So we wake up in Berlin and open up the curtains of our porthole to glorious sunshine. Today was going to be a beautiful day! We opted to pay 5 Euros for a continental breakfast on our boat. We met a nice Australian lady from Melbourne in the lounge who said Manchester was most famous for it's music not football. We left the boat with eager anticipation to be greeted by many people on the grass-verge basking in the sunshine and walked along the Berlin wall into Eastern Berlin. First sight was the Alaxanderstaz TV tower which was colossal in size. We wanted to go up to the top but the queue was bending right round the square due to it being such a clear day. Was it worth queuing for that long? Probably not! Ben threw a suggestion out in the open that we should get a coffee from the conglomerate Starbucks and make reference to our map. We familiarised ourselves with the city and decided to head towards the cities most famous landmarks. Before we set off, I was approached by the first of many Romanians. Although the first time I acted in a naive fashion. A lady with a young baby asked if I spoke English, to which I said yes to Eddies horror. She gave me a card which basically begged for money. I gave her two Euros and realised my fatal error when many many more people attempted the same trick. I did get quite good the second time! When asked did I speak English? I replied, No sorry I don't! This tickled Ben!
We continued our stroll in the intense European August heat and approached the spectacular 1920s Parliament building which is now a concert hall. After taking a deluge of pictures we headed towards the famous Brandenburg gate. It took a while to walk it but eventually it was so worth it. We savoured a perfect opportunity to take pictures of ourselves passing through the royalty arch from the East side to the West side of Berlin. Even as late as the early 1990s you would have got shot for attempting such a crossing. We were through thankfully without any repercussions. We headed towards the Haulacost museum. Eddie stopped at the side of the pavement and on behalf of the whole group he sampled the first Currywurst sausage, a sausage in a tomato sauce with curry powder. Absolutely delish! The Holocaust museum was special and was an outdoor array of concrete blocks the size of coffins which varied in hight. Here there was a girl posing for modelling photographs, so I thought it would be amusing to pose in a sexy manner in close proximity to her. With embarrassment she disappeared rather abruptly! She couldn't stand the competition!
With an extensive journey on foot in the heat, we decided to indulge in a pitstop and rehydrate ourselves in a random local bar with a nice cold Rothaus beer. I hope you see the logic here... This gave us another opportunity to regroup and create more strategy of intention. The last sight we thought was a must before fatigue set in was Checkpoint Charlie, one of the seven guarded gates through the Berlin wall. Ben was particularly interested in the 1961 American tank crisis. Before we approached the checkpoint we staggered across the tepographie DES terror museum based on Nazism and the rise and fall of Hitler.
Eddie and I read all the information rather efficiently but Ben wanted to savour every single word to the letter. We decided to leave Ben to enjoy his rigorous approach on culture whilst Eddie introduced me to the delights of Currywurst... MMMMMMM!! I like very much! After such a particularly edifying experience Eddie noticed a huge hot air balloon which rose 150 meters above the city called the Berlin hi-flyer! Eddie did very well considering he suffers from slight vertigo. I secretly wasn't that comfortable either, but what an incredible experience it was! We descended back down to the ground where we realised that Ben still hadn't finished reading his fascinating literature on the Gestapo. Hey Ben, have a guess what we've been up to? Once we had partcipated in a rendezvous we continued to walk on to Checkpoint Charlie the final sight of the day. We decided we would leave the emotional Checkpoint Charlie museum for the next day.
We returned back to the Eastern Comfort and after a short rest we threw on the party shirts and headed towards a Berlin club as suggested by our lovely receptionist. Club Matrix was lots of fun and that completed our long thorough eventful day in Berlin. Tomorrow we need to check out of the Eastern Comfort and travel by U and S Bahn to our next hostel for our third night in Berlin. Hostel Pfefferberg in Feuerwehrzufahrt. Goodnight!