ja! nein!

hallo from berlin! i am here in deutscheland... it is grand.

so on sunday gabi and i had our 7 hour bus ride home from cumbria to central london. lets just say that a. some english accents, particularly out of the mouths of 15 yr olds, sound like words being put through a garbage disposal, and b. 15 year olds should not have babies, because they do not know how to make them stop crying. needless to say, we made it, and found a hostel, and fell into it, and went to bed. the next day we did gabrielles passport business, the national gallery and the british museum, then made our way to gatwick and caught our flight to berlin.

once in berlin, at around 1030 at night, we realized we had no idea how to get to our hostel. a 2 hour train ride later, we are walking down the street to find our hostel, which is all dark and closed up, in this sketch apartment... sooo... we walked through an open door, climbed a flight of dark stairs, pushed another door open and sat on a couch until morning. a little scary. well, a lot scary. it wasnt too bad until polish men started coming in and out around 5. oh dear. in the morning we found the owner and it all got sorted, and she was so sorry, because she thought we werent coming... it was just a bad situation. we slept for a while that morning.

after that harrowing experience, berlin has been amazing! weve had tshirt weather since monday even. weve been to sachenhausen concentration camp, the berlin wall, old gestapo headquarters, brandenburg gate, the holocaust memorial, berlin cathedral and much more. today we rented bikes for 7 euro and biked all around, and then went to the berlin zoo! weve also been walking so many miles i think my feet are going to go on strike.

tommorow we are headed on an overpriced bus to munich (8 hours... oh crap.. hope there are no babies) where we will soak in the sights and vist dachau, another concentration camp.

i think im learning more than just directional skills on this trip. like how to survive. except seeing what im seeing sort of puts things in perspective.

gesundheit!