Ich ein Berliner! Or something along those lines...

We arrived in Berlin on a snowy, wintry night with no accommodation booked. The plan had been to stay in Berlin until the 2nd of January but as we'd had to change that due to the ridiculous cost of the flights I'd forgotten to take into account our accommodation situation. About half an hour before we were due to arrive it suddenly dawned on me. Uh-oh. Two nights before NYE, the biggest night of the year in Berlin and we wanted a room? What a joke! But after much perseverance (and dragging our cases through snow) we made it a hostel. Freezing cold and covered in snow we entered the hostel that was to be our shining light at the end of a very crappy tunnel. Yes, we got accommodation and yes, it was cheap BUT, and there's always a but with these types of situations, it was terrible. Our room smelled like stinky binge-drinking boys and the corridor smelled the same as the toilet.

The next morning we were out of there quick smart and checked into Pfefferbett hostel which was fantastic. Very clean, great showers and bathrooms and very comfortable and massive beds. Yay! We went on a walking tour of Berlin that day with a fantastic guide who was not only extremely knowledgeable but was a bit of an entertainer too. He kept us riveted with stories of Berlin right up to the very end where he delivered the awesome story of the fall of the Berlin wall. We went all over Berlin on this tour, starting at the Brandenburg Gate. We then made our way through the Holocaust Memorial and stood over the top of Hitler's bunker which, funnily enough, is now just a car park. The bunker has been flooded and there isn't a single sign or mark to let you know that it's there.

After this we went to Checkpoint Charlie which is basically just a massive tourist gimmick and saw some of the remaining part of the Berlin Wall. The area behind it used to be a main operations centre for the SS and as a sign of the respect the German government had vowed never to build on that site again. Not likely. An ice-rink was erected right behind the wall. Nice one, Germany.

We eventually ended up going past a whole lot of museums and his finale was delivered on the steps of the almighty Berliner Dom, a very large basilica in the centre of Berlin, pictured below. This was actually what it looked like when we were there because it was snowing heavily.


After the tour Pru and I hurried back to our hostel because we were pretty much both frozen through and needed time to thaw out. We had some amazing Vietnamese food for dinner and then called it a night.

The following day was NYE and we had a pretty low-key day trying to save our energy for that night. We decided to go on a pub crawl. Basically we had no idea where to go and this seemed like the easy option. It was a lot of fun until Pru decided she was busting to go to the toilet and we lost the crawl sometime after midnight. We'd gotten free shots and fireworks so it wasn't a complete waste! We also had our flight to Barcelona the next day on our minds and didn't particularly feel like a hugely late night anyway - so we went back to the hostel at around 3am.

The next morning we woke up, not feeling too crash-hot and made our way to Berlin airport. Everything was going well, we were rushing slightly as a lot of the public transport had slowed right down for New Year's Day, but things weren't too bad. Until that horrible moment. The moment Pru walked straight into a pole, split her eyebrow open on it and spurted blood all over the ground Kill Bill style. It was like a fountain. Anyway, in the end all was good and we boarded our flight to Barcelona.

For the next few days Pru would be ever so slightly concussed.