Ich bin ein Berliner

160Km/hr on a Sunny Sunday with a tail wind

The six hour train trip from Amsterdam which turned in to seven hours was reasonably uneventful. There's nothing like a good yarn to take home about how you were body-searched on the German border. Not even a flashlight, barking dog or sirn while they were checking my passport (which they did about half way through the journey in a small German town). The Polish guy next to me had his passport number checked over the phone by the local authorities. The trip was a bit more expensive than the French trains, but still not too bad for 60 euro. For some reason it's a bit cheaper to travel in pairs - about 25% off so I was joined at the hip for six hours.

Being the usual Chris that I am, I hadn't written down the address or phone number, or even the name of the hostel we were staying at, so I was banking on pulling my laptop out at the station and picking up some unsecured wifi hotspot and going for gold. Unfortunately no such luck would befall me and it was only pay-through-the-nose bizz. An internet cafe gave us the bizzo and we took the underground to where we had to go.


Put your hands in the air and give me all your money

The first thing you notice about Berlin, and I suspect everywhere else in Germany for that matter is that you can't pay for anything with Visa. No hostels, food, groceries or anything. It's like taking a trip back in time. There is a debit card you can use, but you need a bank account, so lets not even go there. The number of ATMs around the place is quite slim too. Most stations have them, but if you're not near one, you're usually out of luck. By comparison in the Netherlands, they are brilliant by comparison. They have chip cards which I gather are cards you can recharge with money and use for offline transactions. Everywhere there is a geltautomaat, there is a chipkart machine. They also charge you extra if you do human transactions, which, while being a hassle also helps to get rid of that dirty cash word. It's been a big hassle here without Visa in Germany so far, and it's going to take me a while to get used to.

The hostel where we stayed at was really low key. They don't allow smokers which while I thought would render the place desolate was completely full on Sunday night. The idea was to deter the undesirables. So smokers beware.. :) By about 7pm we were ready to devour some form of oversized dead animal, so we went to the local stereotypical German pub and asked for the large beers with our meal. We were brought the tourist size beers of which the glass is literally a foot high containing 10 centilitres of local ale. The food was ultra tasty and is obvious that the Germans love their meat, although I think I saw one vegitarian dish which had only one sort of meat with it ;)

Spending money the easy way....


Emile and I caught up with Guy (a friend of ours from Auckland who moved with his girlfriend to England). They were busy embarking on a mission of Verve Cliquot, and being already past the point of several times of the legal driving limit, I guessed that they weren't drinking for the taste. They were out to celebrate Juliette's birthday and by 400 euro later, I imagine they were doing it in the most English way possible. We wandered to a bar reccomended by the bar staff were we were, and after being there for a few minutes, we could tell that it was reccomended out of malice. The people were pretty trashy and the music was something from the viaduct in Auckland. He also told us that there was a bar that we should go to called Dunkin' Donughts, and being touristy and rather drunk, we didn't notice the humour of the local hospo workers. The Germans have a sense of humour alright.

The english went off for a kebab forage and we headed back home. A nice night in all but a sleep-in was in order but would pale in comparison for the following night listening to German industrial trance...