Souvenirs to go

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time at Berlin's main train station, the Hauptbahnhof. I've reported about it on Euroblog many times. After all these years, I still love the big thing, even though moving around it continues to feel like you are trying to do maintenance work on the outside of the ISS.

At the moment the station's shop owners are complaining about council plans to close their establishments on Sundays. The regulations are meant to bring the vendors into line with shop owners across the rest of the city. Here's hoping that all the shops are allowed to stay open and Berlin's main station is allowed to trade in accordance WITH NORMAL BUSINESS STANDARDS AS SEEN ACROSS THE REST OF THE INDUSTRIALISED WORLD!!!

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. There's a new addition on level 82 of the station. It's a vending machine for Berlin souvenir items. It's from East Berlin's most famous designer store situated on it's nastiest street, Berlinomat. The idea of this machine is that tourists in a rush leaving the city, can pick up a last minute "soov" with their loose change. Thing is, the pricing for some of the items is pretty steep.

Still, it's a winner, I reckon. AND the machine is even prepared to work on a Sunday! What a trooper.