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!
Love your Blogs, keep them coming.
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