march 3 - berlin!

saturday 19/2
woke up, finished last minute packing of makeup, toiletries, toothbrush etc. and after a last scout of the flat we left - trekking down the hill with a detour at poundland to buy sweets for the plane. we took the A40 bus to heathrow airport and checked in a lovely 4 hours early. of course this meant we spent 4 hours eating and looking for food at regular intervals.
once on the plane we realised our entire day had been spent sitting in transit in an airport but we were finally on our way!
my first impression of berlin wasn't over exciting. the airport was abandoned and i couldn't speak the language; what did i expect?! it was cold and dark; we took a bus to an underground train station and from there took the train to just around the corner from wombat's - the hostel where we stayed all week!
after unpacking we all headed up to the  "wombar" where we cashed in our free drink $1 bill and soaked up the awesomeness of being in berlin. yve, georgie and i then went to explore the streets around our hostel to find somewhere else to go out but we gave up eventually and headed to bed.
sunday 20/2
after a leisurely buffet breakfast we went looking for a flea market yve had heard of and along the way we found a memorial to the berlin wall. we spent an hour or so looking around the visitor centre and really getting a feel for the history of berlin. we also visited a "ghost" underground train station which was shut off during the soviet occupation of east berlin and learned more about that.
eventually we made our way to the flea market but at this point i was absolutely freezing and ready to go home. luckily it was quite small; and packed full of interesting vintage (or just second hand) items. we spent a good half hour drooling over a case of expensive rings and i almost bought a black velvet dress - saved at the last moment by realising it had a tear in the top. still, georgie had to drag me away because i insisted " i'll sew it up, i will!"
on this evening (yes i went out every night ok everyone stop judging me please) georgie and i went up to the bar and met a girl from new zealand and her room mate who was from boston in america! again we didn't stay very late as we were quite tired and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of people around.
monday 21/2
today we visited checkpoint charlie; the jewish history museum and tried (and failed) to find the berlin guggenheim. checkpoint charlie was fascinating; to be in such a historical spot and to stand where so many people have stood was unbelievable. my history nerd came out and i spent ages reading all the "first hand experience" posters etc. next we walked to the jewish history museum where we kind of split off into 2 groups - agreeing to meet up after an hour. georgie and i spent what felt like forever wandering the museum and visiting a kind of "message tree" where you write a wish on a paper pomegranate and hang it off the tree. some of the messages were really lovely and some were incredibly sad. it hadn't really registered with me that we are actually IN EUROPE and that not everyone will speak english until i was reading messages off the tree and only understood a tiny fraction of the languages.
after the jewish history museum we tried to find the guggenheim but got terribly lost and ended up walking up potsdamer platz admiring the shops and took our first look at the brandenburg gate.
next we headed to the memorial of holocaust victims which is really...confronting in a weird way. the memorial itself is very effective and its a very sobering experience.
on monday night we finally made friends! yay!
georgie, yve and i saw the same girl from boston as the previous night and the people she was with invited us to sit with them. having a group of people to be with was really nice and as the 2 canadians were doing similar work to us (although they both have a good 9 years on us), it was fun to swap stories and joke around.

installment 1, finally complete. i just got home from a night out with georgie in london (lots of fun, enough said) and i'm going to eat pasta and watch the notebook.
ill finish this off tomorrow. sorry i'm so lazy, every time i got to blog i get distracted by something else.