Bemusement in Berlin

My first day in Berlin saw me get up, check out of my hostel and head across town, closer to the center of Berlin, Mitte, and check into a hostel over there. Berlin isn't terribly centralised, but Mitte (basically a suburb) was definitely closer to what was happening than way out where my original hostel was. I just couldn't get in there straight off the bat.

I had agreed to meet Renske at the walking tour, and searched around sometime about midday. We found each other, and she had brought a couple of her friends along with her. An Israeli pair, they were doing a spot of travelling themselves. There were a huge number of people crowded around to do the walking tour, and the guides quickly organised everyone, firstly by language and then due to the extent of the English speakers, they split us up into two groups of about 30.

Our guide was a young Singaporean guy with an American accent and a very powerful voice. He had been in Berlin for near on a year, and obviously loved the place. He spoke with a lot of passion, and was able to deliver to us the modern history of the city in a very entertaining fashion. We saw the Jewish memorial, a collection of grey blocks all arranged in a square area and the Brandenburg Gate, where all conquerers of Berlin tended to parade through. We saw several large buildings, from churches to universities to libraries to massive parliament buildings (the Reichstag). There was checkpoint charlie, the site of the Nazi book burnings, parts of the Berlin wall, and the whole thing culminated at museum island where our guide gave us a very animated story about the fall of the wall and the reunification of Germany. It was definitely the best walking tour I'd done on my trip so far, and it was incredible to hear how much history had happened so recently to now.

Renske and I parted ways, and she went to catch up with her Israeli friends who had run off halfway through the tour to chase some other fancy. I got back to the hostel, had a chat with another Melbournite in my room along with another Aussie guy from Sydney who was travelling around with a Scottish girl. The pair of them work on one of the cruise ships that go gallavanting around the world, and they both had some interesting stories to tell. Apparently when working on one of these ships, it is a 7 day a week job until you get back to port, which can (at times) take up to months!

Later that evening I went down to a metro station in the former East Berlin and hung around waiting for Renske and her friends to show up. It was a very dodgy area, with several vagrants wandering around and hassling each other whilst drunk. I was nervously waiting about half an hour before the others showed up, and then we all waited a further half hour or so whilst waiting for Renske's local friend to arrive. Eventually he did, and we quickly made our way from that area and into a nearby cocktail bar.

It was a funky little place, with a very red interior. Initially we went into one of the rooms in the back of the place, however it seemed that there was some kind of mafia-ish meeting taking place, and we decided to get out of their before anyone noticed. A cocktail and a beer later saw us leave the establishment and eagerly follow Renske's friend to what was sure to be a great club, as Berlin has quite a big reputation for having some of the worlds best nightlife.

The place we ended up in was Kaffe Burger, an indie little bar that came recommended by Renske's local and also got a good wrap in a couple of travel guides. The music they played was very varied, and whilst the dance floor started off pretty bare, after a few hours and a few drinks the place was near capacity. The music wasn't totally my scene, but after a few more drinks and then quite a few good tracks in a row I started to get into a groove, though dancing wouldn't have been the right term due to the throngs of people in the way. It was more like group swaying.

As the night wore on, I started to lose interest again until the DJ threw on "Chocolate Salty Balls" by Chef/Isaac Hayes, and whilst I don't think anyone else there knew what the song was, I'm sure I entertained a lot of people with my particularly enthusiastic shenanigans. This continued a few songs later when they put on "Gay Bar" by Electric Six. Two songs that I never would have expected to hear in a popular club both got played in quick succession. Brilliant! Shortly after I saw Renske home, wished her well on the rest of her journey (she was leaving the next day) and made it back to my own hostel.

The next day I spent the morning doing my washing, and had hoped to go wander around the Pergamon museum, the Gates of Babylon being high on my to-see list. Unfortunately being a Monday all of the museums were shut, and so I decided to check out the Reichstag instead. It is the German parliament building, with a massive glass dome over the top of it. I waited in the queue to get in for about an hour, and then made my way up the circular staircase that traversed the interior of the dome. It gives a fantastic vista of the entirety of Berlin, and they even give you a little panoramic map that points out the various features of the city from your respective vantage point.

