Berlin - part 1. This is going to take a while.

Caitlin & Janet left on the Friday for Stuttgart, so to avoid being alone in Highlands on Friday night I stayed up at the flat. Izzy's bed was very comfy but somehow I woke up with massive bruises on my shins. Still a mystery to me. I was still trying to fit all my warm stuff for a week into my backpack and handbag until quite late on Friday night, because everyone was doing washing all day/night, but eventually, putting a couple of things into Rose's bag, I managed. I got up at 9am, went over to Highlands to shower/eat/straighten my hair (forgetting my adaptor at least twice) and then we all got ready till 12pm when we headed down the hill. After a quick stop at Poundworld, we bought baguettes for lunch and caught the 1pm bus to Heathrow, which arrived at 2pm. Not having check-in luggage was great - we checked in with machines (no queues) and by 2:30pm were sitting and working out what to do till our plane boarded at 5:05pm. I started to feel quite cold-y/blocked up/headache-y on the bus and while sitting at the airport and I just really wanted a McFlurry. Aisling & I went searching and were told there was NO fast food in the airport. As Aisling rightly said, "That's ridiculous!" So I settled for a hot chocolate and we all got water from Boots just to have the bottles for the week.

The flight wasn't too bad (nice pesto, mozzarella and tomato sandwich) and, although the plane left about 10 minutes late, we still arrived on time at 8:40pm German time - we lost an hour :( We were delighted to hear that it was -2°C outside. Not. Again, not having to collect any luggage was great. We looked for the bus to take to Alexanderplatz, and once there, Georgie eventually spotted the big lit-up 'U' - the underground to take us to the station right around the corner from our hostel. We got to Wombat's about 10pm and had a bit of a problem with getting keys for the room - there were 5 of us and only Georgie had any ID she wanted to hand over in exchange. We were told we could also give a photocopy of our passports and a 5€ deposit so most of us ended up doing that, since we needed the keycards to lock and unlock our lockers. Our dorm was big and the 5 of us took up all but one bed. We made our beds (free linen) and headed up to the bar on the top level, traded in our fake money tokens for free beer, which I couldn't finish - I am so not German - and checked out the balcony, way too cold. Aisling, Georgie and I headed out to try and find somewhere to go out, but ended up just taking photos in a photobooth across the road. Typical. I was still not feeling very well so we went to bed about 1.30am.

On Sunday 20th, our roommate came in about 5am, beginning our not very nice relationship with her. We got up at 9:30am and had our first of our daily Wombat's breakfasts - 3.70€ for all-you-can-eat cereal, yoghurt, hot drinks, juice, bread, rolls, honey, jams, nutella-type spread, fruit, meat and cheese. We filled up and tried to get through each day on just breakfast, which worked surprisingly well. Not knowing how many clothes I may need in this weather, I put on a thermal top and leggings, 200 denier tights, socks over the top, dress, cardigan, scarf, gloves, hat and coat. My boots were dead by the end of the week and my feet froze almost every day. The plan of the day was to find at least one flea market. We followed Torstraße, Brunenstraße and Bernauerstraße until we turned the wrong way without realising and ended up conveniently at a documentation centre about the wall. We looked at an exhibition with photos, video and text, and it was so odd to be in the same place where a lot of the photos were taken during the time of the wall. We followed the staircase up to a lookout at the top and realised we were looking across the road at a piece of the wall, literally a piece of history. You could also see the no man's land/death strip from up there. We took some photos in front of the wall and then walked through a little grassy area with photos of all the victims, those who had tried to flee East Germany and had failed. Most of them were only early 20s with some even younger. It was a sad feeling in there. There were also pieces of the wall with original graffiti lined up artistically. We found ourselves at the Nordbahnhof (train station) where an exhibition about the ghost stations and people fleeing on trains that didn't stop was shown. We bought postcards at another little wall shop like good tourists (Mum & Dad, yours is now on the way) and then found our way to the Arkonaplatz flea market. There was graffiti along almost every street, and not mostly tags but actual art (I know it's debatable). The market was small and hidden away, but very sweet. Lots of stuff from clothes and jewels to stools, nuts and bolts and mountains of coathangers. Although I didn't buy anything, I took a sh*tload of photos. We walked back to Wombat's quite frozen and relaxed in the lobby, used the free wifi which didn't work for most of the rest of the week, marked some places on our maps, and chatted to a nice Chilean guy who was visiting lots of cities for just 2 days each. We all had a nap and then had dinner at the felafel place around the corner, which was very yummy including Turkish sweets. I was still not feeling great so I thought I'd stay in that night.

