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Published: July 23rd 2007
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I just got to Prague, and the hostel has free internet so I have no excuse not to catch up with my blog and emails! Berlin was amazing, I had such a great time. After I updated this on the evening I arrived there, I went back to the hostel and ended up chatting with people in my dorm for about 4 hours! At about 11.30, this guy came in and said he was about to go out with his friend- they were both from Quebec, so me and the Californian guy went with them. We went to this place (it really cannot be described in one word!) called Tacheles that the BusAbout guide recommended. It is in a huge apartment building that was bombed so it's kind of only half of the building. Some squatters moved in in the 90s and decorated the walls all over inside and outside with amazing graffiti, and now they have some kind of deal with the government where they pay like 1 euro rent a month or something equally ridiculous! So it has about 6 floors- a pub/restaurant, a couple of art galleries, a couple of bars and a club, all with completely graffitied
walls! It's not modern looking at all though- the bar on the top floor has old sofas in it that look like someone might have chucked them out of their house, and there are wires and light bulbs sticking out everywhere! I've never been anywhere like it in my life, it was amazing! Outside, there were a few bars in old trailers and stuff, and it was all sandy so it was like a beach party- it was absolutely packed, even when we left at 3am.
The next day, I did a walking tour with a few people from BusAbout. It was so interesting, and the guide was a crazy English guy who has been living in Berlin since the 80s and used to smuggle books across to the East, and took part in protests against the wall. The hostel we were in was technically in East Berlin, although the area is called Mitte, as in middle. Most of the sights are in the East (meaning the east side of the wall). There are two cobbled lines running across the city where the 2 sides of the wall used to be (there were 2 actual walls with a few
metres between them, the death strip- if anyone went there they were shot.) and we did cross over to the west a couple of times, which was strange, becuase the guide would always point out that 18 years ago we wouldn't have even been able to see the other side of teh street. He talked about the history of the Nazis a lot, and it was strange to think that it all happened from there. We went past an old couple selling souvenirs at a bit of the wall that is still standing, and the woman told us about how her family got separated when the wall was put up. We went to Checkpoint Charlie, the American border crossing, and also saw the Holocaust memorial, which is weird, it's basically a load of huge grey blocks in lines and you can walk between them, and the ground is really uneven. We went to the site of Hitler's bunker, which is a sandpit with a slide in it in the courtyard of some flats. East Berlin doesn't look that poor really, every other building is some kind of historical monument that is 10 times more amazing than any building in London,
and even the communist apartment blocks didn't look bad- they had no graffiti and loads of flowers everywhere. There are a few buildings around that look like they were bombed and haven't been knocked down or rebuilt, like Tacheles, but that building in particular has been made into something unique and very successful, judging by the crowds of people that were there all night. After the tour, I went to the Reichstag and the Brandenburg gate with the people from Busabout, and one of the AUSTRALIAN guys (surprise surprise they were all from the land of Oz!) wanted to go to the Jewish museum so I went with him. It was mainly about the history of Jews in Germany, so it was quite interesting, but a bit arty and abstract, which made it incredibly confusing and difficult to see everything!
The next day (yesterday) I went on a tour to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. It was raining, so not many people turned up, which was great because the tour guide had time to answer all of our questions. There was just me and 2 girls from Busabout and a guy who was friends with the guide. We got the train
there, and had to change trains about 2 stops away from the station we got on at in the middle of Berlin. The guide said that neo-Naziism is quite big in that area. The concentration camp was really interesting and very moving.
The way Busabout worked out since Amsterdam has been really good- wherever I go now, I meet one girl that I met in Amsterdam the night I get there and she leaves the next morning, and then I see 2 other girls I met there on my last night. So last night when I got back to the hostel, they had just arrived and we decided to go out. By coincidence, practically everyone I have met came into the hostel reception at the same time, which was really weird! I ended up going to Tacheles again with the 2 people from Quebec, and I had every intention of getting back early because the bus left at 8 this morning. In the end, I got back at about 1. We were sitting outside the front of the hostel for a bit and they were amazed that they were sitting across the street from a policeman drinking beer, because
in Canada they are not allowed to drink in the street!
Today, there wasn't actually that much driving- we stopped for an hour in Dresden to pick up and drop people off, then the border crossing took ages. They had to come and collect all the non-EU passports, which was all except 7 of us! Then they all got stamped by German and Czech border guards. So I had to sit on the coach with everyone for nearly an hour and I didn't even get a stamp because my passport is red! I was so annoyed! We then stopped at Terezin, which was a small fortress used as a jail during the war, and all had a guided tour. The conditions the prisoners were kept in were shocking but nothing compared to Sachsenhausen. I also changed some money there, so my 20 punds and 50 euros became thousands of Czech Koruna! We arrived here in Prague a couple of hours ago. The hostel is amazing- apart from free internet, a restaurant and a bar, it has a swimming pool and sauna so I'm going to enjoy it while I can, as I'm leaving tomorrow at 8 for Cesky Krumlov!
I might put my photos up later if I can be bothered!
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Heenali
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Sounds sooo cool!! Oh I am soooo jealous :p