After admiring the view for a short while I went back down and walked around the top part of the roof for a while, said hi to an Irish bloke from my hostel that was also there, and then made my way back to the hostel for a nap. An hour or so later I got up and went down to the bar, waiting on a couple of people who were to meet me there and then head off to a pub crawl arranged by the same mob that do the walking tours.

Whilst in the bar I ran into 3 English guys whom I quickly convinced to join us on the evening shenanigans, followed by another Aussie girl, Danni, two Canadian guys from my room, Mike and Alex, another Canadian girl at the bar Maggi, and Michael (the Melbourne guy from my room) brought along Jo and Sarah, a couple of English girls. Basically I'd formed a group of over ten people and I took them all down to the starting point of the pub crawl, though my efforts weren't even rewarded with a discount.

We started the warm up at the first bar, with free beers (until the kegs ran out), and we initiated some drinking games. I showed our little group the games I'd learnt in Prague, specifically Fuzzy Duck. Sarah also got in on the games, and introduced us to "21", a game that we'd continue to play for the rest of the night. By the time the pub crawl moved from this first pub, the group was about a hundred strong, filling up the footpath for quite a distance as we changed venues. Maggi and I grabbed a kebab on the way, as neither of us had eaten, and after quickly woofing those down, chased the group into the second bar.

The second bar was pretty cool, with plenty of floor space and some tables and chairs around the edges. I found Sarah and Jo with part of our group sitting at one of the said tables, continuing their rendition of 21. One of the coolest parts of the place was definitely the wrought iron dragon head that was attached to one side of the bar, occasionally spewing out a massive fireball in the middle of the club whenever one of the bartenders got bored and pressed a little button.

We didn't seem to spend that long there, only having time for a couple of drinks and another frustrating couple of rounds of 21's, a few of the group (the English guys) having a bit of a struggle with the rules. We were shepherded out of that place and into the third of the evening, with Sarah and I chasing one of the organisers of the event around getting as many free shots of Vodka and orange as we could. Sarah had made it a point that we must toast to something everytime we took a shot. She also made it a point to make each of her toasts to something that was designed to irk me as much as possible, whether it be to the Queen or the English rubgy team.

The third place was significantly smaller than the last, but we managed to secure another area of chairs where we could continue, once more, to try and get something out of our drinking game. Unfortunately by this stage most of the group was fairly drunk, and it didn't take long before we simply gave up. It was quite crowded, and again, before long we were on our way to the next venue. I continued to chase the organiser around for vodka shots, however Sarah had decided not to keep up with me any more, to the point of starting to throw hers out over the ground. I found this particularly frustrating, and anyone that knows me will understand that I abhor the wastage of perfectly good alcohol. Right before we managed to enter the fourth bar, I'd gotten a couple more shots for us, at which point some guy tripped over in front me of, throwing the shots all over the front of my shirt. Needless to say I was not impressed.

The fourth bar was an upstairs place, with a fairly packed dance floor and some good drum 'n bass music playing through the club. I found myself a chair and continued chatting with those around, but really there wasn't much to say about the place. The pub crawl had dwindled in number by this stage, probably down to about a third of the original group. We left the joint and headed to the metro when the rest of our group decided that we'd had enough of the organised shenanigans. We made our way back to the hostel bar, which had closed. Sarah and I dashed upstairs to play some pool, only to find the table wasn't working. We went back down and asked the bartenders where a good club was around the area, and he marked one on the map for us.

Sarah, Jo, Mike and I made our way there, only to find it was the Kaffe Burger once more, and I couldn't believe I'd been directed to the same place two nights in a row. It really just wasn't that good. However it was late, and Mike and Sarah had gotten into some ridiculous conversation about whether it was worth killing a baby in order to save a lot more lives, so Jo and I left them outside to continue their debate and went into the club. It turned out that Jo wasn't English at all, although she had a thick London accent, and was in fact from Edinbrough. We were talking for a fair while and laughing at the weird music that was being played, when eventually Mike and Sarah found us on one of the couches. We hung out for a little while longer, and in the wee hours of the morning made our way back to the hostel to crash out.

