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Gutenabend!
Its 1am and I am on my third of four trains on the way to Berlin. I arrive in Hamburg at 7am and then it's only an hour and a bit until we get to Berlin. Then, it's all about the lederhosen and techno music!
Quite looking forward to Berlin, but that's not to say I haven't had a dapper time in Luxembourg!
Yes, me and my partner in crime Jonny "dangermouse" Heneghan arrived at Luxembourg City station around 9pm on Thurs. On the hike to the hostel we were really impressed and amazed at this quaint little country. It was so picturesque, clean, friendly, warm and basically had a very positive aura around it.
The backdrop was like something out of the opening credits of the Sound of Music, very beautiful. We walked in line with the famous wall that encircles the city centre. This would be another UNESCO heritage site that I was to explore and cross off my list!
As we skipped merrily (as if, not with our heavy backpacks) to the bottom of the hill where our hostel was located, Jonny pointed out how brilliant it would be if the huge gothic building we had in our sights was in fact our hostel. Wouldn't you of guessed? Good karma all round so far and it was after all or YHA hostel. It was very impressive, very new, high tech, clean. You couldn't really get much better in a 5* hotel. Not when ours only cost 20 euros a night either! One belting shower and a huge lasagne later we had an early night and went to sleep after 11 in preparation of making the most out of our one whole day in Luxembourg City before we departed overnight for Berlin.
We got up around 7 and headed down for our complimentary breakfast which consisted of cheese, salami, soft cheese, "ham" and some baguettes. If I was German or some form of yodelling European I'd of lapped it up, but it wasn't that bad really.
It's now Saturday afternoon in Berlin…..what a journey but here is the second part to the blog.
We began the day with a stroll up towards the city centre where we stopped off at C & A. Yes it does still exist! We took a quick tour of the centre and ended up in the large Cathedral that I assume most of the religious townsfolk would attend, it was very nice and had a warm feeling to it. Something we did notice was that when couples came in to the church, only the men would dip his fingers in the holy water and the woman would touch the water off his fingers. Bizarre.
Anyway, we went to the natural history museum which was pretty interesting. 3 floors about Luxembourg through the ages and then 3 floors of a new exhibition surrounded by death, murder etc. Me and Jonny enjoyed this a lot despite it being quite disturbing.
After this we headed to the American war cemetery where General George Patton is buried with his men. It was really amazing to see such a scale of perfect graves and the monuments around them. All the jewish shoulders had a star instead of a cross grave and on these stars families would place a white pebble in memory of their lost relative. Jews being jews….we didn't find one grave without a pebble placed on it. It was cool to see such perfect alignment and we checked it out from all angles. Well worth the 2 mile walk to get there!
After this we planned on visiting the Grand Dukes Palace. Jonny had already checked out the sign as we passed it earlier in the morning. When the king is away….tourists can check out the palace and there was an English tour at 4pm. Whilst blowing time we visited the casemates which is a UNESCO world heritage site. It's underground tunnels which gives access to turrets in the wall where cannons and things were used to defend the city back in the day. Around these dark caves Jonny decided to jump out and scare an old woman. Funny really…
After blowing more time sat in the cold we headed towards the palace, only to discover Jonny had misread the sign and the Palace was not open to tourists for another week! Shiza!
We headed back to the hostel, picked up our gear and headed back to the station. The first train took us to Trier which is just inside Germany. After having a short nap there we got on the next train to Koblenzat about 9:30. Arriving in Kobulz at 11:07 we waited for our connecting train to Hamburg for 2 hours. It wasn't that bad as we had a laugh practising our German with the girl working at McDonalds. Zuper!
A horrible delirious sleep later we got off at Hamburg at 6:40. We only got off at the wrong station and had to wait an hour before we could get to Hamburg HBF. After waiting 20mins in the cold we finally got on the last past of the train journey arriving in Berlin at 9:45.
Having no idea where the hostel was as we forgot to map it out, we dived in a taxi and got out at our destination. BAX PAX hostel. Great….although it was the wrong Bax Pax and we were on the other side of Berlin. Typical!
We got the metro to the hostel where im sat now. It's actually really cool with a bar, pool table, inflatable pool, table tennis. Waiting for our room so I can nap but I shall keep you updated with happenings in Berlin ASAP.
Big shout out to my home girl Nicky C and the Ofsted clan. Pukkah pukkah booyaksha. Keep it real homies.
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