The Journey to Berlin

Guten Tag!

Departing Brisbane International Airport:

We arrived at the airport about 10:30, spent a bit of time with mine and Dorina’s family and then head off down to customs, duty free and boarding. After a failed attempt to convince Dorina that a $600 Tissot watch was a good idea for my wrist we went to board the plane which was to take off at 13:10. Because I haven’t been on a plane for about 15 years I was really looking forward to playing with all the stuff and pressing all the buttons I could. That however wore off after a few hours. Then it was just sitting down for a long, long, long time in a somewhat uncomfortable chair. After 8+ hours we arrived in Singapore to pick up more passengers. We got off for about half an hour then got back on and settled in for another 8.5 hour flight to Abu Dhabi.

When we arrived in Abu Dhabi it was about 23:45 (05:45 Brisbane) their time but we had been in transit for almost 17hrs (plus we had about 2 hours sleep the night before we left Brisbane) so we were totally drained of almost all mental and physical resources but managed to get to our airport hotel room for some long awaited sleep on a surface that was horizontal and in no way, shape or form anything like an aeroplane seat. By this point we were so tired I swear we could have slept on the bed of nails or broken glass as long as we got to lie down. We found out that our check in luggage wasn’t actually available until we reached Frankfurt the next day so we slept in the same clothes we had been wearing for almost 24 hours. Ahhh the backpacking life had begun and we hadn’t even got to Europe yet. We got up about 10am, ate our room service (mmmm room service) which included beef bacon instead of pork, then headed out to begin boarding again. I had to buy a shirt from a duty free store because if I had to wear my current shirt any longer both I and all economy class passengers would have needed gas masks for the 7 hour flight to Frankfurt that awaited us.

After boarding the final plane in the trek we settled to those beautiful seats and started to get a bit more excited about almost being in Germany.


Arriving in Frankfurt:

After we got off (aprrox 17:45 - 16.09.08 in Germany and 01:45 - 17.09.08 in Brisbane) we got our luggage and proceeded to not know where to go to get to our series of trains that was going to get us to Berlin. It was a little overwhelming at first but after asking a few people with varying levels of English language skill levels we got to the train that we going to spend the another 4.5 hours on to get to Berlin and our accommodation for the next 9 days.


DB BAHN from Frankfurt to Berlin:

Well we made it to the right train with a couple of minutes to spare (20:15), asked a conductor type lady where to go and she directed us further up the platform to the appropriated carriage number. The train was long (about 15 carriages I think) streamlined and red so obviously fast. Inside each carriage there were 4 rows of seating, 2 against each side of the train and a walkway up the middle. Each row contained about 20-24 seats with quite a few having a table between them and a power point for laptops. It was pretty clean and not a great deal of noise until this guy next to us started up. He must have some type of muscular disorder that causes him to jerk wildly and it was happening nonstop. Every 30 seconds he would jerk suddenly, at varying jerk intensities with some being extremely violent, and then he would breathe in gasps and exhale so loud and powerfully I am sure the whole carriage could hear it. Then about 20 seconds later the cycle started again. Every now and then he would start talking to himself as well. After being in transit for 30 something hours this was beyond any painfully annoying experience you have ever dreamed of but as I am sure he wasn’t doing it on purpose we said nothing.


Arriving at our Hostel:

We finally got to hostel about 01:30 (09:30 Brisbane) 17.09.08 - 44 hrs after leaving Brisbane- went to sleep, got up after about 6hrs sleep and went for a walk around to see a bit of Berlin without a guide. Well that will do for my part of the blog as I can’t be bothered typing anymore and Dorina will probably enter the next part of our journey. I’ll just say that we have had a full day in the hostel and we are both feeling pretty good now. Going on a free tour of Berlin tomorrow. Oh and by the way beer is so cheap here. I just bought a Becks 500ml from a hotdog shop for Euro 1.30 so about $2.10 and drank it there. See how happy I am in the photo. Everyone sells beer it’s amazing.

Now that we are finally in Europe the fun has begun.

Mitch

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