Now if you read my life of crime post not so long ago, you're up to date with why I ended up going on a semi-holiday to Europe. BF needed his passport, and my attempts to smuggle it to him via courier didn't work. Tbh I could've tried harder to find a courier which didn't have such an extensive list of 'prohibited items' but hindsight is 20/20.
I'd been thinking about going out to the continent anyway, I'd heard loadsa good things about Belgium, but I ended up going to Berlin. Cos why? BF gets sent to a job in a fucking airport. Where they need to see his passport. So we decided I'd come out to Berlin. Sod's law, cos he builds festival tents, not airport hangars. The one time he's travelling abroad without a passport..
So we got an unexpected cash injection, decided this would be the week I'd come out for a holiday; lined up perfect cos BF was supposed to get the weekend off, romantic weekend in Berlin (a city renowned for romance) - I got my tickets booked - I chose to travel by train. Part money, part fear of being questioned about smuggling passports abroad.
Now I'm no stranger to long journeys, but one word that springs to mind when I think about my journey to get to Berlin.. Hell.
I woke up half 3 Tuesday morning for a 6 hour coach ride to London. I got a train from London to Brussels. Had to mad overtake some slowpoke to barely get my train from there to Cologne. This was supposed to be a four hour train.. it gets cancelled because of a fire on the track. We all get moved off the train, and I don't speak a lick of German so I'm just blindly following everyone else. I had to get a different train Cologne. Picture if you will, the tube, the subway (whatever your sweatiest train service is) at rush hour, packed, tired as fuck, hotter than the sun, no water, surrounded by people that don't speak your language, and no real clue about where to get off.
I missed my connection to Berlin by about an hour and a half. Cologne train station is huge. I had a bit of a meltdown. I eventually found out there were no more trains to Berlin, not until 11pm (it was about 8pm). I'd already had my meltdown, so I just got my transfer ticket sorted, got a McDonald's cheeseburger, a couple of beers, and sat on some cathedral steps until my train came. I got to Berlin at 6am Wednesday morning. No sleep, apart from that shit half sleep you get on trains. Also no drugs, which usually makes staying up for days so easy.
But yano what. I came to Berlin with so much resentment about how far it was, how much a ball ache to get there.. I got a decent night's sleep and had one whole day to go exploring my myself. So I went to the East Side Gallery. A load of graffiti artists done their thing on the Berlin wall.
The weather was fucking beautiful. The atmosphere was beautiful. The beers were cheap. Went to the Ramones museum (only one in the world apparently) and bought a permanent marker so I could tag my own little bit of the Berlin Wall. On my way back to the hotel I met a photographer selling postcards and bought 2 for a fiver. I'm over my resentment, I heart Berlin.
That night me and BF and a couple of guys he works with got wrecked in our lovely hotel room.. the amount of booze we bought; a third of the price it'd be in England.
Unfortunately, BF's weekend off got cancelled, and my mini break to Berlin turned into 1 day in Berlin, 2 nights and a hard drive to Copenhagen.
I am definitely going back to Berlin one day. 4 stars out of 5 (TigerAdvisor) would recommend. I love history (spesh WW2) and didn't even get to any museums. Unfinished business. Plus, I've picked up some German phrases that will only go to waste back in England: Ein große bier, bitte.
I'll write shortly about the hellish (but then a bit OK) trip to Denmark. Tschüss!