London

Wow – well people told me that I would love London… and I would have to say that I did – I had a brilliant time there. We were so busy the whole week – it was insane.

On Wednesday we went to the Monument of the great fire, It this massive thin column – which you can go up and see 360 degree views of  London. There were soooo many stairs (I think about 312 stairs) to climb up but the views were pretty good – they would have been much better before all the buildings around it were built.

We then walked to the Tower of London which is famous for holding the Royals crown jewels – the place isn’t a tower it’s a massive fort next to the river – back in the olden days it was also used as a prison, torture chambers and executions. But we went there for the crown jewels mainly. We got in there for free (woo London Pass) and saw the traitors entrance, which is where traitors were brought in by boat through this gate (from the Thames) and into he fort where they were then dragged to the prison. Guy Fawkes was brought here after his attempt of town hall and all the royal family and important people.

We then went to the crown jewels. They have a lot of boring golden plates and big steins and things which look so delicate and very old. We got to the good stuff – but we couldn’t take photos… they have travelators to go pass the crowns and septars so you couldn’t just stand in front of them which I thought was a good idea. The amount of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires that these puppies had was insane! They have two very impressive diamonds (Cullinan I & Koh-i-Noor) – the jewels in total are something like 23,500 – how shiny is that!! We then went and saw an exhibition on the armour worn by the kings hundreds of years ago. You could see how big and how small some were.

After wandering around there for a little bit we kept going and went to the tower bridge – where we could go up and see the history of the bridge and the stunning views. It was pretty cool – thankfully we got a lift ride up and didn’t have to climb any stairs. haha.

We then went and saw the HMS Belfast which has a sister in Sydney (which we saw when we went to Sydney). It was pretty cool but we didn’t stay to long here as the day was getting on. We then got some lunch in an Italian restaurant and kept going to the transport museum where we saw old trains, buses, coaches, the underground back in WW2. We also played some interactive games where you could drive a underground train – the museum was great.

We then went out to Chelsea to an Independent film cinema where we saw the film – Whatever Works- which was a brilliant film. The same guy directed Vicky Christina goes to Barcelona. We also got to see that for free and we finished the night off with free tokens in a timezone place.

That day we got 60 pounds worth of value each. So we made our moneys worth double.

On Thursday we went to St Paul’s Cathedral… It was nice for a church. The outside is impressive. We then went to  Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and did a tour around here – It was interesting to see the history behind the theatre and the techniques applied to creating effects back in the day. The theartre itself is a close spitting image to what it would have looked like back in the day (thatch roof and everything). I was a little disappointed in they didn’t have much on Shakespeare. (except from the gift shop).

After that we went bowling!! Cindy beat me.. but we didn’t play so great!

After that we went back to the city and walked around – we ended up buying tickets to the theatre that night – like and hour before the performance. We were going to see…. Priscilla Queen of the Desert. We grabbed some dinner and then walking past Leicester square we saw the Eclipse Premier (twilight movies)… we couldn’t see anything as too many people and baracades blocking us out so we just heard screams. We then went to the theatre.

We were up soooo very high – up in the balcony but we had a good view. The show was brilliant – so clever and funny – it was brilliant.  It was nearing midnight when we got back to the hostel.

Friday we went and saw the entrance to the leaky cauldron… and bought tickets to see Oliver that evening. We went back to the hostel to eat dinner and get ready. We also had balcony seats but I think there was many people attending that night because they closed the balcony so we were upgraded to the 2nd row in front of the stage. At first I was put off thinking I would be too close – but it was pretty good. The kids were great in the performance and the adults were brilliant. It was much different to Priscilla which I enjoyed more but the show was still good.

On Saturday – was Pride Day! We got to Trafalga square and went to the stalls where organisations were giving things for free so we got some pens, badges, stickers, posters, magazines, keyrings… so we got lots of free stuff.

Stonewall which is an charity for LGBT – but they had the best brand at pride. They had t-shirts that said – SOME PEOPLE ARE GAY – get over it and  Love your inner lesbian. haha so we wanted to buy the t-shirts but they weren’t selling any on the day (which we thought was a missed opportunity) – so you can buy them online (http://www.stonewall.org.uk/what_you_can_do/2590.asp and http://www.stonewall.org.uk/what_you_can_do/3696.asp)

Anyway the parade was awesome – so many companies and organisations were marching proudly (nothing like home)… We had politicians, the armed forces, police, fire, ambos, sporting clubs – I was asked to play hockey for a club lol. Businesses like British Airways… They weren’t letting normal riff raff like us in the march – but I didn’t like being told to go behind the barriers so I just pretended I was an official photographer and I got to stand on the VIP side of the barrier – muahahahaha… After a while Cindy snuck back over and we joined the parade – everyone was clapping us and we had a ball. We ended up catching up with Stonewall and hung out with their float.

