We stopped off in Hamburg for a day on our way up to Copenhagen. Our first impressions of the city were made in our hostel which was the largest hostel we've seen yet. We arrived there at the same time as a bus load of drunken men all wanting to check in at the same time as us. When a staff member cleared them away to deal with them separately we were surprised to find we were still in a huge queue that took over 40 minutes to get through. From this point Hamburg...

We had heard from other travellers on our trip so far that Heidelberg is a nice place to visit in southern Germany, a student town that was pretty much untouched from the war so it had retained much of its old world character. This, combined with the fact that Sonja has a friend from school living in the town meant we were always going to pay Heidelberg a visit. Sonja's friend, Doro, kindly offered for us to stay at her place for the three days we would be ther...

Berlin has been at the centre of a number of significant historical events over the last century, so it wasn't a huge surprise for us to find that it is unlike any other city we've visited in Europe so far. It's the largest city by area in Europe (unless you count London as part of Europe), which gives everyone so much room to move but also makes it difficult to see everything. Also, understandably, it has very few old buildings that survived World War II so Be...