Berlin was quite the adventure. I left Friday night at 23:30, arriving Sat morning a little after 5 to the bus station where everything is in German, I don't have a cell phone or any idea where I am supposed to meet my friends or even how to get there. I asked a bus attendant who was very surprised I spoke english, he directed me "across the bridge, down the stairs to the left." Easy right? I wander a little bit, and find the stairs, turns out to be a metro station that runs in a circle... How do I get to the middle of that circle where I needed to go? I tried to figure out the bus schedule instead, then wandered back to the bus station where I had arrived an hour ago. Keep in mind it is pitch black and the coldest cold I've ever been in. I find some wifi and pay like 10 bucks to use it for an hr, find myself on google maps and find directions to the hostel where I need to meet my friends. I walk back to the metro station, hop on the metro and get off after a stop, take a link towards the center of the loop and finally find myself near the right metro station. I know the hostel is nearby so I begin my search. I walk outside and around the block to the left, nothing. I walk back to the front and to the right, nothing again... by now I am exhausted, freezing and feeling completely lost in a place where I don't speak the language. I finally find the hostel after about 2 hours of wandering around Berlin... I walk into the lobby and pass out on the couches as my friends are supposed to meet me in the lobby about 9.
After wandering the cold city for a couple of hours I was rewarded with a beautiful sunrise! Good Morning Berlin!
About 9am I met up with my friends and ate at the hostel's breakfast bar, let me tell you right now: Berlin has the best food. Seriously it was so good! After breakfast we headed over to the gate:
And took a 4 hr walking tour through Berlin, got a bunch of amazing pictures and a lot of interesting history. Funny how history differs when you are not learning it from an American school. After the walking tour we stopped to try some curryworst
Currywurst is basically some bland sausage covered in spicy ketchup.. It was the only food I had in Berlin that I didn't enjoy.
Megan and I split from the group to try to find our couchsurfer, we got directions to his house and made our way in the right direction, got lost, made a pay phone call and then finally met up with our couchsurfer.
This is the inside of the apartment....
Our couchsurfer was interesting to say the least. After bringing our stuff in, and having a beer, he took us out for an evening of hula hooping. On the walk there he said we needed to drink the "Berlin way" and proceeded to buy us beers every time we finished one. That was one of my favorite things about Berlin, the legal drinking ANYWHERE you want :)
Hoola hooping:
This is what happens after 2 hours of hoola hooping. I dont recommend doing it for longer than say recess (15 min?)
We were so exhausted after hula hooping that we just went back and passed out. The next day we went to the East Side Gallery (a part of the berlin wall that is graffitied) and the Pergamon museum.
After the museum, we went out for some beers, of course I had to try the one that was beer/absinthe.. It was actually really good! Kind of fruity tasting.
Later that night we went out to the Berlin Pub Crawl!! 1st ever pub crawl, and it totally rocked, met some awesome irish men, danced, hung out and had a great time.
Beginnings of the pub crawl.
Middle of pub crawl with our friend Josh.
By the end of the pub crawl, the irish men had convinced us we couldn't go back to our couchsurfer's place haha so we stayed in a hotel with them. In the morning we had a breakfast of champions: beer! They called it "hair of the dog" guess that's what you get when you hang out with irish men!
That was my weekend in Berlin. Now the bus ride back was a totally different story....
I get on the bus and the ticket lady asks if I wouldn't mind sitting in the back of the bus because the front is really crowded (the front was where I had reserved my seat online). Of course I didn't mind, so I sat in the back where I could lean my chair back and sleep (I was on a night train). I sit in this man's seat, say sorry and offer it to him, he's fine with it and sits one row behind me. Somehow he thought it was okay to just start talking to me, talked about his life, family, money, job, etc... Okay old man, this is a night train, I have class tomorrow, I need sleeeep! He somehow gets on the topic of cell phones, I tell him I don't have one (hoping to end the conversation and finally get some sleep) he proceeds to get out an "extra" cell phone and makes me take it so I can call him and we can meet up. By now I am just frustrated and tired. I tell him I can't take the phone, he puts it in my hands. I say no and hand it back, he refuses. So I keep the crazy man's phone and fall asleep. I wake up to something touching my face. He had moved to the seat next to me and literally was caressing my face to wake me up because the bus had made a pit stop.... Seriously old man. GO AWAY. He was so creepy.. I wasn't even being that nice to him, I wasn't making conversation, just nodding every so often. I was pretty much ignoring him. Of course this is a night train so everyone else around us is asleep and can't tell I am being harassed..... So I go back to sleep.. he again wakes me up by touching my hand when we make our final stop. I practically run from the bus to the metro stop and throw the phone in a trash can.. Sorry creepy old man.
To say the least, I am glad to be back home in Prague!
