berlin - day 4

Maggie and I both awoke around 9:00AM in the City Stay hostel. Luckily this time I awoke without a headache/hangover, instead I was just knackered from our three days of non-stop walking and sight-seeing. We lounged around the bed until it was nearly chuck out time, drifting back in and out of sleep, chatting about our plans for the day ahead and generally being lazy. As it was nearing 10:00AM Maggie went off for a shower, I lounged in the bed since I had one the night before, albeit I forgot my towel so had to make to do with drying myself on an old t-shirt.

I needed the bog shortly after Maggie left for the communal showers so I…well, went. As I returned to our room Maggie was standing outside, with an expectant look on her face.

‘Have you got the room card?’
‘No, I thought I saw you take it out of my wallet.’
‘No.’
‘Ah…bugger’

Fortunately for us there was a cleaner doing the rounds who was happy enough to unlock the room. Maggie went back inside to change while I waited in the hall trying not to feel like a stalker or pervert whenever a group of girls went by. Eventually I was allowed back in and we packed all our stuff away in order to vacate the room before being charged for a second day.

With our gear in tow we had our breakfast in the City Stay restaurant-cum-bar. It was the typical German breakfast we had came to expect; cheese, ham, bread, muesli and fruit. Fed and quenched we stored our gear in the baggage room to save our aching muscles and began our final day.

As we had seen all of the major sites in Berlin we decided it was to be a day of wandering, to see what was in the local area we may have missed when questing for the marked areas on our city map. We had spotted on the previous day a large domed building near a bridge, religious in its appearance. We thought it was possibly a mosque so, intrigued to see inside one, we made our way down to the river. On the way we past several tourist trap shops which, like flies to shit we went into. Most of it was a load of toot, small pieces of spray painted concrete claiming to be parts of the Berlin wall, big beer tankers made from pewter and your bog standard t-shirts and dishcloths with the Berlin bear splashed across them.

We did see some more nice-yet-pointless artwork, this time in the form of wood carved figures mounted on columns. After walking for ten or fifteen minutes we reached the river, the possible synagogue across the bridge in front of us. Down the side of the river bank we spotted several craft of different shapes and sizes offering river tours across the city. After about two seconds of deliberation we boarded one, paid our eight euros and sat out on the deck. It was a warm and sunny day and a peaceful, lumbering trip down a river sounded quite appealing. On the way up to the deck we passed the boats bar, which was filling up quite rapidly despite it only being around 11:00AM.
We sat in our metal folding chairs waiting for cast off, still debating whether the dome across the water was in fact a synagogue, or something a lot more boring. We also spotted many a group of people sporting day-glo yellow shirts and scarves. There appeared to be a big match in the Berlin stadium later that day, as for the names of the teams, I haven’t got a clue.

The tour finally started, sailing down the river past cathedrals/synagogues, dilapidated buildings, cafes, shops and many, many low bridges. If you were standing up straight on the top of the ship you could easily do yourself an injury (something that nearly happened to the barman-cum-waiter at one point). We travelled down the river for a good fifteen minutes until the skipper got bored, swung around and went back the way we came. First we thought the tour had finished and we were going back to harbour. Instead, we sailed past our starting point and kept going.

Cor, we certainly saw some sights on that tour. Essentially, all the sights we had seen on our first day in Berlin. But still, the trip was relaxing, chilled and peaceful. Sitting on the top of a boat, coffee in hand, watching the city and football hooligans pass us by.

The return journey wasn’t as picturesque as the sun had died of ennui and the wind was starting to pick up, ripping any sensation of warmth from us. We spent the rest of the tour buried inside our clothing to garner some heat, sleeves over hands, collars up, face in chest that sort of thing. It wasn’t until we were over half way back we remembered we were on top of a boat, which tends to mean there’s an empty space inside it. We only remembered this as we had seen half the populous of the deck saunter inside and we eventually put 2 and 2 together. We joined the mass exodus into the bowls of the boat and sat out the rest of the journey in heated bliss.

Now that we were back at the river bank by the bridge we had started at we decided we really should find out if the big domed building was a Christian or Jewish place of worship. Turns out it was Cathedral for the Jesus cave crew religion. This became apparent as we had to pay to enter. I can’t think of any other religion that would charge you to go and pray.

