Considering I was technically on a holiday, I don't feel too guilty about spending the rest of the day just relaxing and spending time chatting to my fellow hostel dwellers. Plans were afoot for the following day anyway: I'd noticed a flyer for an alternative tour of Berlin, offering to show the sights of the city not normally covered by the regular tours. It sounded good to me (and was recommended by at least one person), so I rose early and arrived at the meeting point by 11am - coincidentally, the very TV Tower I'd visited the day before.
After waiting a while for more people to arrive, we eventually departed on the U-bahn (the underground train system) to our first stop. I'm afraid my memory is not so good at the best of times so I don't remember the area, but I do know what we saw - lots of street art. The first was one building entirely covered in murals, one side commenting on the pervasiveness of the media in our lives, while the other was about corruption in politics. It was really impressive and extremely well done, as was the next destination.
As it turns out, the area we were in used to be an extremely dangerous area of the city - our guide said he would never have dreamed bringing anyone there 10 years ago. As it turns out, a group of street artists decided to do something to try and improve the area. Their idea was to turn the ground section of one of the area's apartment blocks into a massive mural of 50 faces, ranging from the anonymous to the famous (such as Jimi Hendrix and Ghandi). Surprisingly, this tactic actually helped turn the tide of the area and it's now a much nicer area. The art itself is amazing - extremely colourful, most are very vivid and it's a testament to the very talented artists who helped transform the area into something to be proud of.
As we were promised a chance to traverse the city in the manner of a true Berliner, our next stop was a popular second-hand clothes warehouse where you pay for items by the kilogram, rather than by the individual items. Not being a fashionista myself, I only took a brief look through the place (although I did stop to take a closer look at some of the jackets) - but I still walked out empty handed.
Next on the itinerary was a visit to a man-made waterfall that also provides a terrific vantage point to see the entire city. The water wasn't running due to it being winter, but the view was well worth it. It was still bit grey, but nowhere near as bad as the day before! After this we all decided to grab some lunch, so we wandered down to a local currywurst stand. For the uninitiated, currywurst is basically a sausage (or two) chopped up, sprinkled with curry powder, doused in tomato sauce, then more curry powder - with optional chips on top. This is proper German food, so being the occasionally adventurous type (I can hear the scoffing from there, thank you very much) I partook in a portion - and it was pretty good.
With lunch consumed, we were back on the U-bahn to the next stop - and easily the most dangerous. As we gathered in the morning, our guide (who, I might add, was an Aussie!) mentioned we were going to be breaking into an abandoned prison (in use during the '60s by the Soviets) on the outskirts of the city - but he assured us that not only was there a legal loophole making it highly unlikely we'd be in any trouble, but also he had his phone ready to call his lawyer in case of said trouble.
The building itself was a fair way out of the city and involved a 10 minute walk beyond the train stop, but we arrived and proceeded to navigate the many dangerous barriers, fences and other paraphernalia erected to keep troublesome trespassers out. If you've seen Prison Break or Escape from Alcatraz, it was sort of similar to that.
Actually, it was a rather pathetic little plastic fence that had been trampled to the ground and was easily stepped over, but you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?
Inside was remarkable - aside from the broken glass everywhere (and the cold), there was loads more graffiti art inside. It looked like it'd been home to a few raves in its time, although I have no idea if there had been - at least one section looked tailor made for a DJ booth. We proceeded to scale the stairs (avoiding the very dangerous elevator shafts) until we reached the top floor. Hidden up here in one darkened area was a room that looked like it contained a massive bath, but our guide wasn't entirely sure what it actually was (or, consequently, what it was used for).
Not content with seeing the city from here, we then climbed a ladder to the roof - the absolute top of the building. Now, regular readers of my journal should be well aware of my shitscaredness of heights (yes, I just invented a word) - but it's amazing what a peer group will do for one's courage. Up the ladder I indeed went - to an absolutely amazing 360 degree view of the entire city. On one side was the city centre, with the TV Tower proudly standing erect at its heart - to the other side was a formidable industrial area, belching smoke and undoubtedly lots of other nasty gunk into the atmosphere. From here we were also able to notice several bemused occupants of neighbouring homes, so at this point it was decided to head back down and on to our next destination.
One short bus ride later and we were at an area that was badly bombed throughout the war and had yet to be repaired in any way - except for one building: it had been completely transformed into a huge skate park. It's slightly surreal to wander past the remains of buildings that are barely standing, only to be confronted by one not only intact but filled with kids on skate boards and inline skates. Next to this was another condemned building that was favoured by various itinerants and grafitti artists, so we took a quick look inside - after we were warned the locals were very proud of this building and had acquired the services of a gang of punks to help protect it. No sign of them today, though.
Now, although I'd already seen some remains of the Wall a couple of days earlier, it turns out I was slightly gypped: there is a much longer section (1.3 kilometres worth) still intact by the river, which helped serve as part of the death zone. This was where we headed next, to walk along the back section of the wall inside the very area we would have been shot dead not 20 years ago. Adorning this side of the wall was some of the most amazing street art I've ever seen, including one amazingly detailed reproduction from a Spawn comic.
If this wasn't enough, we then had a makeshift ladder presented so we could climb up the Wall and have our picture taken!
