Berlin

In the morning we pack up our stuff, eat a rubbish breakfast, hop in the car and drive into Berlin. We end up staying at a hostel, our first of the trip but it has wifi and parking so it's pretty good. It's also cleaner than a good portion of our hotels. The neighbourhood isn't the best, it's overgrown, covered in graffiti and when we arrive we are greeted by a man on the street yelling at two teenage girls... Meh, we've had worse.

We park the car and head to the S-Bahn. We work the machine with ease, having already used a lot of them by this point, until it comes time to pay... It won't take our bloody money. Stuff you ticket machine. We go to the next station and repeat the process with the same outcome. Oh dear. We are never going to get to Berlin. An older couple try to show us how to use the machine with the same result. At this point we all move to the last ticket machine and fortunately it works. We hop on a train and get swallowed up by Berlin.

The first station we stop at is Alexanderplatz, we head across the road and visit their Oktoberfest, there's not much going on so we get back on the train and go to the central station. We buy a map from the info desk and head off in search of Checkpoint Charlie. The first thing of note that we bump into is the Berlin Marathon. Holy hell there were so many people. All of the ones who had completed the race were lying around wrapped in see through plastic yellow sheets with cups of beer. Apparently it's good for rehydration. The second place we stumble across is the memorial for all of the Jews murdered in the holocaust, it's huge, apparently the size of a football feild but I don't know. It consists of lots of concrete blocks in varying sizes all set into neat rows. 

We roam around for a while longer, then start passing a bunch of hawkers selling soviet themed souvenirs. That's how we know we are closing in on the check point. The next thing we know we are standing by the largest remaining section of the wall, looking at The Topography of Terror. It's mostly about the Nazi's and we are a bit bummed as we were hoping to find out more about the wall. I grab a couple of quick photo's before we continue on our way and reach Checkpoint Charlie. There's a checkpoint in the middle of the road and two men in uniform posing with female tourists. Willy asked if I would like my photo with them... Um no... Thanks... We head across the road to the museum.

Oh my gosh. Bad move. I love museums. I love reading. I love finding out more wars, or social situations, or daring escapes. So how on earth could I not fall in love with this museum? Easily. This was one of the worst museums that I have ever been to and we both found it to be so, so, so dry. Argh. We were there for about an hour and it was so difficult to read anything because there was just so much writing - in four languages. The audio tours are just so much more effective.

After a while we bail on the museum we go and grab a beer in an inner city beach bar. We are both a little down on Berlin by this point. We miss Munich a lot. In a last ditch attempt, we look up a bar in the Lonely Planet, but while trying to locate it we end up in a rough looking neighbourhood that we aren't happy to look like tourists in... It's just so depressing here. So, so depressing. We've been to a bunch of places that are filthy, with beggars everywhere, yet Berlin is one of the few places that I have felt unsafe in. We don't hate it but it is really disappointing.

We decide not to stay a second night.