Level 3-1: Berlin, Take Two

Well, here's the one you haven't been waiting for - my first in a 3927 part series about my summer holidays. While everyone else organised flights and sunny destinations together, I guilt-tripped because they were going to visit me and then didn't suggested to my parents to spend my university fees on a tour which would take me to both the Arctic Circle and Russia... as you do.

Oh, and a glacier. You know how it is.

Day 1 - Sunday 10th July
High Wycombe, England > Berlin, Germany

Having agreed to take the first bus to Heathrow Airport with Caitlin, I was planning to spend five hours more there than I needed to. Upon our arrival at the bus station we discovered that Caitlin had read the weekday timetable, and that the first bus on a Sunday was at 7:15. While I didn't have a problem with that, Caitlin's mum would've been in the country for over twenty minutes (anyone pointing out that she still would've been going through security is missing the point). Of course, seeing as I hadn't checked the bus schedule at all, this means that Caitlin is still a winner. We ended up taking a taxi.

I might've been five hours early, but this shop was a year too soon.

Buying myself a yoghurt for breakfast, I put it in my bag and promptly forgot about it, then proceeded through security. The lady working the X-ray machine looked at my bag with a strange expression then let it through, so obviously terrorists don't buy things from Caffè Nero.

I wasn't particularly excited to be in the airport for quite so long. Luckily enough for me (and unluckily enough for the many blameless people working there), News of the World was folding after 168 years in print - I knew Rupert Murdoch was old, but he's doing pretty well for someone over 150. At least the one thing BBC News kept telling me again and again was slightly interesting.

Arriving in Berlin Tegel airport, it seemed as though half of the passengers on my plane were also on my tour. Between the 12 or so of us we managed to find Wombats Hostel, received room keys and went to fill in our details with the tour leader, Jamie. Up on the roof it was at least 30°C and very, very sunny, so I proceeded to turn into something between a tomato and a lobster.

After everyone had finished writing their details down and I had finished burning it was time for our first included meal - dinner at a place with "traditional" cuisine with only tourists inside (this would reveal itself to be the typical situation). Dinner was pork and... more pork. I probably ate more pork that night than I had in the rest of my life combined. Still, it was nice.

Day 2 - Monday 11th July
Berlin, Germany

After our breakfast in the hostel (at which I pinched a German Nutella tub for old time's sake), our first stop for the day was the East Side Gallery, a large length of the Berlin Wall with paintings by many different artists on the East side of the wall.

I agree... I think.

So now my buying the postcard back in February is justified.

What ugly curtains.

From there we were taken to the Reichstag and met our German walking tour guide, Jakob. He was a bit more knowledgable than Jamie, who didn't have a lot to say that morning other than "At the end of WW2, Hitler... lost.". The walk was similar to George's walk back in February, but with more focus on WW2 and less on the Soviet occupation afterwards.

Jakob was a well-informed and funny guy, but he wasn't George. With Jakob, everything was "problematic"; the re-use of Nazi-built buildings, the cultural differences between people from East- and West Germany, even Hitler's design for a speech hall which was so large it may have created its own weather inside and rained. Also problematic was the reconstructed Checkpoint Charlie:

Jakob: "I think it might be inappropriate, but I guess we know who won the war."
It wasn't our waistlines.

From Checkpoint Charlie, we split up into a few smaller groups and had the afternoon to ourselves, so we made our way down the high street.

This Bugatti Veyron which I saw while on holiday in Germany, presented without comment.

Eventually we made it to the German History museum... toilets. The next stop was the Pergamon, which I meant to visit at Caitlin's recommendation, but I had to go and buy toiletries instead because terrorists take over planes with spray deodorant and 200 mls of sunscreen.

That night was an optional pub crawl after dinner, which I declined and spent the night chatting to the other three people who didn't go along (as opposed to the forty people who did). I learned from conversation that Perth doesn't have any hipsters, so I know where to move in case I ever get too sick of 'em.

This is unrelated to my post, I just wanted to remind everyone that I own a unicycle.

And with that, it's officially two days down, thirty-three to go... which is slightly less than the number of days I have left at work before I come home. Next time: Copenhagen, Denmark!