Big Adventures, Little World

We got up early again for breakfast in the restaurant which was a nice change from having to do it all ourselves under the cook tent. A nice buffet breakfast before we headed off to the heart of Berlin to start our Third Reich walking tour with a local guide. We started off at the Reichstag building and went from there through the city stopping at a number of places and getting a lot of history from our guide. The walk went for about 3 hours and was really good, visiting the memorial to the Jewish people killed during the war, the Brandenburg Gate, the hotel where Michael Jackson held his baby out the window (and also where the penthouse suite costs 20000 Euro a night, but does come with its own chauffer which makes it worthwhile), different parts of the Berlin Wall that are still standing, the site of where Hitler’s underground bunker was, and Checkpoint Charlie. The city is so full of history, even though it is quite a young city compared to some of the other places we visited throughout Europe and I could have easily spent another couple of days there seeing the sights and learning the history.

After the walking tour we decided to go to the Berlin Zoo. Danny, Anita, Ando and I went off to find it, and figured it couldn’t be too far to walk to. About half an hour or so later we finally found it. The zoo was huge so we just started wandering. We all had a few things that we wanted to see so made sure we saw all of them. We saw elephants, rhinos, hippos, bears, polar bears, a panda, gorillas, kangaroos, cows, monkeys, seals, giraffes, lions and jaguars, as well as a few more animals we weren’t really sure what they were. It was amazing, such a great place and so glad we went there. The polar bears were my favourite, they were just playing around in the water, grabbing each other and pulling them under water, then biting each other on the neck or hitting them in the face. We watched them for a long time, they were so cool. I want one as a pet. We even saw the famous one, Knut, which was born in the zoo and raised by the zoo keepers.

After the zoo it was back to the meeting point for us to all get on the bus then go get some dinner before starting our pub crawl. A few people went to a restaurant for dinner and a few of us went to this little Chinese place where we got a massive serve or fried rice and chicken for 3 Euros, then headed to the supermarket to grab a few beers before the pub crawl started.

The pub crawl was so much fun. There was another couple of TopDeck crews also doing it so it was quite big with about 100 people or so. Before it even started we were all given a beer so we all stood around in the street drinking it and after we had finished we went off to the first pub for cheap drinks. As well as drink specials everywhere we went, we also got at least 2 free shots from the pub crawl organisers which made for a cheap night. It was a Monday night and everywhere we went the places were packed, people everywhere, the music pumping and everyone dancing. We had an awesome time, drinking and dancing with the whole crew, before heading back to the campsite and sitting around the courtyard with a few more drinks until about 5.30 in the morning before finally deciding that sleep was needed.

Feeling refreshed after the decent night’s sleep we made our way to Dresden in Germany, which is a town that was heavily bombed during World War II for no real reason, but has often tried to be justified by the British and United States, although researchers and historians are against the justifications. We went for a walking tour with Hottie as it rained, while Irish Mark and Rainbow stayed back to prepare our lunch. There are some remarkable buildings throughout the city, and a lot of them still have their charred outsides from the fire bombs that were used and ravaged the city during the war. Some of the buildings that were destroyed have even been rebuilt using the charred stones from the old building to still look like the other buildings in the city as well as a reminder of what happened during the war. A very cool and beautiful city that it would have been nice to spend some more time in, but being on such a tight schedule that we were we unfortunately couldn’t. Back on the bus and on our way to Berlin we went.

We arrived in Berlin and went straight on to our driving tour through the city, where we went along the Berlin Wall, the parts of it that were still standing, and saw all the art that had been painted along them in which is now an outdoor art gallery. Some of them have been there for a long time, but most are changed every so often with new paintings from new artists, and a lot of them represent peace and events that happened during the time when the wall was still standing or when it was coming down. We continued on through the city and saw some other amazing sites including the Reichstag, the Victory Monument, Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate which are all full of so much history from World War II and the division of East & West Germany, which we would find out the next day when we were going on  the Third Reich walking tour.

Once we had finished the driving tour, it was on to our hostel. Everyone was so excited to not have to worry about setting up and packing up the tents. The hostel was amazing and was more like a hotel. There was a pool in the basement, a restaurant, a bar, a big courtyard and rabbits running around. We had dinner in the restaurant and sat back with a few drinks before I had to get some washing done, where I had to wait for the washing machines and dryers, before finally getting to bed about 3AM.

