What I Use: Berlin 2024 (Premium)

Like many, my life is split between the pre- and post-pandemic years, and that terrible year that everything changed forever. Among the changes is how we spend our time outside the United States. In the pre-pandemic years, my wife and I spent at least a month each year in Europe, but in the post-pandemic years, we spend some number of months in Mexico City instead.

What this “means” is debatable, but practically speaking, we’ve adapted to this new life and we’re no longer familiar with what it means to travel to Europe from the U.S. It feels exotic and strange, unknown. And yet familiar too. We had visited Europe many dozens of times, after all, often several times each year. But things are different now.

Since 2020, we’ve left the country dozens of times. In all but one instance–a delayed 30th anniversary trip to Paris, my favorite city, in October 2021–every international flight we’ve taken has been to Mexico City. And we’ve gotten used to it. The relatively short 4.5 hour-ish flights that occur during the day instead of overnight. Business class instead of economy. A one or two hour time change instead of five hours. And arriving in a state in which you’re not exhausted and beat-up, and can hit the ground running.

This is great for all the obvious reasons. But we’ve gotten soft. The familiarity and sameness of our routine flights to Mexico City has sheltered us from the often-harsh reality of international travel. Age doesn’t help. As recently as 2019, the year before the pandemic, my wife and I jumped at the chance to spend roughly 24 hours in Barcelona so I could visit Mobile World Congress for the HoloLens 2 launch. (Tell me that doesn’t feel like a million years ago.) I’m not sure if I could make that trip today. I am reasonably sure I’d say no, regardless. It just sounds so tiring. And I love Barcelona.

Tied to this, when the pandemic ended work travel as I knew it, I went through the standard stages of grief over time. Mary Jo and I would join colleagues on Zoom calls to catch up, and we’d reminisce about this life that seemed to be over, and the regular events at which we’d normally all catch up. Build. Ignite. Microsoft launch events. And more. Each in a fun destination. Or at least some destination. It felt normal. And then it was over. And then … then, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to come back. I dealt with not traveling. And then I kind of didn’t want to travel. It felt like too much. Helping matters, it wasn’t happening anyway. Infamously, Microsoft didn’t restart its big shows in a normal way until this year.

That said, work travel is making a comeback, though it’s been slow in my case. I’ve been to some smaller Microsoft events in New York. I went on a TWiT cruise to Alaska (granted, mostly non-work) in mid-2022. I’ve been to Ignite (November 2023) and then Build (May 2024). And now it seems like this thing is churning up again. I’ve been invited to two HP events in California, which I’ve declined. And I was invited by Lenovo (and then Qualcomm) to go to Berlin for IFA.

Berlin.

I love Berlin. But I was also of mixed minds. I wanted to go and didn’t want to go. But in the end, and despite the busy travel surrounding this trip, I agreed. Full disclosure: Lenovo paid for my airfare and my hotel for the duration of the show, as it did for some hundreds of other journalists, bloggers, and YouTubers, and with no expectation of coverage of attendance.

But my wife came along as well, and we stayed for a few more days, and we are paying for that, not to mention the upgrades for the sad back of the plane economy class seats Lenovo provided. Regardless of who or what pays for what, my opinions remain my own. I don’t do this type of thing much, though it’s quite common for certain bloggers, YouTubers, and other influencers. But I agreed because this is a big year for our industry, for PCs in particular, and that’s the center of what I do.

The travel has been difficult but also exhilarating. It’s like exercising a muscle you’ve not used in quite a while, where you’re sore, but it’s a good sore, an earned sore. We got home from a truncated long weekend trip to the Finger Lakes in upstate New York on Sunday afternoon and had less than 24 hours to do laundry, pack, and head off to Newark Liberty airport.

What to bring, what to bring

I thought about what to bring quite a bit ahead of time. I’ve been working through a stack of review laptops and other devices all summer, and I would ideally bring at least one of them to Berlin. But the timing was tough and I wanted to travel light, as always. On Sunday, I had whittled the laptop choice–I would only fly with one, a rarity for me–to two options, the Lenovo ThinkBook 13x that’s next in my review queue or some Snapdragon X-based laptop, for its battery life. In the end, I had to go with the ThinkPad T14s I already reviewed. I felt like using a Lenovo laptop was the polite thing to do, but the ThinkBook 13x is too small for me to rely on for a full week.

