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Despite being about 45 mins late, our train did at least get us in to Hamburg in time to catch an, only slighter later than planned, onward train to Berlin. After discussing our plans for the day we both nodded off for the remaining hour of the final leg, making the total night sleep for both of us that night about 2 hours! We picked up some 48 hour 'Welcome Berlin' cards from Hauptbahnhof (the main station) and headed across to our hostel 'Wombats' which was just outside of Alexanderplatz. Check-in wasn't till 14:00 (and it was only 10:00) so we left our bags and used the bathroom to freshen up a bit and change.
We caught the tram back across town to the Reichstag and Brandonberg Tor, we did attempt to go into the Reichstag but you needed to make an appointment in advance and there were none available. We studied the history of the Brandenburg Gate and then hopped back on the train to Hackescher Market where we wandered around a little collection of 7 'squares' filled with boutiques and small companies offices before hunting for somewhere good for lunch. We opted for 'Kantine Deluxe', a
modern place where we ordered via a tablet, which was pretty decent and fairly priced. Dan had currywurst with potato salad and I went for a German goulash with sweet potato mash.
After lunch we headed across the road the fountain and church at the very bottom of Alexanderplatz to snap a few picks, picked up a Monster Energy drink each from the shop (which we both needed to keep us going today!) and moved on to the Berliner Dom. I had missed out this on my last trip to Berlin so I made sure I got some snaps of it this time round. The weather had started to take a turn for the worst so we headed inside to the DDR (German Democratic Republic) Museum. This told the story of East Germany and its inhabitants between 1945 and 1989 where the allies (UK, US and France) controlled West Germany and the USSR (effectively) controlled East Germany. I have done quite a lot of WWII history but hadn't touched on this much so I really enjoyed the 2 hours we spent here reading and learning about Trabi's, the Berlin Wall, life in the DDR and the Cold War.
Once our concentration had run out after 2hrs reading the weather had picked up so we grabbed a pretzel from a street vendor and headed up the Furnsehturm or TV Tower in Alexanderplatz. It was a bit overcast at first the 300 or so meters up we were but it soon cleared and we took in the views and learnt about the individual buildings and areas we were peering down on thanks to the guide information by each window of the observation deck.
By this point it was about 6pm and we were pretty done with walking for the day so we popped back to Wombats and got into our room, a 4 bed en-suite dorm, where we found our roomies to be out, much like all there stuff! It was clearly two girls as their stuff was sprawled all over the place including iPhones, €50 notes and cameras. Some people clearly are too trusting, the day before some of our roommates in Copenhagen had left their wallet and passport clearly poking out of their jacket in our hostel room unattended. Dan and I have been locking all our valuables in our bags and/or lockers whenever we are not
in the room, can't really believe others do not. We showered up and I FaceTimed with Ping whilst I opened my birthday present (from the day before). She had bought me an amazing present and something I had been thinking of getting for some time now, a Kindle Paperwhite! Needless to say I was very pleased :-D Thank you Pingu!!
We headed out to 'March Braü' for dinner, a traditional German place recommended by the hostel. It was a good recommendation! We each had a massive 1ltr stein of beer from their micro brewery, shared a meat and cheese platter to start and then stuffed our faces with 'Schnitzel Weiner Art' (pork schnitzel, fried egg, fried potatoes) and 'The Marcus Braü' (a big sausage, fried potatoes and sauerkraut). We made our way back to Wombats and redeemed our free drink at the rooftop bar, which had a great view, then it was to hit the hay and catch up on sleep after 38 hours on the go. Our room mates had clearly been back (there was more shit all over the floor and less vodka on the table) but we're nowhere to be seen.
I think it took
me about 5 minutes to fall asleep, probably a new record for me, I stayed that way until our roomies came in during the early hours, they didn't speak but banged around a bit.
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