Stinking Hot in Berlin

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Hallo Guys,
So the flight from Athens to Berlin took about 3 hours, and was a three hour full flight so I didn´t arrive in Berlin till about 11.30. And I was really tired (I'd gotten into a habit of early nights!) and the entire flight stood and waited for our luggage to come for about an hour and a half so by the time I set off for the hostel it was about 1am. I found the train easily enough but I had to change from my train to a U-bahn train and when i went to the U-bahn station everything had closed up and all the trains had stopped for the night. A German guy came up and asked for directions I think, although all he got was a blank stare and "what the.." look as I tried to gesture / say that I didn't speak German. Eventually he figured it out, I think was going to say something in English but reconsidered and walked off looking embarrased. I was just puzzled how anyone could confuse me for a local when I'm standing there with a massive backpack, holding a Lonely Planet Guide and looking around me confused. So anyway I weighed up whether I should get a taxi or walk, and as always my cheapness won out (I was feeling particularly poor after my spending spree on clothes) so I walked the two stations to my hostel. I arrived and dropped my bag into my room and then sat for another 30 minutes finishing my book which was at the exciting part (yes, the same book I´d purchased at the airport only a short time earlier). The book wasn't amazing but it was pretty good. However I felt really dirty when I read the author part at the back and realised that this book was the basis for that trash of trash television - Bones!!
The next day i got up at about 10am and discovered that my previously full bedroom was completely empty of people. I used most of the morning to sort stuff out, like washing all my clothes and then I walked into the centre of Berlin and spent a while looking at the remains of the Berlin wall, and Checkpoint Charlie. I hadn't done anything particularly educational recently so I found it really fascinating and read all the little squares of information peppered around the area. After that I walked around the city looking at all the buildings. I do like Berlin but some areas are very beautiful whilst other are quite dull and boring. After that I headed back to the hostel where I read for a while and then talked to some Americans and a Melbourne girl until everyone headed to bed about 2am.
The next day I headed off to the Brandenburger Tor, and checked out the 17th of June street (it was nice of them to set a street up in my honour) and then crashed in the nearby park for a while. Then I walked around, past the Reichstag and through some of the historical areas of Berlin but this part will be more interesting when i put photos up. That night I talked to much of the same people, but this time everyone was tired and dispersed early.
In woke up the next day about 9am and walked down to the local Big-W equivalent supermarket where I put all my photos onto CDs (which took forever as there was over 2gig worth). Then I walked back through the historical part (it was a beautiful but very hot - i heard 31 degree day - so everything looked much prettier than the previous couple of days which had been dry but not sunny). I then queued for ages to get into the Reichstag which whilst it was okay was not something I would necessarily recommend. The queue wasn't as the place was full, but simply because there was only one elevator going up to the dome and so everyone had to wait as it went up and down. The dome was good and had a nice view but it was also irritating as there was a layer of thick glass between you and the view. In the end i decided I couldn't leave too fast as I'd waited so long to get in, so I sat up the top and read for a little while until i realised how unbelievably hot I'd become and I started to have images of the glass focusing the suns rays on me and setting me on fire!! So I left! I then walked through more of Berlin, and then escaped from the heat in an internet cafe for a while. After I'd finished I walked back to the hostel and decided that as everyone I knew had left and nothing major had happened the previous night, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands if I was going to finally go out. So I picked up one of the leaflets for a pub crawl and headed to the door. And of course despite the fact that it had been such a beautiful and hot day, sometime in the 10 minutes that I was in the hostel it had started bucketing down with rain. I considered going without an umbrella but I had flashbacks to when me and Lise went on a pub crawl in Rome and ended up standing in the pouring rain for about an hour. So I grabbed my umbrella and headed off. I arrived a bit late at the meeting point and so didn't get much free beer but the tour was surpisingly busy. Whilst I was there I talked to a few people but mostly a guy from Seatle who I'm about 