This parade stopped traffic literally – Pride shut down Baker Street, Oxford Street, Regent Street to Trafalgar square.  It was brilliant… whereas back home we used to start of at town hall and block off a little portion of George street… we now start at Roma street and go back streets… Doesn’t show the same message does it.

Pride was brilliant we hung out at Trafalga square all afternoon watching the performance and people getting up on the big fountains in the middle and then watching them getting told off and then security getting into the water to drag them off… haha good times. When we left I saw that they were wearing waders (what fisherman wear)… and standing in the fountain making sure no one would be going in. I thought it was funny.

We then went to Westminster and walked over the bridge there and went back to the timezone like place and did some bowling and games – it was fun and when we got out it was near 11 and the eye was glistening in rainbow colours.  Pretty cool. We went back to the hotel.

On Sunday we got up bright and early as we were on a tour to go to the Stonehenge, Bath and Salisbury. Stonehenge was good, small and rocky. The amount of people there was crazy… you couldn’t go up to the rocks but I thought it was amazing that these rocks are still like that after however many years…. We then went to Salisbury where we saw the cathedral there and the original magna carta which is a legal document back in the day saying the rights of the kings people – and the responsibilities of the king. That was cool.

We got some lunch there and also walked around the town. It was good.

We then stopped at Bath – where we saw the Roman Baths. The brains behind the Romans were way ahead of the times – the genius to come up with the plans for them were so clever. The baths were great.

Bath is an Amazing town – I would go back there in a second – it’s so beautiful.

That night we got Chinese for dinner ( sooo good)… guy gave us free prawn crackers.

On Monday – we slept in and then packed our bags. We went to the train station and jumped on a train to go to East Midlands Parkway station (in the middle of nowhere) where our megabus was waiting for us to take us the rest of the way to York.

We got to our hotel and we’re right up the top and have a nice view if you peer out the window. We went to the pub for dinner where the owner was very nice and chatty… After dinner we went to the SPAR and got some drinks and snacks and went back to our room. The SPAR guy was also very friendly….

We then called some people and had a good time chatting to them.

Today is now Tuesday and all we have done so far is lie in bed.

Photos will be up this afternoon…. maybe.

Love us. xoxo

London Sunday-Tuesday

Well we’ve been busy busy beavers the last few days.

Sunday – we headed to Wandsworth to a pub there called the Ship. We beat Simon there so we got a drink and hung out in the sun. It was so hot… I skulled my beer… We met up with Simon when he arrived – He’s changed so much and London has been great to him, We had a great catch up and his pub had some new ciders that we tried (Cindy’s cider page has been updated). England lost 4-1… hahaha suckers. We got back and CSI sunday was on TV… So we died in the heat while watching tv.

On Monday we moved to the other side of London to Brixton where the other hostel is. Its much cooler here… we’re in an 8 bed dorm, and we’re sharing with 4 live in girls… who are very messy. After checking in and making our beds we headed back to the city and picked up our London Pass which I will talk about later. We then walked to the British Museum and checked that out. The only thing I really liked was the Rosetta Stone (How scientists were able to decode Hieroglyphics), that was awesome to see – I remember our Egypt guide being quite annoyed that Britain had it. We then walked to a nice little park and sat for a while, I fell asleep… lol It was nice and cool in the shade, after a while we headed back to Brixton and got stuff for dinner.

Okay so explaining our London Passes. We bought a 3 day London pass for 62 pounds each and we get free access to a whole bunch of attractions, you get up to 80 pounds a day.

So today (Tuesday), we got up early ( I know, it was hard) and it was raining quite hard but by the time we were ready the rain vanished and we went to the London Zoo and got free access to that and saw lots of cool animals and also saw where they filmed a scene of Harry Potter. My favourite animals were the sleeping Otters and the yellow frogs. We stayed there for a few hours before continuing back into the city and went to the Jewel tower (free access) – its an old tower (the old parliament/storage area) back in the 1800′s (I think). It was pretty cool, we then had an Ice lolly to cool down.

After our break, we went to the Churchill War Rooms (free access) which is like a basement underground where Winston Churchill ran the British War movement against Germany and Japan in WW2. It was very interesting to read and see what it was like 70 odd years ago. After the museum we headed to the river and jumped on a river cruise (free access) and went down the river Thames and saw the London Bridge, Tower of London and went all the way to Greenwich and saw the outside of National Maritime Museum. We just took the boat back once it got to the end.