Our roomate again returned not so early in the morning, about 4am this time, and then was gone for good by 8am. I was on the bottom bunk sort of around the corner from her so I wasn't disturbed like the others. I literally jumped out of bed this morning at the sight of snow falling outside our window but it didn't settle at all on the ground. Had breaky, again lots of it. I couldn't believe the day before when I got through 6 hours without eating and I wasn't even hungry. We also started smuggling out fruit and, later in the week, chocolate spread packets. We took the train to Stadtmitte and walked along in the snow, looking at souvenir shops, past Checkpoint Charlie and a public exhibition thing on the side of a yard. Entry to Haus am Checkpoint Charlie was quite high so we walked to the Jewish Museum instead, read lots of stories about those who were deported and/or murdered or their families. They also had a 'Holocaust Tower' which was just a cold, high, grey concrete room with a tiny hole of light at the top, and a 'Memory Void', which was an art piece with a sea of metal cut-out faces all with angry, confused or sad faces. It was all quite moving. We realised at the end that there was so much we hadn't seen or had rushed through at the end, trying to find out way out. We searched for the Gugenheim which was free on Mondays but couldn't pinpoint it to a street on the map, but I'm pretty sure we were very close when we saw all the other amazing buildings - the Humboldt Uni, lots of other museums on the Museuminsel (island) and the Dom (cathedral), along Unter den Linden. If you go to this area, beware of the women who constantly ask 'Speak English?' before holding out a card which asks for money. Their kids seemed to be doing it too, and it just got annoying. We continued walking, LOTS of walking, to the Brandenburger Tor (gate), past Madame Tussaud's, and onwards to the Holcaust Memorial, which is just the lazy and incorrect name for the 'Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas' = 'Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe'. There is another memorial for the homosexual victims as well as some other groups, which we didn't get to see. Unfortunately the underground info centre wasn't open on Mondays so we promised ourselves to come back later in the week. Oh, and the memorial is indescribale. A huge number of concrete blocks of the same width and length but of different heights all line up in a grid. Walking through it, you don't know where you're going, which way to turn, etc. We walked to the nearby Potsdamerplatz to catch the train back and again relaxed in the lobby for a while, before having another little nap. Georgie wasn't feeling well so the rest of us went walking around the area, looking for somewhere for dinner. We walked past lots of cute little boutiques, and so. many. shoe shops. We ate at a cheapish little place where we all got pasta (cheese & spinach gnocchi for me) and were very full. Trying to find our way back to Wombat's was a bit of a struggle in the dark. We ended up in a totally different direction from where we thought we were, but I asked an old lady for directions in German (*hair flick*) and we got back okay. We didn't do much for a while but then Georgie, Aisling and I went up to the bar again, and chilled with a girl from Boston and 2 guys from Canada who were all hilarious and so nice, despite the age difference of about 10 years (which you never would have guessed!). We also ended up talking to a guy from California, another from Texas, and 2 girls from Paris although one was actually from Brisbane. We had a couple of rounds of Jäger bombs (the others had a serous amount of beer) and then went down to the bar/club around the corner, Kaffee Burger, which Georgie and I had both read about in numerous books/sites and knew we had to go to. It was fun but not young/full enough, plus we were still tired, so we left about 2:30am. Georgie decided she wanted pizza at that point so we got to bed about 3:15am.

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I'm also currently in the process of going through the 1000+ photos I took during the week, I've already deleted 100 so we'll see how I go. Hopefully next blog post will be up tomorrow!