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Published: August 30th 2006
I said goodbye to the regulars at the Tent and headed into the city before getting stuck in the WORST queue ever at the train station (i seem to have a knack for finding the slowest ones!) and almost missing the train i was planning on catching to Berlin. i got stuck with a smoking cabin seat (yuck!) but it was a pretty uneventful journey. it was still really cool just to listen to music and watch the scenery go by because it is all so new. One funny thing i noticed was these bach complexes (if you could call them that) that would be about as big a a single bedroom but with about two single bedrooms worth of fenced garden space. But what amazing gardens! i met a german girl on the train who told me they were like little weekend holiday houses that people would go to just to garden, quite cute but you wouldnt want to spend too much time there! Christine was on her way to Berlin to look for a place to stay while she finished her studies (in Law and Latin of all things!) i had booked a place to stay in Berlin but
had no idea where it was or how to get there but luckily Christine was more organised than me and had a map i could borrow (thanks!)
i went to my new hostel at dusk in the East (near Warschauer strasse) which is a very cool area. It is where a lot of students stay, very grungy, lots of graffiti, heaps of cafes and restaurants and a cool vibe, cheap too! The hostel i stayed at was very clean with good bathrooms but had to heart to it at all. The bar was too expensive so no one went there and there was no common room, so even though it was huge it was difficult to meet anyone. Though on my first night went for dinner and drinks with another group of irish girls, Ruth, Clare, Efa, Kate and Jill, they hunt in packs i tell you! We also played some pool which i havent done in a long time, but they were terrible so it was a great game 😊
Just before bed i met a few people in my room, two Polish guys Misha and Martin and a couple of Californian girls.
The next day
was my birthday! i was woken to my hostel room singing me happy birthday which was pretty cool. i just wanted to have a day to myself so jsut listened to my music and went for a wander. i met a german guy at a cafe who told me about an illegal underground movie theatre that was running in an abandoned building and a few other places to check out. i checked out a huge section of the original berlin wall down near the waterfront that isnt really a tourist spot and after i found a way to sneak around the fenced back part of the wall i found the amazing local graffiti, very cool. i also found out about a fantasy film festival that was running all the next week! That night since it was my birthday i figured i really should go out and have a few drinks so went with the Polish boys and Cali girls on a pub crawl.
i met a bunch of new people and lots of free shots, drinks and birthday celebrations later i woke up in my hostel, the Cali girls had taken care of me and got me home. Bonus!
it was my birthday after all. The next day i met a couple of dutch girls from the night before and did a bike tour of Berlin. Again it was fantastic a great way to spend half a day to see all the sites and again get some of the history. One thing i found was that while i thought i new the history of the wall i really didnt know much about it at all. One thing i must do is to get a book on the history there, it really is quite interesting. i met a group of english boys Mike, Tom and Ally on the tour and we went for munchies after the tour, they were staying near me so we went back to find a bar to drink at. Boy did we find one! We couldnt decide on an actual bar but found a shop (like a diary) that had a table outside and sold cheap beer (<2euro!) We decided it was the perfect bar, it had all the food, snacks and drinks you could want, it was quiet, had a clock and temperature display and a “restaurant” just across the road. And by restaurant i
mean kebab joint, they even delivered to us!
An interesting fact about Berlin, it is the city with the second largest Turkish population behind istanbul, hence they have heaps of Kebab places and really cheap too.
On thursday i met up with Bex (a girl i met in Nice) and we went out to Saschenhaussen which was a concentration camp outside of Berlin. There is so much information there you need a full day and even then you might not get through it all. Was very interesting and quite intense finding all the things they did to those people and getting a feel for what it would have been like in one of those places. The mortuary was the most errie as the tiled autopsy tables were still there and everyone that died there was given an autopsy albeit a token effort as there were only 5 causes of death that they could put down, all natural causes of course. Overall everything was so well documented there i felt like they tried to use beuracracy to justify and cover everything they were doing. Not cool.
That evening we went and saw a festival movie called “Starfish Hotel”
which was japenese and a really good moody atmospheric movie though i thought the ending could have been done slightly better. After a good dinner of half a chicken and a great mixed salad i was sitting looking at a world map on the hostel wall and it really hit me how small and far away New Zealand is, and how small even europe is given its population size.
Friday was not a cool day, it was today i realised my MP3 player had been stolen 😞 And with it all my photos for my trip and some audio clips. i was pretty bummed so did some washing and just killed time hanging out with a polish couple that were travelling living on the street on cigarette and beer to the next. They could play guitar and sing so were going to make some money that night for a train (about 100euro in 3hrs usually, not bad). it made me wonder if i could live like that, it also made me realise that material things like MP3 players are nice but not nessecary.
That night bex cooked me dinner and we went to another festival movie “Shadowless Sword”
a good kung-fu flick with a good story. i was going to have an early night but got invited out by a german guy working at my hostel with his friends. i was glad i went, they took me to german bar in another abandoned building that had a few different music rooms, very cool. it was also interesting talking to those guys to find that while the wall was down there is definately still a mental wall between the east and west germans.
On Saturday i decided i really needed to do some blog updating and emailling and tried to call a few peeps partying back home for Jerrolds birthday. i also organised a round of discgolf for my last day in Berlin, ill post another entry for that! That evening checked out a street reggae festival with Bex though we arrvied too late and missed most of it. i had seen a flyer for a music gig out near my hostel so headed out there to find another abandoned building with DJs playing House/Breaks/DnB in different rooms. it was very cool, excellent breaks too, had a good time and dance, glad i decided to go even though
i had an early start for golf the next day.
Golf was great then i hung out at Bexs hostel and met my first kiwi travelling (London aside) in 7 weeks! Hi Nick! Chatted with him and a pair of irish and Scottish girls, the two Claires, Claire and Bizzaro Claire. We played cards and i taught them “Bastard” great game. Went and saw my last festival movie “Frostbitten” which was a Swedish vampire movie that never really went anywhere. Bex and i hung out for one last time so we went to the “Bar” for a cheap beer and met some locals with some nice dogs. Speaking of dogs in both Munich and Berlin EVERYONE has a dog, and i'm serioulsy talking 1 in every 4 people on the street has a dog with them. its actually very cool, youre allowed to take them everywhere which helps.
i had a Monday morning flight back to London to kick it for a few days staying at Beths (thanks again Beth, Helen and Brad, your personal chef will return 😊 before heading to Rally Finland with Jim and Wayne!
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