Berlin? Berlin!

Now about the first part of our short stay in Berlin.

I kept on waking up this morning (starting around 4). I dont think Andrew was able to sleep much and every time the train stopped somewhere, he would ask me if it was our stop. Somehow I managed, though.

We got into our train station around 9-ish this morning and had to figure out how to get to our hostel. Fortunately, this was another one of the hostels that we found out about from the Europe book because Berlin seems to be lacking in free city maps unlike every other place that we went to.
After we figured out the public transportation system in this city, which I am a big fan of after using it all day, we hopped on a train to our hostel. Our hostel ended up being right next to the train station, which was very convenient. This hostel is very large and we dont have bunk beds. I am a fan of it, except for the fact that its a five story climb to our floor and there are no elevators. It was pretty hellish with the backpacks this morning.

The beds were very comfortable, though. That might have been exaggerated though after spending the night on the train.

Anyway, we left the hostel again around 1130 and went off in search of a Citibank. We couldnt find one in the area that the receptionist at the hostel told us about and gave up after someone at a Starbucks told us there were none in the area. Gianni, however, needed more money and refused to take my extra money until we found one, so we just went to some other bank. Five minutes later, we found the Citibank and became very sad. I think we are going to have to go back before we leave anyway, so it works out more or less.

We ate lunch at this bagel place and went off in search of a tour that everyone got excited about. It was this Red Tour of Berlin, so it sounded pretty cool. We get to the area that the tour leaves from and there is a massive crowd of police cars and police officers surrounding a hotel and blocking our path. We find out that we apparently just missed Condoleza Rice leave the hotel for something. We had to find a way around that mess to get to the tour.

We get there and find out that the companys free walking tour is taking off at the same time as the Red Tour. We were about to take the free tour, but decided to stick with the Red Tour and do the free on tomorrow.

I think it was a good choice. Not only was the crowd significantly smaller, but the tour was very interesting. Basically, we got to learn a lot about the KGB in Berlin and the divide between East and West Germany. We saw various areas of the Berlin wall, as well as what the Stazis used as an interrogation room and learned stories about living in a communist country. Really interesting. Also the tour guide was very cool. Tomorrow we are either going to do the free tour or spend money on the Third Reich tour. Well see.

The tour ended in the East Side Gallery, the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall, where a lot of street artists have painted fun murals into the wall. A lot of people have written over these murals since, which is lame because some of them were very nice. This stretch of wall is a little less than one mile, but it took us over an hour to walk through it because my hippy sister had to read everything on the wall.

Not that it wasnt interesting. I think my favorite may have been the Sweeney Todd quote, but I dont know. I took a lot of pictures of it, so once I finally get caught up there I will post them.

The wall ended at some train station and we found a cheapish internet cafe here, so thats where we are now. I wanted to check the email with Hastings stuff to see what was going on and also to catch up in the blogs. We probably are going to leave soon to watch the Germany-Turkey game and get something to eat. Tomorrow night we take another overnight train to Munich, so we should enjoy the nice beds.