Day 45 - Berlin

We had a very lazy start to our day. Neither of us got out of bed till 10:30ish and basically did nothing till 1ish. Well, we had a coffee, messed around on the net for quite awhile and we both burned the pics off our cameras to cd. Huge relief to get that done knowing the pics are now somewhat safe.

Finally we left the hostel and headed out for Checkpoint Charlie again to check out the museum located just on the west side. It used to be a safe haven for people escaping from East Berlin.

On teh way we stopped at an AMEX spot for Rob to cash his travellers cheques and i randomly ended up in a conversation while waiting for him with two Canadian girls, Crystal and Amanda, and an Aussie guy, Matt, and soon enough were meeting them for dinner later on at 8.

Aftewards me and Rob stopped, had a curry sausage with fries drowned in ketchup for lunch. I don't think i've ever felt grosser after eating. Pretty much ruined my day. Then we finally made it down to Checkpoint Charlie and went through the museum. It wasn't a bad museum, but definately could've been better, but still was very interesting. It went through the whole histeory of the Wall from going up in '61 to down in '89. There were alot of exhibitions and stuff about different ways that people would try successfully and unsuccessfully to escape. I definately have a hard time getting my mind around the fact that the communists actually could do something like that and the fact that it stayed up until 1989 without anything being done by the rest of the world is shocking and sad. Really messed up.

After the museum, me and Rob headed back to the hostel. We'd planned initially on doing alot more today, but just didn't happen. A very slow day. And the other thing too is that Berlin is soooo spread out and huge, so going anywhere takes a long time. Its a big of a shame because there is so much to see and do in Berlin adn we really only touched on the surface. Just have to come back another time i guess!

When we got back to the hostel i headed to the post office to send a package home and then showered and me and Rob headed up to meet the three from earlier for dinner.

We found the place after awhile of looking around and sat down with the three of them and these two new guys, Nick and Greg, from California. They looked like the biggest hippies ever. Greg had a huge tuque on covering his dreadlocked hair and Nick had a humongous black beard. I'm sure the two fo them get stares wherever they go. Turns out that Crystal just graduated from undergrad and then a one year master's program at Queen's (we didn't really know anyone in common though) and Amanda went to Acadia and knows my buddy Kevin Ogilvie and was at his wedding reception two years ago. Crazy small world.

So we ate and then headed to the Circus Hostel (where we'd been the night before) where some of them were staying and we had a pint and met up with some of the boys from the night before. From there we headed to this other bar that the girls had heard about. It was abit of a walk, but we finally got there. It was the weirdest place i've ever been i think. The place we went to was this old abandonned concrete building that was half demolished at the back so you could see into the different floors from the outside. The whole thing was also covered in spray pain and there weren't many people around making it seem pretty sketch, especially after dark. At the back of the building, where the rest of the building should have been anyways, there was a bit of a small shanty village and a projector was projecting all kinds of weird images on the wall of the building opposite. It was very weird and creepy. We climbed this staircase all the way to the top floor to a room with a bunch of couches, very dimly lit, and a DJ was spinning house music in the corner. It was a cool and weird because the other half of the floor we were on was just simply gone. We were on the outside of the building basically, 5 storeys up, looking down on the shanty houses and the wall opposite with all the weird images flashing on it. I felt like i was in a Rob Zombie movie thinking that everyone in the place (who were staring at us) were all going to all of a sudden show fangs and turn out to be vampires or something. There was an art gallery on the floor beneath us that was open and free. I think the story behind the place has something to do with a bunch of artists hiding out there during the war and then when the war was over they were told they could keep using the place as a studio on the condition that they have to keep it open to the public at all time. It was very liberall too with people smoking weed everywhere. I doubt if it was even a licensed bar. The Aussie guy scored some green later on and the Cali guy took his dreads out when he smoked and he looked just like Bob Marley. They were the craziest dreads i've ever seen.

Finally sometime between 1 and 2 we all took off. Me and Rob had the best location for a hostel ever bcause we had no clue where we were, but all we had to do was look up and find the TV tower (kinda looks like the CN tower) adn walk towards it because our hostel is basically right at the base. Tooks us about 45 minutes to walk home, then we both passed out.

Off to the Netherlands tomorrow.

To be continued...