By now it was becoming quite dark, so our next stop was our last - a large artists' collective that started life as a condemned squat. We didn't get to spend much time here, but we did take some time to have one final drink together and rest - I'm not joking, we seriously traversed almost the entire city in a day. It was brilliant. If anyone's going to Berlin, I highly recommend this tour!
As this was my last night in Berlin, I wanted to make it a big one - so I headed back to the hostel to see if anyone else had big plans for the night. As it turns out, nearly everyone did! As usual, we spent most of the evening hanging out in the cafe taking advantage of the super-cheap drinks and watching videos on the computer until it was time to leave - at 12am.
The plan was to hit one of the clubs in the city, which involved a couple of train trips. As you can imagine, trying to corral a good dozen or so half-drunk travellers from around the world took a bit of effort, but we made it in the end.
As it turns out, the club was... well, crap. We were warned by a couple of girls on the train that the place we were going to was rubbish (they were heading to an American Cowboy bar which sounded great to me), but we weren't able to convince anyone else so an R&B bar it was. Ugh. Please note my extreme distaste for this poor excuse for music. Thankfully there were several levels with different types of music, so a handful of us ended up in one room that was playing something that was at least listenable.
Eventually, this same handful grew tired of the club and decided to head back to the hostel. After grabbing our jackets, we headed outside to discover something completely magical - it had started to snow! I've never seen snow before in my life (oh, okay I lie - I saw it when I was _very_ young in Canada, but I barely remember it so I say it doesn't count) so I was absolutely enthralled. The small group I was now with consisted of myself, a Canadian girl and two fellow Aussies - we were all entranced.
Before heading home, we all decided to grab a bite to eat at a nearby currywurst stand (twice in one day, not bad eh!) before heading out into the snow to pummel each other with snowballs. This is going to sound really stupid, but for some reason I wasn't expecting snow to be as cold as it was - not surprising, really, considering it's _ICE_!! Lucky I had my gloves with me.
We eventually called a truce and hopped in a taxi back to the hostel which was an adventure in itself. By now the snow was really coming down quite heavily and the car was having a bit of trouble sticking to the road, but in the end we made it back - this time, to an even thicker layer of snowball material! Needless to say, lots of target practice was had on the short walk back to the hostel - I even got whacked in the side of the face by a German girl who was out with her own friends having their own snow fights.
By this time I was having so much fun I was really sad to have to leave - even worse, I had to get up at 8am to get ready to make it to the airport in time (I went to bed around 4.30am or so). I rose in time, had a shower, checked out and headed to the train station.
My plan was to catch the same train I caught in to the city back to the airport - the S9. As it's a fairly regular one, it arrived within 10 minutes and I was already falling asleep as it started to roll off. As the journey was a good 45 minutes or so, I let myself drift off - occasionally checking the scenery so I could see how the outskirts of the city looked during the day. After a while I noticed the TV Tower again and thought to myself how close the airport must be to the city... and then it struck me, it isn't. The hair on the back of my next stood to attention as we rolled in to the next station and, with utter horror, I saw the notice board announce the train I was on - the S41!!
Now, before you go jumping to conclusions, let me assure you I _definitely_ got on the S9. Let me finish the story first before my near-legendary ability to board the wrong trains gains more strength.
I immediately jumped up and got off so I could try to work out what the hell was going on. A took a look at the train map and realised I was indeed half way back into the city on one of the loop lines, so my first step was to get back to a station that could get me to the airport. Luckily, a train heading that direction promptly arrived and I hopped aboard. Quite naturally, I vigilantly verified each station was taking me closer to my destination until I arrived at the first intersection I could change at.
Back on the platform, I approached a guard to ask when the next S9 would arrive - to which the answer was not any time soon, it had been cancelled for the day! At least this answered why my original train suddenly transformed into something else - I guess that's what the announcements I couldn't understand were trying to tell me. He then assured me the next train to arrive was going to the airport, so I had nothing to worry about - and I didn't. It arrived within 20 minutes, I made my flight with plenty of time and arrived home by 3pm.
Needless to say, I really enjoyed my week away. It was lovely to be able to forget everything that's been building up here over the last nine months and just chill out, relax and have fun. I'd really love to go back to Berlin too, I feel like I only barely scratched the surface of the city, but the lure of so many other places to visit is too strong to ignore. It's both a blessing and a curse of this side of the world, there's so much to see and do - you never know where or what to do first!
With my holiday behind me, normal life was calling - almost immediately, in fact. I barely had time to sit down after arriving home than I had to head into the rehearsal studios to help audition new drummers for my new band. I'm glad to say we think we've find the right guy, we're having a full rehearsal with him on this coming Sunday night so we'll see how it goes.
But that's not all: Monday night I had rehearsals with my other band, which started disastrously but quickly turned around. We've also half-written a new song which I've had a very strong hand in, considering it's entirely based around a bass riff I came up with a couple of weeks ago. Of course, this rehearsal was to prepare us for our third gig on Wednesday night, which was our last one with our current guitarist.
Tonight was (thankfully) a night at home, but the rest of the weekend is just as chaotic: Friday night I'm going to a house warming party, Saturday we're in the studio recording all day, then Sunday is the aforementioned rehearsal with the new drummer. I'm hoping I'll be able to fit a sleep-in somewhere in the middle there.
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