Berlin Backblip No2

Wow. Talk about lack of sleep. Cait and I got the worst sleep imaginable Saturday night. Every 1/2 hour or so we'd be woken up by either someone in the hostel (even though we had a private room, the walls seemed to be paper thin) or, more commonly, some drunkards outside smashing bottles/yelling/singing/screaming in German. Worst sleep ever.

Whatever. We went all around town and checked out a lot of the touristy stuff. First we went to the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, which is where you can see a section of what was known as the "death strip".

This was one of my favourite shots out of the many I took around the Berlin Wall. It's just the top cover that was put on to make sure nobody could get any grip to climb over.

We then proceeded further into town to check out the Reichstag, Brandenburger Tor, the Holocaust Memorial, and more.

The weather was okay most of the day, with the odd shower we were able to avoid by ducking into a shop or cafe. But then late in the afternoon it ripped open with no intention of stopping. It really sucked, and thankfully we both had the mindset to bring our waterproof jackets.

We met up with Cait's cousin Jack who's on a 3 month around-the-world trip performing his one-man show. He took us through to a part of town we desperately wished we knew about a few hours earlier when the weather was better. It was just blocks and blocks of really cool little restaurants/cafes in a very non-tourist part of town.

So we all ended up hanging out and chatting late into the night, finally getting onto a tram at about 1am that we thought was going to take us back to the hostel. Thought.

Turns out the M10 tram can go one of two directions when it gets to a particular junction....this one started to get us home then suddenly deviated to take us farther and farther away.

So at 1 in the morning Cait and I are wandering around the streets of Berlin in some back neighbourhoods, far away from the city centre, using my Nokia's GPS to guide us back through the pouring rain.

We got back, but demoralized. What can you do. But that night we slept like rocks.