I desperately want to travel with the hk Business Slim Backpack and Ravena Mini Rolling Case I wrote about previously in From the Editor’s Desk: Bagged (Premium), both of which are delightfully small. But this was a work trip that required extra clothes, so I’d need to stick with a full-sized (for Europe) Travelpro Platinum Elite spinner I semi-despise. And I brought my normal HP Renew backpack to accommodate (and protect) the bulk of the Beats Studio Pro ANC headphones I recently purchased.

I also brought my 13-inch iPad Air M2, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL I’m currently reviewing. For backups, I had the AirPods Pro 2 and Bose QuietComfort Nose Canceling Earbuds in my gadget back and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which I’d use to take pictures of the Pixel 9 Pro XL for the review.

Flight to Berlin

Our flight out was supposed to leave at about 5 pm on Monday, but there was a “radar malfunction” that triggered a cascading series of delays for both inbound and outbound flights, and the short version is that we left three hours late and spent that time sitting on the plane, on the tarmac, waiting.

Amazingly, there was no rage: The flight attendants were friendly and helpful, and gave out snacks and water, and the people around us just started chatting with each other agreeably. It was curiously nice.

Less nice was the overnight flight. I’ve suffered through this experience an uncountable number of times, and it’s never gone well. I don’t fit well in economy seats, even the exit row we had upgraded to, and I can’t sleep. Worse, I experience a restless leg issue that’s mildly painful and hugely uncomfortable, and each time I nodded off, I would just jerk back awake. It was a miserable experience, as always. Fortunately, this only happens to me on overnight flights, and never at home or elsewhere.

I at least had time to write–I worked on the Modernizing .NETpad Step-by-Step series quite a bit on the flight–and experience the Beats headphones. They worked well. I’m not sure I can claim the ANC on the plane was any better than that provided by the AirPods Pro 2 or Bose earbuds, but the battery life is off the charts: Where those earbuds can barely make it to Mexico City on a single charge, the Beats get somewhere close to 40 hours of battery life. When we arrived, they still had 80 percent battery life left. Nice.

I listened to music via YouTube Music on the Pixel over Bluetooth, via Apple Music over USB-C on the iPad Air, which supports lossless and Dolby Atmos with dynamic head tracking. And then I watched a few Netflix videos I had downloaded when I finally realized I was never going to sleep. The headphones switch easily between devices and the sound quality was quite good, but you also can’t fiddle with EQ settings, which I find odd.

Arrival

I would have rather spent the three hours we had waited to leave Newark in the far more comfortable United Lounge, but that delay was advantageous: We were originally going to get into Berlin at 7:15 am, and even with traffic and airport delays, we’d arrive at the hotel so early there was no chance we could check in. Thanks to the delays, we didn’t get to the hotel–and the sweltering heat in Berlin this week, with temperatures around 90 degrees each day–until 11 am. So we were able to check in and enjoy the AC in our room. (AC is rare in Berlin outside of hotels. The Lenovo events I went to were horrifically hot.)

Before that could happen, I received a bit of a surprise. As the plane was making its approach to the airport and descending, I turned off Airplane Mode and waited for Google Fi to deliver the expected “Welcome to Berlin! We’ve got you covered!” message. And sure enough, Google Fi did welcome me to Berlin, but it also delivered some bad news. “You don’t have service in Germany,” the notification explained. “To get international features, connect to Wi-Fi and upgrade to the Unlimited Plus plan.”

Huh.

I had switched back to Google Fi in January and in yet another example of how soft I’ve gotten when it comes to traveling anywhere but Mexico, I had literally forgotten that the Fi plan I chose at that time is called Simply Unlimited. This plan is $50 per month, provides unlimited data, and offers 5 GB of hotspot data. And data is included in Mexico and Canada, but not elsewhere outside the United States. Right.

Fortunately, I paid for a Nomad 10 GB eSIM for Germany and installed it in the Pixel before the trip so I could further test this service, which I’ve used several times and recommend highly. (My promo code is PAUL65GE.) So I enabled that eSIM, configured the phone to use Fi for phone calls and messages and Nomad for data, and I was online while the plane taxied. It’s worked great over the entire trip, and I configured Google Photos to back up photos over cellular, and have used it as a hotspot with the laptop.

