Berlin is a city of contrast. While exploring the streets there are many grand buildings and monuments to remember the past and to learn from it. On the flipside there is a sense of restructure with a skyline full of cranes and construction works happening at every turn.

We walked through the Holocaust Memorial to the Murdered Jews. The simple design of the memorial with blocks of varying height gave an airy feeling and the museum underneath with personal stories of victims was a moving experience.

It is unreal seeing the Berlin Wall up close. It is hard to imagine what it was like just 24 years ago as we walked freely between West and East Berlin. Now parts of the wall have been transformed into beautiful displays of art and messages to the public.

Our next destination after Berlin was Amsterdam. We had originally wanted to travel by train and had previously looked up fares to be €30. However a week before we were booking our tickets we got a shock to see the prices had increased to €120 each! As this price far exceeded our budget Aidan looked into a more wallet friendly alternative - organised carpooling to Cologne and then a bus from Cologne to Amsterdam.

The night before leaving Berlin we booked a carpool for 9am the next day. We didn't have a cell phone number so we swapped appearance details and arranged to meet at the train station. The next day we arrived early with plenty of time to spot our carpool. As 9am rolled around we noticed a lot of other backpackers standing around waiting. A car pulled up that matched the description we'd been given. A couple of people started loading their belongings into the car so we assumed that this was the guy. We squished our bags into the boot and asked the driver if he was 'Yakub'. The guy Aidan had talked to on the phone spoke English yet this guy didn't seem to understand us however he told us to get in anyways. While we pondered whether this was Yakub or not, two other people took our spots in the car and persisted to push our bags out of the boot and replaced ours with theirs. Being the polite people we are and thinking this wasn't Yakub we took our bags out and waited for him. At 9.30am we realised that maybe 'Yakub' was a front man who organises the carpools and we had missed our ride.

We decided to try our luck with the next lot of carpools at 10am. As 9.59am came around we geared ourselves to jump at the first 'carpool' looking vehicle. Alas lady luck was not on our side as we searched in vain for any signs of someone wanting to pick up desperate backpackers. As 10.30am reared its ugly head we thought if we wanted to get to Cologne at all we better do something about it, so after buying a few coffees to calm the nerves in exchange for free wifi, failed skype calls and good old fashioned coin operated phone booths we got picked up at 11.30am by a young French couple who were travelling to Belgium.