Dresden and Berlin

Oh my, how the time flies! I just realized I have lacked some updates for a while. In my defence though, I´d just like to say I have been having too much fun to get on a computer =)

Lets see, well, after Prague, I purchased a train ticket into Germany. To clarify, the Eurail pass does not include the Czech Republic, so you have to purchase your own way in, and your own way out. Now the original plan was to shoot straight into Berlin, but after finding out it would cost nearly 60 Euros, I opted for the closet border town in SE Germany along the rail line, and that ended up being Dresden. I spent a whole two days there in what turned out to be the major hippy side of town. How do I know I was in the hippy side of town? Well, there were an assortment of stores named "THC Headshop" and "Purple Haze", not to mention the extreme number of people who walked around without shoes and looked baked to hell! It was a fun part of town though.

On the first night, I was really hungry (this shouldn´t be any news) and wandered into a Cuban restaurant to eat. I was extemely indecisive about where to sit (outside vs. inside) but eventually settled for the biggest table I could find. Then of course, the place starts to fill up and I feel like a jackass for taking the table of 20 when I´m only a party of one. No worries though, this German couple asks if they can sit at my table (its only actually a four person table, I felt I had to exaggerate for emphasis) and they do. We start chatting and it turns out the lady used to live in San Fran for a couple years and speaks pretty fluent English. The guy though, he´s German through and through! He was involved in an unfortunate motorcycle accident that has put him in the hospital for the last 6 months and is super excited to have a visitor (the lady) who was able to check him out of the lock down house and out for a party! He had broken English to start - I have zero German except to say "Nein, das is mein hamburger" which means "No, that is my hamburger" which I learned from some drunk Aussies in France...nevermind though...his English started getting worse and worse as he was pounding back Mojitos and even occasionally throwing in some Spanish here and there. LUCKILY the lady was there and able to do translations back and forth. Makes me kind of sad though that I can go anywhere in the world and rely on English. I feel like it sort of cheapens my trip, and if I were have been forced to learn and use a foreign language, that I´d have a richer experience. No worries, next time...!

During the daytime, the hostel, Lollis Homestay, had a free bike rental program. Free ninety nine...I´m all over that junk. So I ended up renting a bike and riding throughout the city, weaving in and out of traffic with such precision that the Germans would have been proud. It was an awesome experience, I mean, come on, when was the last time you can honestly say you´ve ridden a bike around for me? Try it, its guaranteed good times! The only problem was, I took the bike for the day and wanted to make the most of it, so I biked around for roughly eight hours and learned the hard way the next day how sore your ass can get when riding over cobble stone for that long! In between riding, I also polished off "Into Thin Air" which is a journalists account of the 1996 Everest Expedition that lost many many lives. Good thrilling read if you get a chance!

Dresden overall was luke warm in terms of fun, but I was ready to get on with the main attraction...that being Berlin.

I arrived in Berlin care free and first impressions were, "This place is HUGE". I had very vague instructions on how to get to my hostel from the train station. The actual instructions (not ver batim) was something like, "From Zoo station, take the 110 bus until ______, transfer to 115 bus until _____, exit and walk to end of street. Turn left at end of street and continue to walk until dead end. Hostel is right there". If you´ve been to Berlin, you´ll know that the Zoo station is a pretty central hub, so I assumed the hostel couldn´t have been far. Can you see I´m trying to build up the story here? I eventually found a city map and was attempting to find the street needed in small circles starting out from the Zoo in hopes of being able to walk to the hostel, catch some sight seeing along the way, and enjoying the beautiful day. No, I´m not gay. Well, after 10 failed minutes, I start looking for bus routes and notice the hostel is not ANYWHERE near the station. Its on the farthest SW corner of the map. As a matter of fact, I´m still not even sure it was within city limits. Needless to say, I managed to find the place after multiple bus rides and transfers only to realize the hostel is located in the forest. Yes, IN the forest. In order to get there, you do the bus transfers as noted above, you walk to the end of the street as they say, but the kicker is that when you turn left, you are surrounded by trees and walking on a dirt path that leads to the hostel! And when I say the hostel is in the forest, I really mean I could hear some wild animals making noises...and brief thoughts of getting eaten and making international headline news did flash across my mind! The hostel ended up being really nice but just was not my style so I ended up staying one night and moving on out to the sister hostel located IN the city.

