Berlin

G'day folks!

Before we made our way all the way down to Munich and Oktoberfest, Sonja and myself decided to make a detour through Berlin, the capital of this majestic and powerful country. We checked into our 10 bed dorm which turned out to just be two single beds in a lovely quiet room - Sweet! Berlin is big on three things - History, politics and party. For the start of our time in Berlin though, Sonja and myself just focused on the history. Sonja proved herself to be as good as any guide someone could pay for, but at the same I could tell her if something was boring the hell out of me. She also added all her own experiences into each part of the city from her previous trips.

Throughout the city you can find a few pretty cool fountains that sort of "Dance" I guess. They squirt up in synchronised patterns and it's a nice decoration for a built up city. One day on a free day with a school trip, S-daw and a few of her school mates bought a couple crates of beer, ripped off their clothes and played in the fountains for the day. With the beer drinking age of 16, no-one was breaking any laws, although I'm sure a lot of people were staring. Sounds like fun!

Anyway, we spent the day walking around the entire city, and I learnt a lot about how Germans deal with what happened in the war in every day life. Sonja told me about at school where the teachers would just drill into their heads how awful and mean the Germans were in the war and that everyone hated them. In every country, most kids just learn about their own country's history, and in Germany, the war was a pretty significant peice of history I guess.

When the sun goes down in Berlin, the history of the city takes a back seat and party takes control. Not tonight though for us, we decided to find somewhere really nice to eat and just have a quiet one. We found a greek restaurant with prices not too hideous and chowed down on. Bloody hell the greeks must eat a lot. Even as I was sitting there starving for most of the day, I struggled to eat half of what was on my plate - Sonja had the same problem, but she got through a quarter. The lady who served us seemed convinced that we thought the food sucked, but I would be disgusted to find out if anyone could finish one of those.

The next day we set out on an adventure to find some currywurst (A chopped up sausage that is covered in a curry sauce and sprinkled with curry powder, pretty brilliant). Berlin and Hamburg are rivals for who has the best currywurst. Although I couldn't taste a huge difference, I definitely think I preferred the Hamburg ones. Sonja said there was no comparison and that the Berlin one tasted like ass...I guess the Germans are pretty passionate about it. They all hate Australian sausage, and despite German sausages knocking the Australian attempts way out of the park in excellence, I think I can still go home and enjoy a good ol' sausage sizzle with onion on white bread.

Having been on a few pub crawls myself, I guess Sonja was sick of hearing about them and just finally wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so she decided that we should take on one of the Berlin pub crawls. We picked a good looking one from the outrageously large list of options and met up at the meeting point for the "30 minutes of free beer". That alone should have told us it was going to be a big night.

Not long into the journey we met a English chap hanging out with a group of three girls from Belgium and we almost became inseparable from the throughout the night. They were all pretty cool and that girl's hair was amazing.

When I mentioned that I was going to make my way Belgium, they went crazy and all offered me a beer and couch to sleep on on my arrival there. It turns out not many tourists go there - Sounds pretty good to me! They warned me of the beer in Belgium though - The most common one's over 10%.

As the night went on, free shots were being thrown at us every time we turned around and before too long, we were both unbelievably drunk. As everyone made their way to the final destination - A crappy club that all pub crawls end up at, Sonja and myself decided to bail on the idea as we wouldn't have even made it inside the door. Throughout the whole time in Berlin Sonja was the navigator, but this evening was my turn apparently, even though I couldn't understand what she was saying most of the time and I could hardly see in front of me.

Somehow we made it back to the hostel, but it wasn't pretty. The pub crawl was a long night, but the next day was even longer for poor old Sonja, she couldn't physically sit upright in the bed until midday and couldn't get out of the bed until 4. This was a hangover I hope to never experience myself.

With the day to myself, I went for a three hour walk to a half built monument, sat in a park on a bench watching people for an hour and went on a quest to find Berlin's best bratwurst (Plain, big, fat Sausage, sometimes served with mustard, tomato sauce and a roll). For the capital city of Germany, the capital country of sausages, it was so bloody hard to find one. It's not just a touristy thing either, the locals love them, so why was no-one selling the bloody things?

