I've been feeling that I need to get out of the city, so a last summer Labor Day hurrah, I'm flying out on Friday night and coming back on Monday.

The only combo that seems reasonable in terms of cost was to fly into Frankfurt and back from Berlin with a combo of cash and miles.

My excuse is to see Dokumenta in Kassel, which takes place once every 5 years. Since I'm flying into Frankfurt, I may as well see the twin Koons exhibitions at Schirn and Liebieghaus before heading to Kassel.

Let the flaming begin!

P.S. Let me know if there are any tips for Berlin, particularly for a Sunday. It's my fourth trip to Berlin, and I don't know it too well.

You are so lucky! That is the full extent of my flame. I was just searching for quick-and-easy getaways from SFO but I cannot find anything reasonable for Labor Day. And from the West Coast I'd be dead with just two days.

Have fun and please post something when you return.

Thanks Leely.

It looks like most things are closed in Berlin on Sunday, unfortunately, except for museums. Also it seems like Berlin is much more expensive now compared to when I was there before; I guess it's caught up with other European cities.

Enjoy your long weekend!

I envy your impulsiveness (and your energy).

Have a great trip! I went to Documenta years ago. Unfortunately I only had an afternoon. Could've spent much more time there!

Way to plan ahead. What's your home port?

I live in NYC.

I only have an afternoon for Documenta as well, about 5 hours, which I guess is actually a lot of time for me! It seems like the venues are spread out and I need to find my way from place to place, so maybe it's not really that much time.

Thanks for all the encouragement. I'm a little disappointed that "this can't be done and you're crazy" crowd hasn't show up to flame yet.

I remember it being fairly spread out and I didn't have time to visit all of the venues I wanted to.

I once flew from LA to Paris for 2 nights and to Jamaica for 12 hours so I don't think you're crazy at all

Ok, I've had a few travel time > sightseeing time trips before. One happened this year when I did a same day r/t from JFK to LAX.

Now that I think about it, maybe it was a bit crazy. I took an early morning flight from JFK and the 9 pm flight (I think) back from LAX.

Another one that was also crazy was to fly to Taipei (from the US) and stay for about 36 hours. Basically I arrived one morning and left the next afternoon. My excuse was to see the reunification of a Chinese scroll:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/06/wo...pagewanted=all

(Yes, it was worth the trip, I'll tell you.)

Maybe we can write a book on how to minimize sightseeing time and maximize travel time.

On the Berlin's official website, you can search, in English, for events for a specific date / theme: http://www.berlin.de/international/events/index.en.php

I don't think you are crazy. If I could jet off to wherever at a moments notice I would do it too!

I did just make my first (for me) last minute travel plans after receiving a Travelzoo alert about airfare to Paris. I leave in just 7 weeks. I am usually the queen of long-term planning so this will be interesting.

A refreshing approach to travel. Enjoy!

Trvlgirlmq I'm heading there in 7 weeks too !
With coincidences like this, don't be surprised if we bump into each other over there too, lol.

Have fun 111op. Nothing crazier - and extremely awesome - than one of your other recent adventures ! Good for you.

Have gone to the Jeff Koons exhibits twice now. Quite enjoyable and I like the way his sculptures are mixed in with the other sculptures in the Liebieg Haus. They did a good job matching them up I think.

Hope you enjoy them!

Hey,

Yes, I liked the Jeff Koons exhibition at Liebieghaus. It was a nice balance of older works with newer ones (no diamonds, hearts or balloon dogs, but there are two nice sculptures from c. 2012 -- a blue "Metallic Venus" and a "Balloon Venus"). I had to zip and out of the painter part of the show at Schirn.

I got on the Singapore Airlines A380, which is essentially two planes combined in one. I saw a very good Cantonese movie called "A Simple Life," and I just found out that Deanie Yip won the Best Actress award in Venice for this movie in 2011. It was released in NYC but I didn't get around to seeing it.

I found Kassel a little disappointing. Even though I had five hours, with the venues being spread out and crowd control (lines everywhere), I didn't get a chance to see much at all. It was definitely helpful to read some reviews ahead of time. Tino Seghal was inexplicably left out of the pamphlets listing the main venues, so if I didn't read any reviews, I wouldn't even know where to look for it. His work was definitely a highlight.

Another highlight was buying a copy of Fischli/Weiss's Bilder/Ansichten at Walter Koenig at Documenta for 128 euros. This was in very good condition. I once saw this book for $250, and while this wasn't as cheap as what I could find online, this will be a nice memento of my trip to Kassel and two of my favorite artists (David Weiss died earlier this year).

Chipperfield's restoration of the Neues Museum was stunning. Supposedly Neues Museum has now overtaken Pergamonmuseum as the most visited museum in Germany.

One rather strange thing about Berlin -- it seemed very hard to find an ATM machine! Maybe I didn't try hard enough? And the Reichstag visit now needs to be arranged by advance appointment -- I made mine for 8 am Monday.

