We arrived in Berlin in the late afternoon. We stayed in a hostel I stayed in last year on a trip to Berlin. It is ok, and very cheap. The room smelt a bit cheesy though, and there were a lot of school groups staying there for some reason. We headed out in search of cheap food and ended up having pizzas from a Turkish place. I had chicken curry pizza, the man insisted on sprinkling loads of curry powder all over it. Brilliant. Alan was jealous.

The next day we went out fairly early to get some serious sightseeing done. We ended up doing a massive walking tour of the city. In the morning (after a lot of walking) we took in the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag (Parliament). We also saw the big Jewish memorial and had some excellent kebabs for lunch. They were so packed with veg that we easily got two of our five a day (even Alan).

Having regaining our energy, we walked down to Checkpoint Charlie, the old border crossing between East and West Berlin. They have a big outdoor exhibition there about the history of the Wall so we spent a while looking at it as it was very interesting. You can do a walk which follows where the wall used to be, which is marked on the streets throughout Berlin. We followed this back to the hostel, and on the way we past the East Side gallery, a part of the wall which is preserved and in covered in murals which were painted there after the Wall came down.

Once back at the hostel we went straight out to eat. We had "currywurst" which seems to be very popular here but was pretty disgusting in my opinion. We then spent a couple of hours in the internet place, where we worked out a new travelling route which take us back to Eastern Europe.

The next day we woke up late, as some people had checked into our room in the middle of the night and woke everyone up. We walked into town armed with supplies we had bought from Lidl the night before (there was fruit by the way: healthy stuff!). After another massive walk past Checkpoint Charlie we found another part of the wall exhibition, which was a preserved part of the death strip, which used to be the border strip which was lit up and guarded. A church was demolished to make way for this, but now a new one has been built where it used to be. They have memorial services there for people who were killed trying to go over the wall.

On the way home we got supplies for the 10 hour journey to Krakow we were planning to make the next day. We got an early night which was disturbed by possibly the worst snoring I have ever heard. Seriously, it was bad.

More updates soon...xxx