A Grimm Warning (The Land of Stories, #3)(25)

The group followed Mrs. Peters through the crowded Berlin airport as they made their way toward the Ausgang, or “exit.” They shuffled their way outside where Mrs. Peters had arranged for a small van to pick them up. The driver was a stern older man with a plump face and a thin mustache. He held up a sign that said PETERS.

“Guten Tag,” Mrs. Peters said to the driver. “I’m Evelyn Peters, so nice to meet you.”

“HELLO,” Cindy said very loudly to the driver, and forced him to shake her hand. “WE’RE FROM THE UNITED STATES. IT’S AN HONOR TO BE IN YOUR COUNTRY.”

Everyone rolled their eyes at her except the driver. Clearly this wasn’t his first experience with a tourist like Cindy, the type who gave tourists a bad name.

“I’m German, not hard of hearing,” the driver said in perfect English. “Let me load your bags into the van and we’ll be on our way to your hotel.”

As the driver drove them away from the airport, all eyes in the group widened as they took in the first sights of a new country. Seeing his first glimpses of Germany reminded Conner of seeing the Land of Stories for the first time; they were so far away from home, yet a very familiar world of its own existed here. The Book Huggers took out their cameras and started taking pictures of everything they saw.

“Look, it’s a telephone pole!” Lindy said, and showed the others the photo she’d taken of it.

“It looks just like the telephone poles back home,” Bree said.

“But it’s a German telephone pole,” Lindy said, as if Bree was missing something.

Every street the van drove down gave them something new to gawk at that they would never see at home. A massive cathedral with gargoyles stood next to an office building made entirely out of glass. An abstract art installation of a balloon dog was planted near a statue honoring a famous German opera singer. Tiny shops that looked like gingerbread houses were across the street from strip malls similar to ones in the United States.

Berlin was unlike any city Conner and the girls had ever been to. It was a combination of new and old, with monuments celebrating people and events of the past, alongside tributes encouraging thoughts and ideas for the future.

“Of all the cities in the world, Berlin is very much among those that shaped the world into what it is today,” Mrs. Peters said. “There is history everywhere you look, some noble, some terrible, but highly important nonetheless.”

Conner took what she said to heart. He looked out the window and wondered just how many people had traveled down these streets before him, and what their lives had been like.

“It seems more dirty than historical to me,” Mindy said, not showing any enthusiasm. “Look at that wall over there—it’s covered in graffiti!”

“That’s the Berlin Wall, Mindy,” Bree said. “It’s one of the most important and historic sites on earth.”

The driver let out an amused snort under his breath and Mindy turned bright red. The other girls instantly started taking as many pictures of it as they could.

“Oh,” Mindy said. “Well, you’d think there would be a sign or something.”

Occasionally they would see a brown poster taped to a bus stop or pinned to a message board advertising the Brothers Grimm event.

At a couple stops, they found the poster had even been translated into English:


The University of Berlin Presents

A Grimm-Fest

Be among the first to hear three never-before-told stories by the Brothers Grimm as the University of Berlin opens a time capsule left by the famous storytelling duo.

Wednesday, 12:00 noon

St. Matth?us-Kirchhof cemetery

Contact the University of Berlin for ticket information



Seeing the posters around town made the group even more excited about the readings. Mrs. Peters pulled a thick itinerary out of her purse and went over it with her fellow travelers.

“Let’s all take a quick nap when we arrive and then perhaps we can go for a walk around the city before dinner,” she said. “The stories will be read at the cemetery at noon tomorrow, so we’ll meet in the lobby at ten o’clock for the complimentary breakfast, or if you want to sleep in, we’ll be leaving the hotel at eleven o’clock sharp. Then after the readings we can have lunch in a café of our choice and I’ve scheduled a bike tour of Tiergarten Park. Then on Thursday we’ll visit the Brandenburg Gate, the Chancellery, and a couple museums. On our last day I thought we could visit some of the local shops before our flight home.”

They all nodded excitedly although Conner wasn’t as thrilled at the idea of spending a whole day shopping as the girls were.

Soon the group arrived at Hotel Gewaltiger Palast, which Mrs. Peters told them meant the “Enormous Palace Hotel” in German. However, the translation didn’t live up to their expectations. There was nothing very big or grand about the hotel at all. It was fairly small, very plain, and had only a few staff members. According to what the group could make out from the photos framed on the wall, the hotel had been owned by the same family since before World War II.

The older woman behind the front desk also looked like she had been there since before the war. She was tall with curly gray hair, and her beaded eyeglasses chain was the most colorful thing in the lobby. Her English wasn’t as good as the driver’s had been but she was able to check them in without a hitch.