Directions to Ibis Hotel in Berlin from Tegel Airport

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/2/16 4:55 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/24/2016 1:44 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> The hotel emailed them to me, I presume they know what they're doing :-)
>> so I thought I'd share:
>>
>> Bus 109 to Jakob-Kaiser-Platz
>> Subway U 7 in the direction of Rudow to Grenzallee
>> Cross the street at the traffic light and turn left. The next street on
>> the right is Jahnstraße.
>> On the left side you will find our hotel.
>
>
> I made it to the hotel yesterday, thanks everyone for the help! The only
> issue was trying to find the 3 day bus pass on the ticket machine with
> impatient locals tapping their toes behind me and telling me there was
> no such ticket!
>
> Just had to click around on the options until I found it.

I arrived as well. I foolishly chose to ignore this thread and assumed 
taking the taxi from the airport to the hotel is a proper choice. So I 
hop on the taxi and ask if he takes credit. He says no taxi at the 
airport does. So I walk to an ATM and get some Euros, then hop back in 
the cab. There's no driver/car identification displayed inside and I see 
no meter. I ask where the meter is, he says it's on the left (where I 
can't see what it shows).

We get to the hotel, he says it's 76 Euros. I'm like, Jesus this is 
high. He goes, yeah Tegel is far away from this hotel, next time try to 
book the other airport. I ask for a receipt, he handwrites me one on a 
standard form with no stamp and no identification.

As I walk to the reception I ask the receptionist what's the usual taxi 
price to the airport and sure enough I paid twice the usual. I mention 
what I paid and to her credit she makes an effort to call the number on 
the receipt and tries to figure out what happened. They say they can't 
do anything without a stamp on the receipt so she suggests I call the 
police and try to get his plates off of some security cameras. I figure 
life is too short to press on, but this is quite the bummer - Germany 
was really the last place where I assumed this kind of stuff cannot 
happen. In fact it was the reason for which I didn't heed the 
non-visible meter warning; something similar did happen to me in 
Romania, in a very different era.


Andrei