Life across the pond: The East Berlin Ministry of Ministries

Two posts in one day, so exciting for you guys.

Wednesday morning was more traveling, a 5 hour bus ride to be exact, out to Berlin. It didn’t take me long to realize that a day and a half in Berlin would not be long enough and for the first time I was wishing I could extend my stay by a few more days, you just can’t see and do it all in such a short time.

My first day I booked it across the city after checking in to my hostel, to make it to the last free walking tour of the day and I am so glad I did. It was over 4 hours long and our guide knew so much and was so entertaining. We saw almost every sight in Berlin and learned lots of cool stories. I found out that they do a few free walking tours in Amsterdam too so I’m going to be sure to check those out when I get there.

The TV tower that watches you from everywhere in the city, communists are creepy like that

From inside the Memorial dedicated to the death of Jews

Outside of the memorial

Inside of an abandoned buildings from the communist time

At the Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie (and no that isn't Charlie in the picture)

Summer our awesome tour guide who knew so much and was really funny

I finally dragged myself back to the hostel around 9, had some dinner and met one of the guys in my room Tom, from Byron Bay Australia. We chatted for a while exchanging stories of where we had been and craziness from the road, I had to do a few things online so I headed downstairs for that. While I was at the front desk downstairs a guy checking in claimed he knew me, he looked familiar so I was sure it was true and we tried to figure out how we knew each other (turns out it’s from Vienna, he helped me get on the internet in our hostel but I never saw him after that). The guy at the desk of our hostel was so amused by us he gave us each a token for a free drink at the bar, which we gladly accepted. Tom came down to join us and we ended up all sitting around talking until the bar closed around 1am.

Thursday I grabbed Alex, the American kid I met in Vienna, and we headed to find the bike tour. After much confusing we ended up on one that went around hitting all the sites of Berlin, most of which I had already seen. But it’s interesting to compare the stories and how different guides tell things, plus I love riding around on those cruisers. We headed through a giant park to a beer garden for lunch, along the way getting subjected to sprinkler attacks (which were very nice and cooling) and a quick ride past the nude bathing area (which was not so nice and very frightening). By the end of the bike tour I felt I had learned all I could from these type things so we headed to see the part of the Berlin Wall that is still painted/being repainted by original artists. It stretched for a very long time, probably took us 20 minutes to walk down, and looked amazing all the work that went in to some of the paintings.

Random lightbulbs in the trees outside Parliament

Alex and I in front of Parliament

At the colorful part of the Berlin Wall

Back at the hostel I got ready to do an alternative pub-crawl with Tom while Alex went out with a native Berliner to be shown some of the sites. Tom and I headed down to this little bar where I almost jumped when I realized the people at the end of the bar were so still because they were mannequins, freaky. It wasn’t a huge group, 15 at the most. Our first stop was a dungeon like bar which was known to play host to the likes of Rammstein (a German heavy metal band) so it was a bit weird when they played Blink 182, but oh well, good atmosphere none-the-less.

After that we were taken to a hole in the wall bar that probably only existed a few times a week, ping-pong was the game at this place. Everyone started by walking around the table and volleying the ball back and forth, if you screwed up you were out and sat in one of the chairs around the wall, this kept going until it was down to two people who played an actual game of ping-pong before it all started again. My skills are legendary for the fact that I’m known to hit balls 90degrees to the side, so I sat it out, but Tom managed to make it down to the top 6 at one point.

Our final “bar” was an abandoned industrial complex with a bar outside and trance/house music playing inside. We danced ourselves silly before deciding we should probably find our way home to get a bit of sleep. We got quiet a shock when our tour guide informed us that we should be able to get the tram easily as it had just started running for the day, we had no idea it was so late, 4am to be exact. It is very understandable now why Berlin nightlife goes on for so long. We managed to make it back to the hostel a bit before 5 and fall into bed for a bit of sleep.