''Ich bin ein Berliner.''

13th September 2008


This train was only Hannah and I in the cabin, so it was basically a twin.... private room, ahhh, something that was so nice among all the hostels sharing the space with at least 10 other people.

We arrive in Berlin in an uber clean, new, glass train station - how German. As we arrived so early in the morning we went to do the free walking tour of Berlin, well worth it, the guide was really good. It's quite a world wind tour of the cities main sites but the guide gave us enough history so we had some context to appreciate the sights better. As well as the more serious sights he showed us the hotel where Michel Jackson dangled his baby out the window.

I really liked Berlin, even though it is the capital city it never felt overly busy or crowded. There is always something to do. The tour was a good start as we went back to a few of the sites to have a better look at them. The Reichstag, the home of the German Parliament was re-designed in the 90's by British Arechtech, Norman Foster, with it there is a giant glass dome that people can walk up. It's free to enter so we spent most of the morning queuing and getting to the top to see the views of Berlin.

We ate the compulsory bratwurst and drank the Berlin beer which has a bear for the logo as many many years ago during the beginning of Berlin it was called bear town because there were so many bears in the forested wood where the founding community choose to settle.

Museums are free on Thursdays from 6pm so we took advantage and went to the Atlas museum to see a Egyptian and Ancient Greek exhibition. The following day we went to the Babylon: Myths and Truth exhibition which was a really interesting look at the myths surrounding the city then to contrast that a seperate exhibition into the reality of life in the city.


The evening of the 5th September Hannah and I were waiting to go to the cinema and I was checking our on going train ticket when I noticed our train was half past midnight on the 6th. Basically I got confused with times and dates, I thought we had one more night and the whole day in Berlin, but turns out we didn't. We figured this out about two hours before the train was supposed to depart. We went to the station to try to change the ticket to the 7th, but no luck - that's what I got for getting the cheap special price tickets. So we raced back to the hostel, packed in a matter of minutes and were out the door. We ended up being early for the train which turned out to be delayed for departure by nearly an hour. Then in the morning, there was a problem with the brakes so we were delayed in arrival to Amsterdam and had to switch to a non-German train once we got to The Netherlands. How ironic, the society where everything is 'punkthlich' was the one train I took that wasn't.