So we forked out our money to the Christians so the bishop could buy a new hat, and had a gander. The main hall was enormous, full of gold plated statues and architecture, with a humongous organ set into one of the walls. It was all rather posh gothic, typical of most cathedrals I’ve seen. To side track the only way I can describe the parts of the cathedral that weren’t the main…hall, is; Grange Hill. By that I mean dark wood panelling of a cheap rather than regal appearance, thin creaky floorboards and chipboard walls. I was surprised and a bit confused by what was going on in the centre of the cathedral, a wedding.

It wasn’t as such the fact it was a wedding, they tend to occur in churches from my knowledge, it was more that this was going on whilst a load of tourists were wandering around them. We had wandered into the main hall-y bit of the cathedral, taking pictures of everything that looked cool or expensive, while a female vicar boredly mumbled her way through the religious text. The witnesses were sitting in the pews, not dressed in suits and dresses like you’d expect, but in comfortable, casual clothing. The sort of getup you’d wear for a day out shopping or sightseeing, like us.

Eventually the vicar finished her monotonous monologue and the newly married couple walked down the aisle in front of many voyeuristic tourists (I recorded it on my camera). They were followed out of the cathedral by what must be the most ominous and dark piece of wedding music I’ve ever heard. It ran from deep sombre tones to real gothic despair, gradually rising in a crescendo of fear and horror. Not quite like the typical ‘der der de-der’ you hear at a wedding.

After prying into what really should have been a private function we moved upstairs to the first floor museum, full of religious artwork and tapestries that I didn’t really care about, being an atheist. After that it was the dome itself, the part of the building that had caught our attention from the outside and led to our debate over whether it was a cathedral or synagogue. We had to traverse several flights of stairs, weaving our way closer and closer to the centre of the cathedral in order to get to it.

The dome itself wasn’t that impressive from the inside, just a tight circular corridor with smudged windows looking out across a small part of the city, obscured by the towers, gargoyles and grimy glass. Also as we discovered when we went round the whole thing you have to go back the way you came, the door that was three feet away from the flight of stairs we had traversed up was locked.

There was another flight of stairs leading upwards which a handful of people were ascending. However, there was a ‘no entry’ sign dangling from one of the rails which led Maggie and me to believe you weren’t actually supposed to go up them. Our suspicions were confirmed when a security guard passed us on our way down looking pretty miffed.

As always you can never exit where you entered from, instead we had to go past the obligatory gift shop, then not so commonly through a crypt. It was full of tombs and elaborate stone coffins full of famous holy people or some such. They were probably from the era when the churches were in control of Europe, taking peasant’s tax in order to construct buildings of immense proportions and grandeur, surrounded by the taxpayer’s slums and huts.

Anyway we finally got out of the cathedral, stumped on what to do next, so I suggested a wandering around the local area. Just outside the cathedral was a large grassed square, pointless art deco fountain in the centre and several mah-husive buildings surrounding it. We had a quick recce around the quadrangle before noticing a sign for a market down a small alleyway. Keen to see a German market area and to get off the beaten track we headed into it.

It was around lunch-time and we both felt like having a small snack. At the start of the ‘Markt’ was a stall selling traditional Currywurst (a sausage with curry sauce and paprika slopped all over it), with a chunk of bread. We bought our Currywurst and munched away as we wandered through the market.

I’ve been to markets in Essex, full of mockneys flogging their wares accompanied with shouting, bantering and oodles of ‘geezer’ charisma. I’ve been to a market in Spain where one seller chased a prospective buyer through the stalls with a tablecloth demanding he buy it. I’ve even been to the Silk Market in Bei Jing where sellers grab you by the arms and physically drag you into the shops, blocking your exit until you either force past them or buy something. In one case a girl chucked her security card strap around my neck and then proceeded to drag me by the cord into a stall, semi-strangling me in order to get a sale. None of that though prepared me for what we saw in Berlin’s market though. And that was precisely it, nothing. No shouting, charismatic banter, physical contact/force or even the atmosphere of a throbbing, busy market.

Even the buyers were relatively quiet; picking items up, turning them around, inspecting, shrugging, putting them back down and wandering off. It was the most civilised street market I’ve ever been too. There were a few questionable items on sale, a Nazi history bookstore here, military paraphernalia there. On the whole most of the items on sale were second handers or throw aways rather then dodgy knockoffs you come to expect. There wasn’t even a stall selling tacky pewter jewellery that turns your skin green.