Shortly after my return to the hostel at about 5ish, we heard knocking at our door and it was Lucy and Callum! We weren't supposed to see them until we got to Munich. They were really hungry, so we took them to the same Greek place we went to a couple nights before. Sonja was still very slow in moving, but made a pretty good effort as she hadn't seen either of them for 2 or 3 months - since she left Townsville.

7am the next morning we made our way out the doors of the hostel as a group of four and made our way to Munich, bags on backs. We filed onto the bus, with about 30 other smelly Australian backpackers. Everything that was said on the bus was in German, and after translating it to me, Sonja noticed all the other Australians leaning over to try and hear what was being said too, so eventually she just turned around, and yelled out what was being said for everyone to hear. I felt pretty lucky to have my own private translator.

I told you last time that this blog would be about Oktoberfest, but I promise you the next one will actually be about it!!

For now though, keep being awesome and I'll whack up the next blog soon!

Byyyyyyye!

Dialogue in the Dark

Ooook!

So we've seen the Reeperbahn, the Lake Alster and we've eaten German food. This next story is not special to Germany by any means, but it still happened in Hamburg. Sonja had been reading and reading about something called "Dialogue in the Dark" since before she even went to Australia and as she never got around to going to it, she saw my visit as the perfect excuse. Of what she'd told me, I had a very vague idea of what exactly we were going to get ourselves into, and I'm not sure if Sonja knew much more than me. Basically, what I was told is that you go to a building, and are taken into a set of rooms all in complete darkness. The idea of it is to show people what it's like to be blind.

We arrived about 30 minutes before we were due to start our little tour, and slowly and slowly, more and more people turned up and we waiting with us. A quick check and listen around the room made me discover that I, again, was the only person with no German speaking skills. This means it's always going to be fun. Finally, our group was called and it was our time to start. Walking into the first room, a lady stood at the front of the group and said "Who is the English speaker?". I raised my hand and she gave me a card with a list of pointers and things to and not to do. While I was reading, she explained everything I was reading to the group. If there ever was a chance to learn some more German, I guess that was it, but due to everyone speaking German, I thought I'd better concentrate on the things I wasn't supposed to do. I'd never want to get a German angry, they sound angry enough when they're just telling a joke.

So after the rules, we were given our walking canes and we were pushed through a curtain, where our eyes had to adjust to being in the darkness, and then we were put through a door where EVERYTHING was in complete darkness. I cannot being to express how dark this was. Sonja leaned over to me and said "Geoff...It's actually pitch black, I never though a room could be so black". And she was not wrong, there wasn't a flashing exit sign, a little speck of like a hole in the wall...NOTHING. It didn't take me long to start feeling claustrophobic, all my comfort was gone. Due to everyone speaking German around me, I even felt a little more on edge, but then came the reassuring voice of our guide who said "Ok, who is our English speaker, what is their name?". She was a lovely lady and had a really calm and comforting voice, exactly what you'd need in this situation. I introduced myself and she did the same. She said that I had to stick with Sonja through the ENTIRE 1 and a half hour session. I'd never felt so attached and reliant on Sonja in my life. If I lost her, it was all over for me as I was concerned.

Walking through the first room was easy enough, it was just to get a feeling for our cane and adjust to our current environment. After a while, I felt less claustrophobic and a little more adventurous. A couple times I would have my hands out, feeling the walls to see what I could find, and I would grab an arm, back or chest. Somehow a boob never managed to fall in my hands, but maybe that's a lucky thing, I wonder if a slap would hurt more in the dark?

After walking over cobblestones, through "markets" and streets, our guide found me again and put my hand on a box and said "Ok Geoff, in your country, what colour would this box be? Here it's yellow". It was a post box, and when I told her red, she said "Ok, I have no idea what red is, or yellow for that matter, I'm not completely blind, but colours don't exist, I just can see light and dark and even then, not much of that". It really made me think, that she had gone her whole life, and she was asking these questions, not even really knowing what I was answering.