Now, this other one, called JetPak City, was INCREDIBLE. On top of being new and extremely clean, they provided free internet access via Macs, iPod chargers and iPod speakers in each room, and one of the most amazing showers I´ve ever used. I´m not picky by any means for showers, but this had a seat, a shower head, some other over the top sprinkler, and some insane side jets that would...well, I´m not exactly sure what they were for, but the looked cool!

I almost immediately made a group of friends and ended up wandering out to take the "New Berlin Tour", another event that was free ninety nine (it is tip based but you don´t have to pay anything up front). I don´t know if I´ve mentioned them before, but very good quality tours for getting your feet wet! Actually, much better than the majority of paid tours I´ve even taken. It turned out to be extremely hot that day and I was somewhat dragging along towards the end, UNTIL we took a lunch break at Schlotschi´s (that is horribly spelled) Deli. Why...well, because they had FREE refills on drinks, which is the first one I´ve seen in Europe while I´ve been here. Normally I don´t even care that much for soda, but that day, I must have drank 5 cups of mouth satisfying Sprite! Okay, to sum up, the tour was great, it was just too hot outside.

Now on top of the "free" tour the company offered, they also have some paid trips and of course, a pub crawl. A group from the hostel got together and decided to check this thing out. Lets say, it was intense and wore me out the next day. It was also a little out of my element...maybe I´m getting old, but a group of around 100 drunk American college students trying to outdo each other the whole night became tiring. And I felt bad that I was lumped in with the group at times! Regardless, we hit up 3 bars and 2 clubs so it was a great chance to see the nightlife of Berlin. One of the bars in particular, I think its called Zapata, located near Orienburger (I call it Orangeburger) street, looks like an abandoned five story builing with graffiti throughout. What I think it is, is a place used by artists as studios and whatnot. It had a sand filled outdoor area with an assortment of items including a section of a helicopter, a VW van, movie theater seats, large metal welded alphabet letters, and almost anything else you can think of. Quite a cool place and I actually went back later to take pictures! The pub crawl ended at a club called "Matrix" located on the FAR east side of Berlin. I thought the area was sketchy and at this point realized if I got separated from the hostel group, I´d have to sleep under the stairs or on a park bench in East Berlin. Lets say, I feel extremely lucky to have made it back to my own hostel bed at the end of the night!

Overall, Jetpak was really cool and had a great group of people. I hung out with a good number of them and they were mostly real chill people! As a group, we went out at night and checked out this awesome local rock band that was jamming hard. Good times! There was however two girls, one of who I only heard about and didn´t really talk to, that were nicknamed psycho girl, and bitch girl. Haha...I thought that was funny!

But now, I unfortunately decided to move hostels and try out a new section of Berlin. I seem to have bad luck, because I booked a hostel and ended up pretty far in the middle of nowhere again! Spent the night there but luckily ran into a friend during the day and checked out a funky Jewism museum along with the parliament building (has a clear dome that you get to go up) and the Sony Center (just think of a futuristic plaza with a Sony store, Legoland, an interactive VW store, and an IMAX theater). Back to the hostel situation though...(its Monday morning) and I´ve decided to move out. I went hostel shopping for half a day yesterday and feel I´ve found some really cool ones! But officially, I have hostel-homeless right now because I don´t have any reservations. Thats pretty cool, I´m homeless!!

The plan is to spend 3 more nights in Berlin and move onto Amsterdam by Thursday. Spend a week there, and move on, eventually landing me back home to North Carolina by late May. I think I´m ready to start winding down and eventually get back to some structure in my life!

I´ll check in soon, have fun in the meantime!