As we got to the halfway point Maggie was hungry again and she felt like another Currywurst. I was surprised since all Maggie normally eats in a day is a pea (or at least she would if she ate ‘green things’). We found another stall selling Currywurst, this time with chips. So we purchased some more succulent sausage and grabbed a couple of seats so we could sit and enjoy our second lunch of the day. Unfortunately the only table available was partially occupied with a handful of American students with their paranoid teacher. She was warning them to watch out for bag thieves and other such lowlifes. I somewhat doubted you’d find any of them around the area, it was much more likely that someone would tap you on the shoulder to let you know your bag was open then punching you in the face and running off with it.

We finished Currywurst two and walked through the last half of the market. We wandered some more around the area, past churches, [I]actual[/I] synagogues, homeless ladies singing songs, scenic little bridges, other tourists and locals travelling to and fro. After exhausting all the possibilities we could see in the area we grabbed an S-Bahn to Gesundbrunnen, a shopping centre located in north Berlin. We had found out about the place in two different ways, first off when we overheard one guy in The Circus tell a couple of American tourists where to go shopping, and secondly when we got lost on the way to some place or other on day three and were stuck in Gesundbrunnen for twenty minutes for a train.

The shopping centre was pretty good, the best we had been to in Berlin. There were plenty of shops, noise and people along with several glass display cabinets housing weird and wonderful insects down a couple of the walkways.

Maggie and me had noticed since day one that ice cream appeared to be extremely popular with the locals. Despite the wet, cold and downright ‘British’ weather we had seen people incessantly licking away at frozen sweet treats since day one. We thought we’d better find out why that was. A small ice-cream store with a varied selection of flavours (all in German) gave us our chance.

Maggie chose a flavour she vaguely recognised in German while I, rather typically, chose one that consisted of the brightest and most garish colours. We sat in the seats reserved for ice-creamers only to be told off be a security guard, in German. We let him finish his tirade before mentioning to him we were English. No problem, he ‘switched channels’ and repeated it in English to us. Basically, as we had only bought cheap cones instead of the slightly pricier pots we weren’t privileged enough to sit, we had to bugger off and enjoy it somewhere else.

So instead we ate our icy sugared snacks whilst finishing off the shopping centre. Shops were looked in, items were prospected, money was counted, faces were fallen. It seems I had spent more than I realised in the last few days. So, relatively poor Maggie and I decided to move on from Gesundbrunnen. We still had a couple of hours left before we needed to go back to Schonefeld Flughafen, but no idea where to go next. Maggie, as always our saviour, suggested a place called ‘Wedding’. A slightly amusing name in English, though slightly less in German since it’s pronounced ‘Vedding’.

The populous on the S-Bahn didn’t look too shiny and new unlike the majority of the people we had seen on the S and U Bahn nearer the city centre, even the Gestapo looked worse for wear. In fact most of the people here looked utterly violent and aggressive. There was one man across from us nursing a bottle of wine that gave us quite frightening stares whenever we opened our mouths. We stopped talking for most of the journey; we didn’t feel like getting bottled on our last day.

As we got off at Wedding’s platform we could hear a cacophony of noise. Intrigued we left the station via the stairs and headed towards the small platz we had spied before pulling in. When we left the station we got a bit of a shock in the form of a hundred or so German policeman, kitted out in thick green riot gear with over a dozen or so riot vans parked down the road. We were apprehensive at the sight of the po-po, along with being even more intrigued then ever, so we pressed on to the platz.

The place was full of people drifting about with flags tied around their necks like capes, a small stage at the edge of the platz pumping out thumping techno music. Maggie, having an extensive knowledge of flags, recognised it was the national flag of Hungary. Feeling this was something political, and therefore something we shouldn’t be standing in the middle of, we decided to back off and get back to the station. Especially since my limited knowledge led me to believe that the Hungarians are a socialist society and I was still wearing that fucking Russkie coat. Not wishing to kick off a riot we got back to the S-Bahn in double time, with Maggie being able to take a couple of covert pics of the police on the way.

We still had an hour or so until we needed to make tracks, so a final drink was suggested, perfect! We got down to Hackescher Markt and to a bar that sits under the station’s bridge. It was a place called AM-PM, so called because they proudly declared they had been serving continuously since they had opened several years previously. We squeezed ourselves into a corner of the bar, got confused over the drink prices which was eventually explained to us by a helpful waiter. We ordered two pints (or to be more precise two half-litres) of Erdinger beer, the nicest beer we had tasted since being in Berlin.

