Where We're Going

Where We're Going

Friday 18 July 2008

Hot D&G Soup, Hippo Fountain & Tardis Toiletten

Our morning train wasn't until 10:36 so we were fairly leisurely in our getting up. Toast was devoured, bags were packed and a bus was caught. The Prague rush hour seems to be between 9am-10am annoyingly, so the bus was crammed and I fell on top of a man in front when the bus turned a sharp corner. The Metro was a more comfortable ride and we were at the station in no time. Unfortunately, so were hundreds of other people who were also going to Berlin it turned out. We got a seat in a compartment with a couple of people younger than us. The journey was nice and we passed 3 castles between Bad Schandau and Dresden alone! The further we got into Germany, however, the worse the weather became and by the time we pulled up in Berlin it was full-blown raining. We caught an S-Bahn and then walked to the hostel past lots of kebab shops and cafes. The hostel common room was quiet and full of books with suits of armour statues flanking the entrance, and it looks as though it was a warehouse before being a hostel.

We're finishing our adventure in a city we know and love and a hostel that is big and clean, so it'll be a great end to a great trip. We left our bags to dry and went for a wander in the rain. We chose this hostel because of its location in an area we already know pretty well, so it was nice to walk around and know where we're going rather than clinging to a map. The city has never disappointed us, and even in the rain we had fun. We saw lots of fun things in our first short wander, including funny graffiti, a shop called "Ass Style", some cool fountains, a packet of liquorice "kitten paws", anti-pickle patches and discovered that public toilet booths look just like Tardises! We stopped for dinner at a kebab shop where I had ring-shaped falafel and John had some kind of meat and chips, a delicacy he had been craving for weeks. They gave us our food on real plates and we sat and ate in the shop, in the only seats that were available on a table with a guy our age. He asked where we were from and we told him about our adventure. He told us he was working as a voluntary event manager to get some experience in the field and we had a nice chat about London, kebabs, pigeons and all sorts.

We left happy, our bellies satisfied and our hearts happy to be back here, where strangers strike up conversations over kebabs. We walked to our old haunt, Karl-Marx-Allee then back to the hostel when the weather got worse, and met the other people in our dorm, a Dutch guy, a couple of French guys and an Asian guy. I started reading a book by Josie Dew in which she cycles across America, and John scoured maps of Berlin, Amsterdam, Riga, Krakow and Vilinus, just in case.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Aw that sounds lovely. See you soon

xxx

sansan said...

so you must be round the corner! don't fall asleep, I would love to meet you tonight! :)

Anonymous said...

Siobhan, you're so funy! lol! This blog wasn't very interesting. Please try harder next time. lol