Berlin

Day 4

We had a train at 11am so were uo pretty early to check out and have breakfast. This was fine for Rach who was pretty spritely. Me on the other hand, was suffering from the previous night at Amsterdam Pride and felt like my body was melting. Just the smell of breakfast nearly made me sick.

Anyway, we managed to make the train to Berlin after a few doubtful moments.

Whatever you hear about German public transport always being on time, ignore it. It is all sick and filthy lies.

We got into Berlin Hauptbahnhof an hour late. An hour. Not like 20 minutes. A whole hour. Always on time my arse.

After checking into the hostel we found out there was a beer festival on a couple of u-bahn stops away which was really good but a bit expensive. Tried pineapple and mango flavoured beers which were surprisingly pretty nice.

The beer festival wrapped up around midnight so we caught the u-bahn back to Alexanderplatz and had a couple of beers at a festival which had set up in the square. We then made our way back to the hostel and noticed there was an absolute ton of prostitutes lining the streets on the way back, most of them looking like men in drag which was pretty funny.

Day 5

After the yellow brick road of hookers showed us the way back the previous night, we left the hostel around midday the next day.

It was absolutely boiling and we caught the s-bahn to the Brandenberg Bridge so went to see the Reichstag and Holocaust Memorial while we were close.

Neither of us had ever visited the information centre for the Holocaust Memorial and not much can really prepare you for it. While it's only small it documents final letters of Holocaust victims, and whole families who were murdered. I can't say I enjoyed it but I'm definitely glad we took the time to visit.

After leaving there, it was only around 2pm so we went for a bite to eat, so being the massive tourists we are, got a litre stein of beer and a currywurst each. It was absolutely sick. No regrets.

We wanted to see the East Side Gallery before going back to the hostel, so I left it in Rach's hands to navigate our way there. Big mistake. We ended up on the other side of Berlin on a street with the same name as the East Side Gallery. Back on the s-bahn we got.

After an hour detour we finally got there as grey clouds gathered and the sun went down, which was pretty atmospheric.

I underestimated how long it actually was, and by the time we got to the s-bahn station it was dark and about half 9.

We'd planned to go out that night but didn't actually end up getting out til about 1am, so just went for a beer at a nearby both because we were both knackered and knew we had to catch the train to Prague the next day.

Day 6

Got up and left the hostel pretty quickly so we could go and see Checkpoint Charlie.

When we got there I couldn't help but feel a little underwhelmed. We got the obligatory lame photo with a fella dressed as a German soldier though.

We caught the s-bahn back to the hostel after and had a few hairy minutes on the way to catch our train to Prague which involved me havimg a few choice words to say to a German woman in front of me who didn't understand the concept of urgency.

That said, we managed to get it with time to spare and our first experience sharing a cabin with 4 other people was interesting.