each day. The bathrooms (WC) cost €1, and they have an attendant so they're always clean and nice. It's like a shopping mall once you're inside with all kinds of shops selling souvenirs, clothing, fast food, bakeries and noodle houses (Asian food is huge here; it was tough not to wander into a Thai or Pho restaurant). There are probably 6 or 7 floors and trains leaving from 5-6 platforms per floor. North-South trains on the lower floors, East-West trains upstairs. And each train going in both directions to add to the confusion. So not only did we need to figure out which platform/floor we need, we also had to figure out which side of the track to get on the train. We have an assigned car and assigned seats in an assigned cabin. Oh boy. Way more complicated than the airport. Maybe that's just because we're unpracticed Americaners.