Euro adventure [Part 3]: Berlin

....my trip over to Berlin started pretty late on the 27th of Dec 2008. I had to take the last train from Queen St to Edinburgh at 11+pm. Change to a bus to take me to the airport (luckily I had done my research so I knew where to find everything). Reached the airport at around 1.20am. Did a quick tour and settled down for a nap on one of the benches. Not very comfortable, it was...and cold! Woke at 4am to get in line for check-in and boarded the plane at abt 5.30am. Man, I was so frazzled with the early timings and lack of sleep. Btw, I don't know why but I always hate going through immigration. I always feel like I'm gonna get caught for something...no idea why. Thanks to information I got from Amy, I managed to find the right train station and took a good guess on which train to take even though the station they told me to alight at was freaking far from the hostel. It's worse when u don't know ur way because u don't know if u're heading the right way and every step u take might be taking u in the wrong direction. So anyway, turns out I was on the right track but I somehow walked right by the hostel without even realising it was there. It was so nondescript. Everything else went pretty smoothly from then on. Walked into the room to find Amy still tired and wearing her clothes from the previous night but she went to bathe and change once she saw me. Once she was all done up, we proceeded out into Berlin for a quick tour. We were pretty good at walking the whole way. Didn't even have to take the train when we were at Berlin 'cept from the airport and the cab to the bus station.

Interesting way of advertisements

Unfortunately, most of the camera work was done by Amy so most of the shots are of me :D We had a very good catching-up session whilst walking around Berlin. It's been a while since I've had such a good talk with anyone. Thanks Amy!
Luckily I had bought some gloves beforehand...it was cold!!

Victory column. It was old, dirty and very tall. U have to climb ur way to the top.

View from the top.

I made it up to the top by myself cuz Amy had climbed it the day before and it took the wind out of her so she didn't want to do it again.

Pretty amazing. The tower is located in the middle of what seems to be a park with 4 major roads in 4 directions.

According to Amy, they were setting up for the new year celebration. That's what all the tents and equipments were for.

This was one section of the flight of steps I had to climb. The railings were so low, it was a nightmare climbing up/down. U had to hug the side of the walls to make it down safely. Not to mention, people had to squeeze by each other if they were either going up/down.

Brandenburger Tor

Us in front of Brandenburger Tor

On our way to Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie which was one of the checkpoints between east and west Berlin.

Loads of information located on these boards. They make for quite an interesting read.

The tour was quick and easy Dinner was at a place called the Bar of a 100 beers.

The streets were all lit up...very pretty.

Had a good sleep at the hostel and that concluded my first day in Berlin. The next day (29th dec), we headed to the Christmas market near Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church to meet my sis, Damerce and Angel cuz they had arrived that same day on the same flight as I had taken except that it was a day later.

The Christmas market had alot of interesting things but it was very very cold. I couldn't text with my gloves on to arrange a meeting place with my sis. Amy and I were hungry cuz we didn't have breakfast so we stopped at a stall to have some pizza and a cup of hot chocolate for her.

I don't like the pictures from here on so we'll skip the next few hours. Basically, we headed round for some shopping and then to the Story of Berlin museum and it's tour of a nuclear shelter. Hah, Damerce kept teasing me abt my map reading skills but I showed him...haha.

While waiting for the tour to start, we had drinks at a bar near the museum. Wasn't very nice to be honest...just wanted to find somewhere to sit down and talk a bit.

Planning the next stage and pretending to be involved :D

The nuclear shelter was located under the museum and smelled kinda musty. Haha, really cool. Apparently, it can hold almost 4/5 thousand ppl over 2 weeks but after the 2 weeks, everyone has to leave the bunker because the provisions and water would have run out. There are abt 5 levels as beds but very spartan in terms of decorations...haha.

The whole place is lit by blue light. Very depressing. Especially with so many ppl packed together.

Pictures of famous German ppl

Haha, this is a pretty nice picture.

More posing...haha.

Having more fun posing for pictures...

Damerce having a nap on an exhibit

The things they had on display were pretty interesting, depicting the life and history of Berlin over the centuries.

After the tour, we waited for Tristyn and Boris and their friends and we decided to take them to the place we had our meal the night before. Unfortunately, we miscalculated the distance it took to get to the place so Amy and I had to abandon dinner to rush back to the hostel to get our stuff. Thanks to my sis, we had good stuff to eat on the 14-hr (foaming at the mouth) bus ride from Berlin to Paris. But I think that's probably the last time I shall take a bus ride that long..wasn't a good ride at all. Well, that concludes our trip to Berlin. We spent the next few days over in Paris but that's a story for another time. Till the next installment...