Berlin is Germany's largest city. It's a beautiful place that has plenty to offer travelers.
I arrived to Berlin from my hometown of Kaiserslautern. Using blablacar, I was able to find a cheap train ticket. The train ride was about 6 hours if I remember correctly.
Unfortunately for me, I arrived to Berlin right at the peak of tourist season. Every single hostel was booked. I was able to find a room at the SORAT Hotel Ambassador Berlin for a decent price, but it was expensive for my budget.
It was disappointing to not find a hostel because it's easier to meet people in hostels. Also the location of the hotel wasn't ideal. But I wanted to spend a fair amount of time in Berlin to get a good feel for it so I booked the hotel for about a week.
On my first full day in Berlin, I did all of the tourist stuff. I wandered around to the main sights and got photos for facebook (damn I wish I had Hive back then!).
The city is pretty and seemed clean. The sights were cool and there was lots to take photos of.
I would later see other cities lots of buildings with statues and beautiful ordainments, but Berlin was one of the first cities where they seemed to be everywhere. So you'll have to bear with all of my photos of buildings.
Up until this point in my trip I hadn't seen any crime. But in Berlin I saw two people get busted for stealing. The first was a drug addict looking guy getting chased and tacked by two people right in front of me. One of the guys looked at me and said something and I only understood the word "police". So I called the police and handed him my phone to talk to them.
The second incident was a man leaving the metro and yelling at a woman and a man. The couple were gypsies and after a moment they gave the man his wallet back.
I thought Spain would have more crime than Germany, but Berlin won that particular contest.
There was a lot of construction going on in Berlin. In some areas, the sky was filled with construction cranes.
Of all of the tourist sites, I think my favorite was the Neptune Fountain.
There was just something enchanting about Neptune and all the water babies. The more you look at the fountain, the more little details you notice.
After getting my tourism activities out of the way, it was time to spend a few days doing normal stuff. For me, normal stuff was food and beer.
Berlin is home to some of the best doner kebab on the planet. Berlin, being located in Germany, is also great for beer.
When it comes to beer, I'm not a snob. I'm more of a "quantity is quality" type of beer drinker. I don't seek out different notes or "hints of cherry bark" or anything like that. When I don't know anything about the beer being offered, I follow a simple rule. If the label has a child or a monk on it, it's good.
It's a good rule to follow if you're not sure what beer to order. Ask any beer snob if they've ever had a bad beer with a monk or child on the label. They'll say no.
One evening I went to a reggae dub event next to a river. It was pretty fun but I don't have strong memories of it.
I also spent a couple of evenings drinking beer in front of a metro stop.
My plan was to spend about a week in Berlin. But my plans changed when a friend sent me a message on Facebook. He was going to a fest near Berlin and had an extra ticket and invited me. I don't like electronic music fests very much. Camping out and listening to the same music for several days in a row isn't very appealing to me. But my goal was to say yes to things and I said yes.
I checked out of my hotel early and got picked up my friend. That'll be my next post.
Something unique from Berlin
In my Carcassonne post I mentioned that I liked the lamps there. Berlin saw that and said "hold my beer".
Berlin is champion of the lamp game. Holy smokes! They grabbed onto the "lamp dopeness" dial and cranked that sucker up to 11.