We had used TSA PreCheck Touchless check-in in Newark, which is incredibly seamless. And when we arrived in Berlin, we scanned our passports, and got fingerprinted and photographed, which seemed very modern, but then got an old-fashioned passport stamp, which did not. But we got through that whole process–from plane to outside security–took about 30 minutes. I ordered an Uber, which was expensive–welcome to Germany!–but also seamless, and off we went.

Driving to the hotel, I was immediately struck by how clean and new everything looked: The roads, the cars, the buildings, everything on the way was like a city from the future. Coming to Europe from the U.S., as we had so many times, I always noted a certain common “Europe-ness” to the places we visited, but this impression was tied to our experiences in Mexico City, which is much poorer and unkempt by comparison. There isn’t a single road in Mexico as perfect as the road we took into Berlin, not one.

Hotel

We stayed at the InterContinental Berlin, at the southwest end of the Tiergarten, next to the Zoologischer Garten Berlin (Zoological Garden, a zoo). It’s a fancy place, like the hotels I’d visit for events throughout the week, and quite modern. Maybe too modern.

This hotel was a comical reintroduction to the over-thinking–or, maybe, underthinking–that we’ve experienced throughout Germany so many times, with ridiculous buttons for lights, indecipherable shower controls, and a coffee machine so complicated my wife had to watch two YouTube videos to figure it out. For some reason, the button that controls all the lights in the bathroom is outside the bathroom, and not next to the bathroom door, but across the hall.

I needed Steph’s assistance with the shower, and we never did figure out how to make water come out of the rain-shower head in the ceiling, though it was nice enough to drip cold water on us while we showered using the other shower head.

Only in Germany will you find a master “on/off” button for all the lights in the room and then master “off” buttons next to the bed, with no way to turn it all back on again. This is just classic Germany.

The night before the trip, I was coiling a Lenovo power adapter so I could throw it in the HP Renew backpack when I suddenly realized something. We were going to Germany. To Europe. And not to Mexico. And then meant we’d need something we’d not used in several years: Power converters. Oops.

This was fortuitous: My wife had also forgotten about this important detail, so common during our decades visiting Europe exclusively, but now unnecessary on most trips. I had collected dozens of these things, of course, and so I grabbed two small converters and one larger converter for both of us, and then a few more for the gadget bag. So we used those to charge devices and leave in the room. (Comically, I later realized I had brought the laptop charger with me to events, but not a converter. You get so used to things just working in Mexico.)

My Lenovo responsibilities were minimal on Tuesday, just a welcome reception that evening. And so we headed out into the heat to check out the area and grab lunch.

There’s a path behind the hotel and zoo alongside an offshoot of the Spree river, and so walked that way to a local biergarten, where we reacquainted ourselves with two of our local favorite foods, Currywurst (sausage with a spicy sauce and curry powder) and Flammkuchen (what we think of as Tarte flambée, its French name), a thin crispy pizza with fromage blanc, onions, and lardons (basically, cheese, onions, and bacon-like pork). Perfection.

After lunch, we walked up the Bundesstraße 2, the main road that divides the Tiergarten.

We went past the Siegessäule (Victory Column) that resembles the Monumento a la Independencia (“Monument to Independence,” or “Angel of Independence”) in Mexico City.

And then on to the Brandenburger Tor (Brandenburg Gate). Close by is a Microsoft office, but the street-level cafe we’d visited in the past is now closed. (It’s in a new location now.)

I tried to record First Ring Daily there, but we had technical issues, so that episode is mostly audio. Afterwards, we quickly visited the sobering Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe) and then headed back to the hotel.

At the Lenovo reception that evening, I caught up with Dan Rubino, who I’d not seen in a while and always enjoy being with, and Rich Woods, who I’d seen at Build and various HP events recently. But that was pretty much it: There were hundreds of people there, and I only knew a few, and a friend from Lenovo I was eager to see again couldn’t make it because they were setting up for the event the next day.

Lenovo and Qualcomm events, more sights

I was hoping to balance my time in Berlin between my Lenovo obligations–which, granted, I was free to bail on–and my desire to revisit this place. And it mostly worked out: Aside from Thursday, which was curiously busy, we were able to spend a few hours each day in the city, walking and taking photos, between working from the hotel room and me heading off to whatever events.

