Berlin

We rocked into Berlin and dropped the car off after some shenanigans- The map we had didn't say anything about the tunnel we got stuck in and forced us to cross half way across town... Then we realised we didn't have a map or location for where to drop the car back to! After 30 minutes of walking around the biggest train station I have ever seen we were all sorted. This place was seriously huge- after we had dropped in the car, we got a kebab on the -3 level, hit the food court for a coffee on -1, the tourist info on -2 for maps, and the supermarket on ground for some brews and headed off to check in. The place was about the size of a big city block, an 5 storeys tall- and that's just the shops.

That night we headed in to the pub crawl run by new europe tours which was awesome. Free bottomless beers the first hour, then we hit 4 pubs after that with free shots all along the way. The following night me and the other 10 odd blokes from my hostel that went were all trying to piece together what actually happened and where we went. Collectively we could recall 2 pubs, a train, maybe a tram ride, and that the guides running it seemed to have backpacks full of this orange flavoured vodka. We all had a great night, and i think every other drunk on the tour did too- including the bloke from southern Cali that we had to carry around pub to pub. I don't think the 2-for-1 beers were needed at the end, but they sure do explain everyone's state the next day. The one thing everyone seemed to recall was the two birds me and Kyle met that were only too happy to pose for the camera. Getting home was much simpler than the Munich fiasco- aside from a 1 hour wait at a traino patiently waiting for the S-Bahn to start up again for the day. Luckily here every traino seems to have a 24 hour deli/bakery attached so the beers and munchies came through well. With the recommendation of most of the guys on the pub crawl we hit the New Europe Berlin free tour the next day too.

Getting up for the 1pm tour was a bit of a struggle after a few hours of sleep, but I'm dedicated. A few litres of coffee later I was almost functional too and we got into it. It started at Pariser Platz- home of things like the Brandenburg gate, The hotel Michael Jackson dangled his kid from, the Reichstag (The building that gave Hitler his dictator powers) and the bomb proof US embassy.

There were a few laughs in this town- one of them a huge bowl that was meant to go into the national museum on Museo Island, but it was delivered late then found to be too wide to fit between the doric colums out front, so it was just left in front of the building, and they wacked a lid on it. We also checked out the Alexanderplatz TV tower that Germans built to showcase their construction prowess. Unfortunately the engineers needed to call in swedes to finish the plans after a half built failed construction. Seeing a fence around the Berlin wall to protect it was a bit ironic as well.

During the tour I think Germany got its annual rainfall, and my jeans stole half of it. Walking around for the rest of the day in 5 degree weather and soaked to the bone sucked pretty bad, and it wasn't really helping the hangover. I almost dropped my coffee all over my lap after the tour because my hands were numb. It was odd to hear that Berlin was still separated east from west until 1990 as well! What the hell? I thought that stuff was sorted way back. Even more surprising was the way that the divide was only ceased due to a slip up by a government official misreading a memo under pressure at a press conference! Some people want the wall back- $55bn in debt, 19% unemployment and lower standards now in West than when they were separated I can guess which side of the ditch is the bitter one.

Did the Saschenhousen tour today all day today at our own pace. This camp, designed by Goebbels was the prime design for the Nazi concentration camps that were built all across eastern EU, and had a few secrets that some people would rather have not let out- eg: the design of the camp and industrial grounds were part done by Porsche to increase their construction speed with slave labour. The slave labour was used all around town as well from building public facilities, gardens, testing all kinds of weapons, illnesses and goods and all sorts of other stuff. It was pretty horrific seeing the place- gas showers for mass executions, the cremation ovens for disposing of the bodies and the mounds of ash that they produced. The museum was cool the way it told the story of so many people in there and their own personal fights- Nazis going against their leaders to help inmates and stories by inmates about their own struggles against the immovable force.

The place was pretty miserable- cold concrete, and everything so clinical and bare. We saw the killing trench- An area people were led to with one purpose. There was a gallows made for families, and a inside a bunker was a slit in the wall people would be lined up against then shot in the back of the head, then their fellow inmates were forced to drag the bodies, incinerate them in the ovens they were forced to build and perform show autopsies to diagnose death as one of 9 approved options. The people in the huts around the mass graves could keep track of the number of deaths during the day by the number of splat sounds they heard from the bodies being tossed in. As a memorial, the pillar in the middle of the camp was erected, but as a further slap in the face it only has red triangles on it- These are for political prisoners, the sign for Jews was the yellow star of david. It was humbling to see the extent that the German government had gone to to try and preserve the site, and the cash it had poured into the displays- how there can be a group that denies the holocaust happened is beyond me.

On the way back to the hostel we went to the thai place on our street and picked up some curries- good stuff! Its been a while since I had a green curry and this one was awesome. Got the heads up from a bunch of Perth boys we met on the pub crawl about some other cheap local places too, which was handy given our location and the average of $40 AUD for a steak around here. In the common room I sank the rest of my $17 carlsberg carton with the crew of misfits- most of them here because they left booking tickets to the last minute and have missed either planes, trains, have no accommodation or have run out of money. We realised that between the 13 of us we had enough people to call ourselves a group so headed into a club.

This place was weird- it looked like a shopping mall out front, and I thought there was a clothes shop inside- nope just the enormous glass walled cloak room. Once the bouncers had forced us to leave our jackets in there we went downstairs to the action. It was a bit of a surprise to see a country western bar in this place, with karaoke of a language we couldn't even read and the entire crowd getting into local folk songs, but it was all cool after we used our entry tickets on the chocolate wheel and all won free drinks. After the western bar there was a corridor through a kebab shop, a souvenir shop, a beer garden and a bakery, then it opened into the dance club. With the different selection of drinks, cocktails and crew this place was totally different. Beyond that was the cocktail lounge, then a huge R&B area with a few hundred people. We seriously need some of this in Aus- I could go without the dancing semi naked bloke on a podium with the Michael Jackson mask though.