Before I get on to the flight, some cheap advertising for the hotel. We stayed in the Holiday Inn Express Mitte Stadt. The staff were friendly, helpful, bilingual (although I can get by with my German), the rooms basic but spotless, the inclusive breakfasts meant never having to go hungry and it was close to many of the sites tourists want to see. Checkpoint Charlie was a 5 to 10 minute walk away, Brandenburg Gate another 5 minutes after that and there are plenty of other sites even closer but which may not be so well known. Even brother-in-law who is somewhat fussy was more than happy with the hotel.
Anyway, the hotel called a taxi for us and off we went back to Tegel. I had checked in at the hotel the night before (SN 47 and 48) but there is no bag drop counter at the airport so you still have to queue with everyone else checking in for the flight.
When the ground staff eventually arrived, the single lady seemed to be working in slow motion as she loaded the machines with the suitcase labels, boarding passes, etc but eventually, someone else strolled down, ignored the one already there and then opened up the Club Class desk only to discover that her equipment wasn't working.
The original lady then opened up for economy check in and was very pleasant dealing with us.
At Tegel, it appears that each gate has its own security and Immigration desks and we had to wait about 30 minutes before these would be open to go through into the departure lounge.
That gave us time to pop into the fast-food outlet (I think it is the only one there - Tegel is very poorly served by the retail industry - and charges accordingly) for a quick bratwurst and Weissenbier before returning to security.
Surprise, surprise - when I stepped through the machine, it beeped again and I was given a good going over. When he told me to undo my belt and started putting his hand down the front of my trousers, I started sweating a bit but he stopped before he got too personal. Very officious and efficient but still half pleasant about it.
We were soon through into the lounge where it took as much as about 90 seconds to do the duty free shop. We decided against the bar so grabbed a newspaper from the gate and waited for the boarding call.
When that came, it was the same lady from check-in who remembered us, gave us a big smile and wished us a pleasant flight.
Down the ramp and onto G-EUYN, a relatively new A320 who had her first commercial flight on 12th January this year. Big smiles from the crew as we boarded and down to our seats by the door.
Again, the personal briefing because of being sat at the door and the polite request to pay attention to the safety briefing (ignored by the guy sitting next to me who found War and Peace far more interesting).
A couple of people dragged their heels which prevented any thoughts of an early departure but we still pushed back on time. The taxi was very short to 08R but we had a longish wait there before lining up for the take-off run.
The Captain had already warned us that there would probably be some slight turbulence as we climbed out as well as during the flight and, sure enough, almost immediately after gear up, it started but it really was very slight and did not go on for very long. There were a couple of times during the flight and again on finals into LHR but nothing worth writing home about.
The service was at a snails pace with the crew frequently calling for more water, tomato juice, etc. The 'meal' was the same small packet of crispy whatevers but the guy in front of me asked if he could have some more and the crew quite happily gave him another packet as well as some biscuits.
Eventually into LHR on 27R after a quick lap around the Thames Estuary and pulled up at the gate a couple of minutes early.
It then took ages while we waited for the doors to open and then through to Immigration and to collect our luggage. Immigration had 2 people on the EU Passport section handling all the incoming flights which meant that it was a rather slow process - especially compared to Tegel where there had been 3 just for our flight the previous Wednesday! They eventually opened up a third desk which speeded things up slightly and we were through to wait and wait and wait for the luggage to arrive on the carousel.
There was an announcement about the delay and apologies for any inconveniance caused but it is a load of nonsense really that LHR is so pathetic in getting luggage from the aircraft back to the passenger.
Luckily, once it started, ours came through fairly quickly and we were soon on our way.
Scoring, Hotel superb, Ground Crew (not BA) excellent with passengers, seemingly hostile with each other, Cabin crew good (would have had an excellent if they weren't so darned slow with the service, flight good, aircraft excellent (clean, tidy and still shiny new), arrivals (immigration and luggage handling poor)