Today was another free day and unfortunately I had woken up after about 2 hours and couldn’t get back to sleep because it was cold and wet and the tents weren’t the most comfy at all. So I sat around the campsite until more people surfaced and got some breakfast before sitting around and chatting with everyone for a few hours. Most people were feeling a bit worse for wear after the night before, but most were still up and about and looking forward to heading into town to check out the sights. Me and the Aussie Boys, Gerad, Joel and Tim, headed into town about 1.30PM to go have a look through the castle district and see the Prague Castle and whatever else we could find on the way. It was a long walk to the top of the steps but once there we had some amazing views straight out across the city of Prague. It was really beautiful, some of the old gothic architecture through the city is just stunning. The castle itself is something else again. It is so big and once again I am just amazed at how they managed to make these buildings so long ago and still have them standing. It really is quite astounding. We sat there for a bit being so dwarfed by it, it really is quite unreal. We also walked over the Charles Bridge, which supposedly has 12 gold coins stuck on it throughout it and if you touch all 12 you receive supernatural powers. We found what we thought might be the coins but weren’t totally convinced at all, and didn’t find 12 of them anyway. We decided that because of this, our tour leader, Hottie, must have been making it all up and then started to wonder how much of the other ‘facts’ he had told us were real or not.

We headed back to meet up with the rest of the group who had come into town and headed to a pub where the beers were 39 crowns (which is about $1.70 Australian) for a half litre (or pint). We had a couple of beers and headed off to another seedy little bar for another couple, and then back to the underground club we had been at the night before. As I was running on only 2 hours sleep, I headed back a bit before midnight with Clive and Chloe to try and get a decent night sleep, or at least as decent as possible in the conditions.

Prague is such a cheap city and is really awesome, it just would have been great to be staying somewhere with better facilities than what we had. Also, better weather would have been nice too. Definitely a place I would love to go back to, and I still love the place no matter what it was like when we were there.

Coming into Prague I was really looking forward to it, but the weather soon put a dampener on that with it pouring with rain, and also the campsite not being that great at all. We weren’t going to let that stop us from having a good night though, and also celebrating Lucy’s 19^th birthday, and what better place to do so than in Prague and with a bottle of absinthe. We had a short walking tour through the city and finished off getting some Prague Sausage, before heading to the campsite and getting our tents setup, then having dinner, drinks and cake before making our way into town in the pouring rain (we weren’t going to let that stop us from having an amazing time) to check out the famous Prague nightlife.

It was a long, long night, but so much fun, going to a number of different clubs, including an underground club and also one that was 5 stories high with different types of music on each level! They were all really cool and better than any of the Adelaide clubs (obviously) but also any others I have been to in Australia, that’s for sure. We ended up getting back to the camp ground about 5.30 in the morning, after having more Prague Sausage (why wouldn’t you when it is so cheap?) and went to rest our weary bodies.

We had a bit of a sombre stop to start the day at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp from which was used during World War II by the Nazis. It was quite strange wandering around the camp and learning of some of the things that the prisoners were made to do while in the camps. I don’t really know how to explain it r if my explanations of it would do it any justice at all. I think it is something that needs to be seen for yourself to be able to take it in and understand what went on there, although none of us would ever be able to truly understand, just the people that were made to suffer there. In saying that though, I did think that it would have been more graphic that what we had seen. This camp in particular was mainly used as a work camp, and not as much as an execution camp like some of the other ones were, which is why it may not have been so graphic, but there was still over 100000 people that were executed there.

Once we arrived in Munich we went on a walking tour before heading to the Hofbrau Haus, which is giant beer hall. It was hard to find a seat in there for the group of us but we managed to get a table and ordered a round of steins for the table. 11 steins in total, and they were all brought out by one waiter, just using his two hands to carry them all. It was remarkable. In addition to the beers we had some food, including sausages and pork knuckles, all of which was amazing.

After the food and another round of steins we started to get a bit rowdy and started playing a few drinking games, but no matter how loud we were it didn’t really matter because the place is such a loud atmosphere. I think one of the funniest sights for everyone would have been our whole table standing up singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ as we finished it off with a big group ‘cheers’ (which were a common occurrence). This also led to 3 of the steins getting cracked in one go, just after I had told everyone that they must be unbreakable as you could put a lot of force into the ‘cheers’. After my third stein, I headed back to camp early on the bus with a few others to get a good night’s sleep as I needed it with all the partying and full on days we had ahead of us.