Wednesday, Lenovo brought groups of us over to the nearby Waldorf Astoria Berlin for a product showcase, where they showed off all the new PCs they would announce the next day and the twisting prototype PC that seemed to really captivate everyone who saw it in person.

That day, Steph and I had two more local favorites for lunch–Schweinehaxe (pig knuckle) and Kalbsschnitzel (veal schintzel)–and then we took an Uber over to the Berlin Wall Memorial to see that incredible bit of history again.

We worked from the hotel and then had dinner at the hotel restaurant, Marlene, which was surprisingly good–more Currywurst, of course–and then I had to record Windows Weekly. (I do this at 2 pm ET back home, so it doesn’t start until 8 pm here.)

I had hoped for a reasonable recording time, but we went the full three hours as we usually do now, so Steph and I headed out into the dark to visit another local biergarten that was allegedly open until midnight. They were closing up when we arrived, but they let us sit outside and have a few glasses of wine since there were lots of people there still. So it worked out OK.

I had missed an Intel sponsored dinner because of Windows Weekly, but I attended an AMD sponsored lunch on Thursday at Wasserwerk, a former water mill factory.

And then I went back to the hotel, worked a bit, and headed over to Kraftwerk Berlin, a crazy humongous event venue that’s hosted raves of historic proportions, for Lenovo’s main event, called Lenovo Innovation World. I was happy to do this–I got to hang out with Ryan Shrout, always appreciated, but it was more of the same, and a bit tedious given the heat.

Fortunately, we were able to meet with a long-time friend from France, Fabrice, who was also at the show. We had dinner together at the lunch place from the day before.

And because he had never visited Berlin before, we collectively decided to split three classic local meals–Currywurst, Flammkuchen, and Schweinehaxe–before heading over to the first biergarten we had visited for a few drinks.

Friday, I worked in the morning before heading over to a Qualcomm meet-up for reviewers who want to run their own benchmarks on new Snapdragon X Plus 8-core PCs. I was happy to just hang out with a few friends and accept the benchmarks others were running.

Weekend

When that ended, I headed back to the hotel, worked a bit, and then Steph and I headed back into Berlin, this time into what I consider to be the heart of the city, the center of old East Berlin. After lunch–more Currywurst for me, plus a nice beef consume with liver meatballs, and a different sausage, similar to a U.S. breakfast sausage, for Steph–we walked through the entire area, taking photos.

And we went to the top of the iconic Berliner Fernsehturm (Berlin TV Tower) like tourists.

After a few drinks, we headed back, rested a bit, and then walked around the neighborhood, looking for a place to eat.

We struck out at least three times–every place seemed pretty busy–and so we just ended up back at the hotel’s Marlene restaurant. Which, again, is quite good.

Unfortunately, while carrying a bottle of wine back to the room across the lobby area, the container it was in, which wasn’t affixed to the stantion I was holding, fell and exploded all over the floor. I was embarrassed but wondered why the guy at the bar had given me the thing, I assumed it was all one piece. Anyway, we got a replacement bottle and that was that.

Today, Saturday, we did a bit of work–I wrote much of this article in the morning–and then we headed into East Berlin again. This time, we started at a favorite spot of mine, the Hackesher Markt behind the Hackesher train station. We ate lunch at Restauration 1840. Steph had Käsespätzle (cheese spetzel), and I got the Hauptstadtteller (a “capital plate” with a Berlin-style meatball, two currywurst sausages, one with the skin, the other without, and Berlin potato salad).

And then went out past the Soviet-style Friedrichshain to the East Side Gallery, the longest preserved part of the old Berlin Wall that’s covered in street art. I also took photos of the Pixel 9 Pro nearby for the eventual review.

As I write this, it’s late Saturday. We have reservations for this evening at a restaurant a friend recommended, and then we fly home in the morning. If all goes well, we’ll be in Newark around 1 pm ET and then home by 3:00 or 3:00. We have three weeks before our next big trip–Dallas for work and then Mexico City for six weeks–but a few smaller trips to deal with as well. It’s suddenly a busy time.

It’s great to be back in Europe.