About 11 I woke up and met with Jo, Sarah and Mike downstairs. The girls and I agreed to head to the Pergamon museum, however Mike went on his own way as he'd checked it out already. We made our way down to museum island and into the entrance, nearly losing Jo to the toilets in the process. The place was massive, with life size recreations of various pillars and gateways. The thing I was most excited to see, and then equally dissapointed by was the Gates of Babylon. It was indeed massive, however the blue and yellow paint scheme on the thing made it look like a giant childrens toy, rather than one the most intimidating structures in human history. It was about that time that Sarah realised that very little of what was in the museum was actually authentic, and was mostly recreated with plaster, and then she lost all respect for the place. This combined with a severe lack of sleep from the previous evening saw the two girls start bursting into strange fits of laughter about topics I didn't understand, and I just chalked it up to their slow descent into madness.

Eventually we'd all had enough of the ancient artifacts and made our way out to get a late lunch. It was here that Mike rejoined us, and after a couple pizzas and a round of beer, we made our way to the new art gallery. I'm usually not a fan of these sorts of places, I've never really understood painting, and this was compounded by Mike's rather good knowledge of it all. I did see some things I like, including a painting of a tiger with some cubs, a postcard of which Jo and Sarah gave me as a gift later on that day. We only spent an hour or so there, after which Mike and I went back to the hostel and left the girls to go do some shopping.

I got out my little book that detailed all the pubs and clubs in Berlin, determined not to end up at the Kaffe Burger again that night. I made a list of about 6 different places to go to and marked them out on a map, and eventually people started to congregate in the bar. The drinking games started again, with about 6 people from our group the previous night, plus a couple more Canadians, Mark and Mike (we now had 3 Mikes in our group), and another Aussie girl, Renee. We hung around in the bar for quite a while, and after a few false starts about 12 of us made our way to the first bar on my list, as a group that had been dubbed "Jimmy P's Pub Crawl Shenanigans". Sarah had enticed one other guy from the bar to join us, an Aussie game named Tom. He was deaf, but could read lips like a champion and could communicate fairly well by talking. A couple wrong turns later we eventually found the first pub. It was fairly quite and full of locals, so we had a few beers, the new Canadians broke a few glasses and we all had a good time for about an hour.

After that we made our way to another club, "Delicious Donuts", which was very difficult to find. It ended up being behind a closed door that we had to ring the bell of to get in, but once in it was a very funky place. It was pretty dead as well, and we just decided that due to it being a Tuesday, there just mustn't be that much going on. Berlin's reputation for being the nightlife capital of the world was fairly shattered for me at this point. There were about 6 or 7 of us that actually stayed at the club for any amount of time, and at one stage Tom and I challenged some locals to a game of foosball, and got our asses handed to us in short order, without scoring a single goal.

Sarah and Jo had the plan to stay out all night, as they had to catch a 10AM flight back to England. We ended up making it until about 4AM, and given the previous nights efforts, we were ready to pack it in by then. We headed back to the hostel, I said my goodbyes to the girls and we agreed to meet up some time in London.

I slept until around midday the following day, packed up my gear and then headed to the airport to catch my flight to London and meet up with Dave, who I was staying with until I got my feet settled in the new city.

Berlin as a whole was pretty cool. It was incredible to learn about so much history that had happened only in the past century. I would say that it is definitely the focal point of modern history, and there is still so much there that really didn't happen all that long ago. The walking tour was definitely the best I've been on so far.

The nightlife reputation is very overrated. To talk to people that might not have been there you would get the impression that the city is a non stop party. This is simply not true, and I did get out and check a few different places out. Considering Kaffe Burger is supposed to be one of the best places around, and that it sucked, doesn't really say much for the scene. I guess it was very over hyped for me before I got there, and this would be why I was dissapointed. It didn't, however, stop me from meeting a bunch of cool people and having an awesome time all the same.

It has taken me a long time to get this post out, but finally it has happened! Berlin was the last stop of my European journey, and marked the end of what was an unbelievable trip. I can't do it justice as an epilogue to this post, and I'm going to write up a proper summary and reflection of everything that happened sometime in the next week or so. Stay tuned, and in the mean time check out the photo gallery!