We spent the next half-hour or so discussing our trip through Berlin. The things seen, done and possibly missed out on (clubbing for example). Despite being only four days it felt like we had been there for a lifetime. Already memories of Berlin were tinged with melancholy; a sense that what was still going on had already finished. But still, we had seen a whole city in four days, no small feat that. So, with thoughts of England swimming uninvitingly into my head I finished off my pint (Maggie as always had half left) and we trudged back to the City Stay for the final time to collect our gear.

The S-Bahn back down to Schonefeld Flughafen was largely uneventful, except for being sat near several punks fully equipped with silly styled and coloured hair, leather jackets and the body odour of a wild hog. We travelled past the graphitised and rundown post-industrial areas of outer-Berlin, this time in reverse. Already the original trip on the train felt like a faded memory, part of a collage of yesteryear. Maggie and I arrived with plenty of time to spare, so we had a manky drink at a coffee bar and made several notes on the trip (this basically).

Customs and security was a nightmare, the English stereotype of ‘German Efficiency’ had certainly been discounted by us on this trip. First off was a baggage check, a big x-ray machine that scanned all your luggage, be it hand or for the hold. This was followed up by the ticked booths, and straight after that was the metal detector bit. We queued up at the metal detectors only to be turned away because we had forgot to bag up our liquids. So we queried the security guard on the location of the so-called liquid bags. We were told they were back in the ticket booth area between the baggage check and metal detectors, which meant having to do a U-turn past the queues. Irritatingly we had to pay for them as well, not like Gatwick and Heathrow where massive piles of them lay around in easy reach. Worse still was the fact that the machines were empty. We asked a ticket woman on the location of [I]another[/I] bag machine only to find out they were back in the main foyer. Not trusting our luck enough for the machines to have any bags in them, not to mention not wanting to have to queue up again from scratch we decided to chuck all our liquids in a bin.

We went straight back to the metal detectors where I got the usual ‘he’s a midget, he must be a drug mule’ pat down by a [I]very[/I] enthusiastic security bloke.

The next part of our return to England was all my fault, for essentially being a complete pillock. We were sitting in a lounge near the duty-free area, sorting out some of our stuff; papers, passports, maps, leaflets etc. I chucked them all on a table as I repacked my bag since yet again security thought my rape alarm was a mini-bomb or some such.

After that we left our seats so I could blow the last of my cash on chocolate. Our previous chairs were now occupied so we sat in a different place, making fun of all the uni students walking past in their drainpipe trousers, arses hanging out with their unisex t-shirts. We did that for an hour or so until our flight was called out, boarding was about to begin. We left the duty-free zone to get down to the flight gate and joined the already swelling queue. As I sorted my flight stuff out and listened to some American mother behind me telling her son how clever my trousers were because they were full of pockets (?) I noticed I was missing something. Go back a paragraph and read the little list I wrote, you should notice an important item inserted in there.

Yep! I had managed to lose [I]that[/I]! With several ‘buggers’ and ‘fucks’ issuing from me (which undoubtedly pissed off the mother behind me) I did a triple check of anywhere my passport could be. Maggie got somewhat worried, in fact much more then me, and took control. I was feeling pretty calm since I expected my stuff to turn up somewhere in the airport. Maggie found a security guard and explained to him how much of a prat I was/am and with his help we went off to find someone who could help us. We marched back the way we had came with me trudging along behind, semi-laughing at myself for being such an arse.

It turned out somebody had already found it and taken it to our flight gate. So we hurried back to the queue where we got pushed straight to the front. The passport guard handed over my passport along with (and this made me issue a chuckle) all of my maps and leaflets I had left with the document. In a way it was pretty advantageous that I lost my passport since it meant we got sent straight to the front of the ever-increasing queue (Maggie got sent through with me, obviously the airport didn’t think they could trust me on my own).

So with our, well, my, crises over we waited to get on our psychedelic Ryan Air flight back to the UK. Back to reality, as it were.

Here ends this sprawling, overly detailed and highly self-opinionated travel diary. It may of only been a four-day trip to a city in Europe, but it was still an adventure. Now I’m back in the house I grew up in, working the nine to five and doing what everyone else is doing and it doesn’t feel like the trip ever happened. I think that’s why I like love to travel, it never feels like you’ve done enough, the ‘now’ turns to memory in an instant, the thirst for travel is unquenchable. This diary is a way to focus the memories into something concrete, real, something other than a handful of humorous anecdotes to tell your friends.

A special thanks needs to be given to Maggie, because without her there wouldn’t have been a trip, in turn meaning no memories or diary.

Not even an anecdote.

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