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It only took a 5 hour train to transit from the gay captial of Germany, to the techno capital, Berlin. Looking at the map it seemed that the best way to reach my hostel boat, would be to find the river Spree and follow it down 6.5km. The weather was decent so I was quite up for the stroll and it would've been fine, if I'd gone the right direction. Possibly the first time Duke of Edinburgh Bronze has let me down... I ended up deep in West Berlin and couldn't come across any English speakers, but a Turk living locally spent a good half an hour explaining German public transport to me, in German. The public transport proved easy enough to follow and I made it to the hostel boat, which is located directly opposite the East side gallery. where I met my roomie, a German girl, Liza. We went to a few bars with some locals and indulged in some Zwickelbier. The places we went wouldn't look out of place in shoreditch, only they went on from 9pm Friday to 4pm Sunday! I didn't quite stay the duration...
Next day I started on the touristy stuff, and went on a tour led by a 4ft yank with serious volume. It was pretty good but quite rushed as they packed loads in. After this I went down to the Berlin Catherdral where they had a few musicians playing. There was a pretty good 3-piece band cracking out led zep covers, the drummer/singer on a Britney Spears mic. I snuck in a litre of Dark Dunkelbeir in a Bavarian beer garden and headed over to a pub crawl that the tour guides cracked out every night. It was a great turn out, probably around 150 people - majority kiwis! We filled all the pubs/clubs on the trail and it led back conveniently close to my hostel. I strolled back to the hostelboat at 4 and met Jesse and Lio from Reading and August from Finland who persuaded me to head back out and go clubbing with them. They were up for a 24 hour session but I cut after a couple warehouses.
Sunday would be my last night in Berlin, and there was a festival I've heard of in north Berlin. So I got the metro up there to check it out. It's a free fest with artists dotted all over the field with their own gear. One place drew a far larger crowd than the rest though. It was like a quarter of a Colleseum, that watched down on a circular platform and around 500 people had shown up. It's the most lively karaoke I've ever seen, and everyone gets an unbelievable reception. A fair chunk of the crowd put their hands up at the end of each tune hoping to get on stage and an Irish guy, who's been running it near enough every Sunday for 7 years picks who's on. I was on the verge of cracking out some Lionel but others proved keener... That ends when the sun sets, so I made my way back to the boat and bumped into Liza and met Patrick, a Polish guy travelling by motorbike to Stockholme the next day! We grabbed some bockwurst and went to some bars but had a fairly quiet one by Berlin's standards.
I spent my last day in Germany on the hostelboat, knocking back a few beers with August and a South Korean yank living in Austria (there's no wonder I can't remember his name), roamed around the city centre for a bit and I now await my overnight bus to Krakow, to crack on.
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