Put your hands in the air; put your hands. in. the air.

After waking up at a leisurely midday on Saturday we thought we'd have a quiet day of walking around the city and seeing the sights. 10-odd kilometres later we had still only seen a tiny amount of the city. Most of the touring was in the style of following our noses, and that we did. Emile was wetting himself checking out the Audi and VW showrooms and I was busy having a nosey in the Hugo Boss shop and some bookshops. One thing that was obviously different with the Netherlands compared to Germany and that's the Dutch love to read. There is a bookshop on almost every retail block.

We wandererd along Under den Ligne and came across a big Jewish festival around where the war monuments and the Reichstag were. We decided to steer cleer since I was getting tired of kindly denying the chance of getting to know the big J some more. We did the walk around the Tiergarten (most of the perimeter) which is the largest metropolitan garden in Europe. I was asked for directions more that afternoon than the previous two weeks. Everyone from drunk Swiss tourists and one guy who looked as though his Prozac supply was on the blink and getting to Zoolische Garten station was the only thing holding him back from topping himself.

There were plenty of monuments around that we just saw and had no idea what they were, so Berlin is one city that I'd like to get a tour of, then perhaps spend enough time in the city in order to give the sights the justice they deserve. After we got back to the hostel we rested for a few hours before we headed to Tresor to see T. Raumschmiere live. On the way we stopped off for a quick look at a fragment of the Berlin wall next to Potzdamer platz which half of the impressive-looking place (do a google for it) is a Sony Centre outfit. We had to go there because Tresor wasn't opening until 11pm. Vive la Berlin and its night life!

Tresor was amazing. We hung around in a building which was a converted bank or vault. Emile got some photos which I'll put up on the gallery, but you walk down some stairs and if you imagine what a vault downstairs from 50 years ago would look like, this was pretty much it. Wrought iron rusty gates and concrete with old graffiti scratched and painted on the walls. This wasn't open for another hour or so so in the meantime we had a wander around. There was another room back upstairs which a dude in a flower dress was DJing some house music. Outside there was a huge chill-out area with water fountains, trees and tables to sit and talk while having a beer. We were told T. Raumschmiere wouldn't be starting till 4.30, so we had a good time sifting between the various areas until he started. His main attraction wasn't DJing (he's got his own band), so it wasn't as fabulous as I thought, but still worth it. The other DJ Aparat was well-worth it. All the artists are from the shitkicker label, so I think I'll do some shopping from there. We headed back some around 5.45 and tried to make our way home. We got lost, so took about 45 minutes more than we had hoped, but we stumbled upon a whole bunch more old stuff which I'll have to had a read up on and visit at some stage. It's the really old area of Berlin (that much I could recognise at 6.45 in the morning). We arrived at the hostel and the room-mates were just leaving as we were getting to bad. Unfortunately around 4.30 I was getting tired and I knew that if I had a bit of shut eye, it would be a matter of minutes before someone would come up and either offer me drugs and ask me where I could get some. Reglardless, I thought I'd give the snooze plan a go. Some concerned dude came up and asked me if I was tired. Yes I exclaimed, but realised that he was speaking German and asked for a bit of clarification on what "tired" meant: Coke. I replied with an unhelpful (for him) "Nein". I shoudl always wear a sign that says: "I'm ok, just sleeping" in several languages when I need some shuteye.

Unfortunately we had to check out of the hostel four hours later and move to a new hostel so bleary-eyed we headed to the artistic area of town which feels a bit like monmatre of Paris except not as clean. Before we would have a sieste for the afternoon, we found a buffet for 6 euro just down the corner and definitely ate till it hurt. There a few unsecured wifi hotspots which I'll scope out tomorrow and send this offline update to the world of etherpackets.

In about 75% where we went around the city, it smelt like a sewer. This was near Under den Ligne (the retail area) as well as most other places. It was like the whole city had its sewage system broken - not a Rotorua smell either. David, get Daniel over here to fix this place, pronto!