Before long, we found ourselves in a room, and there was no English, everyone was speaking German and I had no idea where Sonja was, just as I was about to call out for her I heard something shut...Something like a door. When that happened, everything was silent. Everyone else had moved into the next room and had closed the door behind them. It didn't take long for me to start to panic, I had no idea where I was, or where anyone else was. My guide and Sonja were nowhere to be found so I started to knock on the wall. I frantically moved around the wall feeling for something, a handle, a door knob, anything! I couldn't find anything but I could finally hear voices through the wall, so I just tried to push on a section of wall, hoping at the same time to not destory something and by complete luck, it just happened to be the door. Thank God. This entire ordeal would have taken maybe 15 seconds, but it felt like half an hour. I could hear Sonja looking for me and I pretty much ran to her and held on for dear life.

At the start, we were given a ticket and were told to NOT lose it because this was our ticket for the boat. We stepped onto the boat and had to give our ticket to the boat person, our guide. We sat on the boat and it started rocking. Again, I can't really express what it was like, but when you can't see everything rocking along with your motions...It's a completely different feeling, especially when the boat 'hit' something unexpectingly. Pretty much the whole time everyone was on edge, because if the boat veered quickly one way, you would almost fall off your seat.

Stepping off the boat, we filed into a room where we sat on the floor. Still in complete darkness, our guide then played a few tunes. Listening to music like this was completely different too. Although not the sort of music I'm used to listening to, it was still an unreal and unforgettable experience. After spending about an hour in the dark already, all my other senses were on overdrive. I could hear what every instrument was doing, and the quality of each song, whether it was really much different at all, was pretty obvious to me. I picked up on the most slightest little glitches in each song, something I would probably never do when listening to a song normally.

Anyway, filing out of that room (Fiercly holding onto Sonja with a death grip), we made our way to the bar. While here we could buy chips, beer, soft drink...Whatever...But all still in the dark. We got ourselves a beer each and a packet of chips. Again, the senses were still in overdrive. I could sort of tell the coins apart, but didn't have enought to buy our stuff, so I had to pay by a note. I knew I had a 10 and a 50...I just had to give the right one. Our guide can easily tell which coin she's holding, even without any other coins to compare with, but to figure out notes, she had to measure them. When she gave my change back from a 10, I was really hoping I'd given her the right note.

We couldn't drink too much in the bar, firstly due to the fact that we didn't have time, but also because of if we got drunk...I think it would be near impossible to get us out when we were stumbling around completely sober. Just before leaving though our guide told us to guess how old and what she looked like. Sonja and myself agreed on a 20 something average height blonde girl, as did most of the group. Everyone was pretty shocked when she told us she was in her mid-40's though. She seemed to have a young voice and I was told that when she was speaking German, she was using popular slang that only young people would use. She was very good at the deceit game. We weren't allowed to see what she looked like though, her ruling was that she doesn't know what any of us look like, and she never will, so we're not allowed to see her. It was shredding me to peices though and I'm sure it was the same with everyone else, I just wanted to see her more than anything, as the picture in my mind had been completely blown into the sky.

As soon as we got out of the darkness, and made our way into the light, it was so much more comfortable, and for an hour I kept telling myself how thankful I was to be able to see. Life is about a million times easier. When we were signing the "visitors book" and I saw my awful and disgusting handwriting, I didn't really care, because at least I could still see what I was writing.

When we walked outside and made our way home, we had to walk past the back entrance and we heard a few voices and we turned around and saw her. I feel a bit bummed because we weren't supposed to see her and it ruined everything, but she just a little taller than my tummy, was definitely mid 40's and she had brown hair. She had the same voice and was sure enough wearing her sunnies. The imagine I constructed in my mind was most definitely destroyed.

The whole experience was AMAZING, and if anyone ever went to Hamburg, or anywhere else where they have the Dialogue in the Dark, I would highly recommend it. It was fun, terrifying, exhausting, informative...Everything!!

Next time, Sonja and myself make our way to Berlin to meet up with Lucy and Callum and then make our ways to the most famous beer festival in the world - The Munich Oktoberfest, popular for one litre beers, dirndls, lederhosen and drunken buffoonery.