90% sure was called James. Then on the way to our second place I started talking to a couple of Irish girls (Julie and Emma), Julie had been studying in Berlin for almost a year and Emma was heading home after studying in Spain for a semester. They were really fun, although Julie was a little crazy. I had quite a few Jagermeister shots at the next place (they were the cheapest drink at 1 Euro per shot). Although the fact that they were cheap didn't stop Julie from stealing two shots when the bartender wasn't looking. After that place the whole group went to catch a tram to the next place, but for some reason the tram wasn't coming so we caught a train and then walked for ages to get to our next place. I guess this is an appropriate place to mention that I have two blisters on my feet (one of them has grown to enormous proportions). I can't recall ever really having blisters before so I'm not particularly sure what to do (I tried putting a blister patch on them but it didn't seem to work). So because I'd been walking all day, the walk to the next club was torture on my feet. We arrived at the place called Matrix. It was a really large club, but there was a main room where most people seemed to congregate. However the main room played the worst German dance music, and the occasional American song like "Don't Cha" and "Beep" by the Pussycat Dolls and "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas, and other "classic" songs. In the end, Julie, Emma and I found a room that played more retro music and spent most of our time there. Quite early on most of the people in the tour disappeared so we spent the entire time together (except when Emma disappeared and we scoured the whole club until I found her asleep in the corner of one of the rooms). At one point I lost my umbrella which is really annoying because it was a good umbrella. At about 3.45 I was falling asleep on my feet so I said my goodbyes and went to attempt the torturous and painful walk back to my hostel. In fact I had no idea where I was. However when I walked out of the club I was so relieved to discover that I was at the same train station where I had first arrived and only had to walk a couple of train stations to get to my hostel.
The next morning I woke up at 10am and headed to an internet cafe to make sure that my photo CDs had worked before I started deleting all the photos. After that I walked into the centre of the town. It was a really hot day, and even though I'm used to much hotter days in Aus whenever I was in the centre of Berlin it was always stifling. So eventually I headed back to the park in the centre of the city and read for a while there where it was a much pleasant temperature.
Then I headed to a travel agents to try and sort out how to get to Munich the next day. You see Germany has the bullet trains which is great cause they only take 3 hours, but have the massive disadvantage of costing over 100 Euros (way more than any of my flights!!). And everyone i talked to seemed to think that it was the only way. So in protest at paying over 100 euros I went to a travel agent and he told me about a bus that left at 8:15 the next morning that cost 40 Euros (yay!). And then the day just kind of disappeared, however as I was heading back to the hostel the German weather did another about turn and it started raining, and then it went to really heavy rain and then it started hailing! Of course this was on the one day I no longer had an umbrella (I've gotten so used to sudden weather changes - in Spain, Croatia, Albania and Greece that I just always carry an umbrella). I found a semi-shelter along with other people, but in the end I got bored and cold so I just ran between doorways until eventually it stopped raining as suddenly as it had started. I had a chance to go out with Julie and Emma again but I had to get up early to catch my bus so in the end I decided not to.
The next morning I got up at 5:50 and packed up my stuff, so i was out of the hostel by 6:30. I jumped on a couple of U and S-bahn trains until i got to the bus station on the other side of the city at about 7:45. I had no trouble buying my ticket and then got on the bus in a really good mood cause I´d just saved 60 Euro. And then the bus took off and we headed towards Munich.

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Photos

Soviet Memorial Monument
For fallen Soviet troops in Berlin

Comments

[Babs]

Blisters
Hey you need to put on one of those fantastic blister plasters I gave you and leave it on for about 5 days. Failing that - amputation?

[Patrice]

naked people
While you're in Munich, make sure you frequent the Englischer Gartens. SO Awesome. Big open space in the middle of the city, where everyone gets really naked (I mean excessively naked) and floats down a creek only to emerge at the end, get out naked and run to the start again. Oh and they surf at the top of the creek. You haven't seen surfing until you've seen it in Bayern! Youre making me want to travel you lucky thing! Patsy