Day #8 Synopsis – By now we’re all international Travel pros… carrying credentials and picking our way home. It is a later start which does have us moving early, but at a civilized hour! I’m looking forward to landing in Iceland and secretly hoping to get delayed there for an extra day so we can explore that too 😁. You’ll need to brush up on Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) details for re-entering Canada. They may ask you where you have visited, if you have anything to declare and other trip details. Most often it’s clear sailing. We use the ArriveCan App which can speed up the process if things are busy.
The day began with getting things sorted and ready for check-out and departure. We always do our best to leave things the way we found them, so we took a little time to make sure dishes, beds, bathroom are all in good shape and that we haven’t left anything behind. It proved a convenient rental that met all our needs (Proximity to UBahn, internet access, and even a kitchen).
When ready, we left the bags at the door and completed one last visit, located just next door. The Museum in der Kulturbrauerei is hard core DDR, an exhibition on “Everyday Life in the GDR” showing what East Germans’ lives were like in the 1970s and 1980s – at work, in public and in private. Another motivation for visiting this museum was to give Paige access to how this Museum in the heart of East Berlin is presenting the transition from one dictatorship to another in the 1950s. For her IB history paper, Paige is researching challenges that led to the Second Berlin crisis (Before the wall went up). Great period description… very authentic collection, and, nicely, we had the space to ourselves!
With that complete, we checked out, hit the subway, transferred to the S9 SBahn train and chugged our way to Brandenburg Airport (BER). Interestingly, we did have a ticket check on the way as the time had just about ticked down on our 24 hr passes. In fact, they had expired by the time we actually disembarked. Tricky… but it all worked out! At BER we eventually located and navigated security with no real hiccups and settled in, two hours early, for the first leg of the trip home, Berlin to Reykjavik via Icelandair. We left a little late, but arrived a little early, so some extra time to navigate the airport. Really a good flight, with some really fun views on the way in to Keflavik Airport. Here we saw the areas of black char near Grindavik, the tiny fishing town that was impacted by volcanoes / lava flows this spring.
The airport customs check at Keflavík was full on! Line up twisted through three rooms. Surprisingly busy here but the customs lady explained that there are a lot of connecting flights to North America. The line up was massive, but moved quickly and we managed customs easily. Then, a little more waiting. We boarded the last leg “on time” and took on the final 5 hrs of flight time to Halifax. Customs & departure from Halifax Stanfield International went as expected. Although an entirely exhausting day, lasting from 6:00 AM Berlin time to arrival at 204 Cloverville at almost 11:00 PM (nearing 24 hrs with time change) it’s the price of being abroad this time of year! The brighter side is that all connections were made, nothing was lost amid all those stops, and everyone was still speaking to each other (barely) 😂.
Welcome home and congrats on pulling off another stunning trip. Once again, you folks saw, experienced and enjoyed a ton of stuff in such a short time. Your planning looks like it was meticulous, efficient and successful.
Pretty cool with the Iceland route. And I was crossing my fingers that you’d get delayed as well. It’d be interesting to compile a list of all of the airlines we’ve travelled on. Oh wait. Silly me…. I’m sure you have that!!
Haha… you know, I don’t have an airline “list”, although I have enough history in the blog to gather one together. Lots of carriers this time around for sure… no luck in missing flights in Iceland (darn)! Both Scotland and Iceland are “teasers” will be back to those countries undoubtedly.
Janie and I were talking today… love your commenting Mike. So on target and always with a tip, an inquiry and a good sense of humour. Thanks so much for travelling along with us. It’s always appreciated. As you well know, blogging while on the road is hard work, but I think worth it (especially this time around as families followed along from home). Cheers, and looking forward to your next Hinchey Adventure!