On our way to Berlin we decided to stop for lunch and a random adventure in a town about halfway between Hamburg and Berlin called Pritzwalk. Pritzwalk was a hectic ghost town, in the hour and a half we were there we saw about 10 people and the only places open were a couple of the pubs and an ice cream shop, but it was a very picturesque small German ghost town with very good ice cream (the quality of ice cream going some way to explain our frequent sightings of massive, built German guys on bicycles eating ice creams). Lewis took over driving after Pritzwalk so I napped the rest of the way to Berlin. Before that point though it was a lot of fun to cruise down the autobahn doing 150 (I wasn't allowed to go higher due to fuel consumption and was still getting smoked by some of the crazy German drivers!)
Woke up just as we arrived at our next hostel, "Plus Berlin", again part of a big hostel chain (it's hard to tell these things when we book, often drunk, off a hostel website). The hostel was huge, bigger than any we had stayed in before, so we went in expecting the worst given our previous, experience-generated, theory of "the bigger the hostel, the worse the hostel" but it was an awesome place. Very nice rooms, cheap laundromat, pool and sauna, massive open grassy common area with comfy chairs, ping pong tables and a large quantity of rabbits and a very cheap bar and restaurant, its only downfall being the completely useless wifi. Got late (as in 5pm) lunch from the supermarket down the road and relaxed in our dorm, which we had to ourselves the whole stay, until about 7 when we headed down to the bar/restaurant, which did great value for money pizza and pasta and $3 beers. After dinner we sat outside as summer in Germany isn't the lie that summer in England is. After a while I went inside to get more beers and watch a bit of the football on TV and when I returned we had gained the company of three awesome pom chicks, Lucy, Izzy and Bella. Had some more drinks with them and then got kicked out of the outdoor area (kicked in?). Stayed there for a while then moved to the smoking area, where Bella started getting hit on by 2 hugely drunk American tools, which was hugely entertaining for the rest of this. After about quarter of an hour of this we all headed up to our rooms and played drinking games until 3am when the girls went back to their room.
Spent the majority of the next day sleeping and relaxing around the hostel, doing all our much needed washing. For lunch we went out an found a little indian place called "Asra" which did huge, $5 curries. Spent a lot of our time in the common area, amusing ourselves with our books, strongbow and watching a variety of girls (and one moronic group of English chavs) trying, with little success, to catch the rabbits that are all over the area. Had dinner again in the hostel restaurant then met up with the girls again for some drinks at the bar before we all (excepting Lewis who needed to get a bunch of work done) went out. The first place we went to, "Matrix", wouldn't let Bella in so we tried an apparently very trendy place in a warehouse. The bouncer there let Bella straight in but then refused the entire rest of us. When we then asked why couldn't get in he said "No why! No!" a couple of times before pushing us away, apparently we weren't trendy enough for a warehouse called "Suicide Circus". Bella decided she would stay at "Suicide Circus with a couple of the English guys we who had also joined us" and the rest of headed back to "Matrix" and got our clubbing on. At some point not long after Bella rejoined us.
Woke up the next morning around midday to Macky regaling Lewis with our previous nights tales, telling him about how "boss" I was for carrying Izzy between "Suicide Circus" and "Matrix" because it was pissing down with rain and there was broken glass around. Yeah I'm pretty great. Supermarket lunch and again spent the day around the common area as Lewis struggled to get work done on the craptastic wifi and discovered that Macky plays ping pong like a crazy person, very badly but with sudden explosive bursts of violent and scarily effective smashes. Had another cheap dinner, couple of drinks then early bed.
Got up at 8, showered, cleared up our room, which looked somewhat like a bomb had gone off in it, and checked out by 9 before getting a train in 4 stops to central Berlin for a walking tour run by a company called "Original Berlin Walks", which cost $10 but was well worth the money. In the next 4 hours we saw a whole chain of amazing churches and rebuilt buildings (Berlin having been 90% destroyed by bombing in WW2 and still rebuilding now really brings on the realisation that WW2 wasn't really that long ago and the effect it had on Europe). Also a whole bunch of monumental sites, Checkpoint Charlie (the last closed checkpoint in the Berlin Wall when it openned), the Berlin Wall itself, the site of Hitlers (and Eva Braun and Goebbels) bunker and suicide, haunting memorials for both war and the holocaust, the Brandenburg Gate and a host of others, plus a lot of very interesting German and Berlin history, from its creation, through the World Wars, the division and reconnection of East and West Germany (and Berlin itself which was divided) and up to the present day". Found a nice cafe after to rest our legs and have some cheap lunch then headed back to the car for the drive to our next stop.
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