Jun 2008

We left Helsinki on an early morning flight and were farewelled by Timo at the airport after clearing customs we headed to our departure gate - our European backpacking adventure was about to begin.

We arrived in Berlin clueless as to how to get from the airport to our hostel so we queued up to speak to a transit information employee to get some advice, on what bus we should catch and where it departed from and any other tips that were going - sounds logical right? We'll after waiting for 20 minutes to speak to someone we got the most obnoxious and rude German on the planet; as soon as I opened my mouth he started off on a angry rampage in German - he looked like Helmut Kohol's little brother - I kept trying to repeat the suburb I wanted to go to "Alexanderplatz" each time trying to do it in a more German accent. Obviously I was unsuccessful as this made Helmut's little brother angrier and angrier, in the end we walked away, more confused and a little bewildered then when we started.

Anyway, we ventured outside where there were some bus stops and another transit employee who must have seen the exchange - called out to see whether we needed help - of course we did and we were soon on our way to our hostel.

We arrived at our hostel in one piece and were looking forward to a shower - we went to our room and met one of our room mates - a Canadian who couldn't speak English? Yes, she was from Montreal, and proclaimed that she could not speak English. At the time I thought this slightly bizarre – am I the only one?

We discussed her Francophile inspired travel itinerary as she preferred to travel to french speaking countries and our conversation abruptly ended with her declaring that she was getting tired of concentrating on English and so with that I (gratefully) bid my adieu and went to have a shower.

We also met a bloke named Raphael from Brazil who had been living in Dublin. He had been deported from Brittan and was in trouble in Ireland for working on a student visa. Although he was a little depressing telling this story over a beer on our first night in Berlin we told him he should try to get into Australia and gave him the name of a contact (Kevin Rudd ). It made me realise how lucky we really are to be able to travel around with relative ease, Raphael was deported before even stepping foot outside the airport in London!

The next day Jez and I did a fabulous walking tour and got to see all the major sights in Berlin, checkpoint Charlie, the remains of the Berlin wall, the new parliament ( we went up in the dome thing the day before) the holocaust memorial and Hitler's last bunker (well were it was and is now a car park). One thing that struck me about the old East Germany was that the architecture was so depressing - this was made even more evident when we caught the train to Warsaw, you go from clean, modern minimalist design to grey concrete blocks. For an ideology claiming to create the worker's utopia its design and creativity didn't reflect it.

Anyway it was a great tour but a long day so we headed home to have a shower before heading out for dinner at a traditional German restaurant. We headed to our rooms only to discover that someone ( a new roomie) had taken my bed! Yep, she removed my towel which indicated that the bed was taken and had put new sheets on and left her books on the bed. I was a bit annoyed but as there was a vacant bed in the room figured I would just sleep there for our last night. As I made up the vacant bed the new roomie walked in - she had beady eyes and weasel like features so of course I thought she was French but Jez thought she was German. I wanted to say something but as soon as she walked into the room she gave Jez and I a harsh look and jumped into bed, covering her head with her sheets (or were they still mine?). Oh, well I bit my tongue, packed up my bags and thought about the international incident that could have been.

Jez and I then headed out for dinner and had the biggest pama's we had ever seen and some nice locally brewed beer as well. The next day we headed to the Pergamon Museum which houses art from the ancient worlds. I was surprised to find that the Museum had some really great pieces and wondered how they had managed to maintain such vast collections especially with WWII and the German partition. Well, according to my guide book its seems that Hitler was a bit of an art buff and like a good Fuhrer liked to pillage the art collections of nations he conquered. He also requested or should I say ordered that that all German museums safeguard their collections by storing them in underground bunkers - this was before the outbreak of WWII. He also instructed that the Jewish cemetery in Prague be left untouched as he planned to turn it into an exhibit for a new German Museum that of "an extinct race"..................................................

arty farty

some wall

Parliament- its always exciting

Chilling with locals (Jeremy if he keeps eating those kebabs!)