It wasn't enough time as usual, but I guess I made the most of it. A brief timeline is follows. If I have more time, I'll post some more later.

Sat.
====

around 10 am, flight arrives in FRA from NYC
around 11 am, Frankfurt Hbf
Jeff Koons exhibitions
11:58 am, train to Kassel

around 2:45 pm, Kassel Hbf (note that though it's the Hauptbahnhof, this is no longer the main train station in Kassel; there were coat checks at the various Documenta venues, including one at Hbf, which took my bag.)

8:10 pm, Kassel Hbf to Berlin (Managd to land an iPod for the much acclaimed iPod tour of Hbf with the husband-wife duo Cardiff & Miller, who were profiled in a recent NYT magazine article)
around 11:45 pm, check into Berlin hotel
around 3 am, bed

Sun.
====

11:30 am, wake up reluctantly

12:15 pm, head out to flea market at Bernauer Str. (a memorial here poignantly commemorates one of the crossings between East and West Berlin)

around 2 pm, lunch at Hackesche Hoefe
around 3 pm, Neues Museum
around 3:50 pm, leave for Hamburger Bhf
around 5 pm, arrive at Gemaeldegalerie (spent some time looking for the Portinari Triptych by Hugo van der Goes, but then realized that it must be at the Uffizi; also looked for the second Vermeer, but it was nowhere to be found; snapped photos of the Walter de Maria installation in the central hallway)

5:40 pm, cab to Photography Museum (since the museum closes at 6, cab driver tells me that I'll only have time for the Newton nudes and asks me who I think will win the American election before I leave the cab)
5:55 pm, notice the Newton nudes high up on the walls but rush into the bookstore
6 pm, get kicked out right when I noticed the shelves with limited edition books, head to Martin-Gropius Bau. Having seen the Diane Arbus exhibition in Paris earlier this year, I head for the bookshop instead.

7:10 pm, arrive ten minutes late for dinner with my NYC neighbor
12:20 am, bed

Mon.
====

7:45 am, arrive at Reichstag. Despite my letter saying that I need to arrive no later than 7:45 am, the Visitor Center tells me they open at 8.
8:50 am, leave for Pergamonmuseum
9:20 am, arrive at Pergamonmuseum, to be told that they open at 9 am only for special exhibitions

Map out my escape route for the airport and then head back to the hotel to fix a wardrobe malfunction and to see if I can check in for my flight at 1 pm online. No.

10:20 am, check out of hotel
10:35 am (?), arrive at Pergamonmuseum again panting. Do a perfunctory three-minute tour hitting the Pergamon altar, the Gates of Miletus, the Ishtar Gate. Was going to try for the Aleppo room, but decided that would be pushing it. (I've been to the Pergamonmuseum at least twice, but this was the first time I saw the Gates of Miletus without scaffolding.)

10:55 am, take the bus to Tegel on Unter den Linden
11:25 am (?), arrive at airport with plenty of time to spare (should have spent more time at the Pergamonmuseum!)

Sorry, train to Kassel was 12:58 am, so that wasn't quite such a rush.

I felt badly for not getting to run today, but now I'm out of breath from just reading your report. You should patent this style of travel and it's cardio effects on the trip report reader.

I haven't been to Berlin yet so cannot comment on what you saw and did, but I enjoyed reading of your adventures just the same, and can see that you enjoyed doing it too. Thanks for the report.

Ha ha. I've thought that my travel has some exercise elements in it, like lots of walking (plus occasional running) plus weight training (carrying luggage for occasionally extended distances). I don't go the gym but I guess the cost of a gym membership is better spent this way.

Age is catching up with me now; now an occasional taxi ride and hour-long lunches are permitted.

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone!

I am way too much of a nervous Nancy to travel this way, but I do like to read about it. Glad this (mostly) worked out. You never sound as if you feel shortchanged or disappointed by these hops of yours.

Well I do have some regrets. I read that they just closed Tacheles. If I'd known, I'd have made an effort to stop by to see it.

It's interesting to think about this. I see myself as pretty detail-oriented and perfectionist, but I do seem to relax (yes, it sounds paradoxical) more and more when I travel. I guess when time is so limited, I actually end up feeling lucky that I could actually do as much as I did (instead of getting hung up on what I didn't do).

So far (keeping fingers crossed), very few things have gone wrong -- or in any case, not something that cash couldn't fix (like spending $200 on a cab ride in Croatia instead of taking a scheduled bus that never came).

Plus it's really a cumulative experience. The more I do this, the more I realize that there's always the next trip. If I revisit a place, I try to do something that I've never done before, so in the end, it all seems to add up.

Anyway, the intensity really does make me forget temporarily a lot of things. It was not a good feeling to be back at work. I can definitely see why I needed to jet off on a whim.