We then got the metro back to hostel, had dinner and now bing bang boom – the blog is done! So our total spending for our London Pass is 50 pounds each so we’ve nearly made our money back and we still have 2 days left.

Tomorrows an even earlier morning… going to see the crown jewels…ooo

Until next time,

Love us.

P.s will put photos up now.

Our last day in Krakow, Belgium and Paris…

Tuesday

We headed out to go to the aquarium quite early that morning. It was just around the corner from our hostel. When we arrived we saw that the building was like an old apartment building and were really unsure if it was the aquarium. We wandered down the hallway and into the entrance and saw 2 girls in Aquarium shirts. One was on the phone and the other was wandering around. We heard kids down the hall and decided that we would not visit the aquarium as we were quite unsure if it would be worth the money, and the girl never got off the phone while we were standing there… So we left there and wandered to the town centre, we sat in a park for a while as it was a nice day then we went off to the Irish pub for a huge lunch and a few drinks.

After we were very full we headed to the city centre and went to the markets then we headed back to the hostel to pack and get ready for our long bus trip the next day.

Wednesday

We got up quite early, kids running around the halls, as per the last few days… We checked out and headed to the bus stop. We arrived early to make sure it was the right stop and to escape the hostel. We had some lunch while we waited for the bus. We managed to get ourselves prime seats on the bus… great ones! We were so happy… We travelled for hours before our first stop, the driver only spoke Polish so we had no idea what he was saying. Our first stop was at about 4pm and we had 25mins. We stretched our legs and had some snacks, we didn’t realise that we would not be getting another food stop the entire way! We were stopped at border control going into Germany… It was quite scary cause they took select people’s passports away and took them outside to do a check on them (both Kath and mine were taken) haha… We then were followed by police and signaled over.. They were even scarier, they took only selected men’s passports… The guy who was collecting them from our end of the bus was buff and very scary looking and he just glared at you then decided if he was going to take your passport. He double looked at a few men and you could tell even they were scared.

We continued to Berlin without any more disruptions, when we arrived there we had to change buses (we were unaware of this)… We got really bad seats on the next bus as it was already full.. So we got the last 2 seats in the back row, luckily this time we got a window seat. Kath sat on the window seat and I slept on her, next to a man, woman and their kid. We both got a few hours sleep during the night.

Thursday

We arrived in Brussels on time and made our way to the hostel. It was pretty awful weather at this time and freezing cold, about 6degrees (big change to our 22 in Krakow). We checked into our hostel (we had to wait for ages for our beds), then we rested for the afternoon and cooked some dinner. We both slept really well that night, no suprise given the big day before.

Friday

We checked out of our hostel and went to the hotel we stayed in last time we were in Brussels. We were quite early before check in there and had to wait an hour for our room, we got the keys and the guy gave us a twin room, we complained and he told us to push the beds together or wait. So we said we were happy to wait for the double bed (after all it was what we booked!). Another hour passed and we finally got a room. Our room was much smaller then the last one we had when we stayed there, we weren’t too concerned as it was only for 2 nights. We then wandered into the city to try and find the Pride information point, Kath saw a brochure in a gay bar and ducked her head in to grab one and a man was telling her to “come, come”…  We saw where the Rainbow Village and the centre of the festivities would be, then we went back to the hotel to relax for the evening.Our room had a bath, so we made use of that to soak for a while… haha.

Saturday

We got up early and headed down for the breakfast. It wasn’t as good as the last time we were there, there were lots of people and its was like they didn’t accommodate for everyone to eat, as they were out of bread, eggs, coffee cups and plates.. We were quite disappointed and didn’t get to fill up as much as we would have liked to. We wandered into the Rainbow Village and we were very early, so we walked around the city and looked in some shops. The Rainbow Village started to get busy around lunch time, Kath got a beer and we had some chicken pieces. We got some rainbow badges and some other free stuff. We got a little flag, as we only had 1 flag.. so Kath got to have the little one… unfortunately too small to put on as a cape! haha. We followed the crowds to the street where the march was staring, there were lots of “floats”, Ford had one, a local council and some eco friendly people were riding a bike float. There were heaps of people there, some “fire girls” and heaps of other people were giving out some fliers for gay parties and evenings coming up in clubs and pubs around Belgium. We made our way to the front of the parade where there was a huge Rainbow flag… Kath was holding a bit of it for me to take a pic, then we decided just to join on and carry the flag. It was quite fun as we shook it and made it do waves.  To do this they made us squat down and hold it flat to the ground, then on the count of 3 we had to lift it up, making a wavey pattern thing. There were about 30-40 people carrying it and when the wind blew under it (under a wave) it was very strong and at times was hard to hold onto. The parade went for 2 hours, by the end of it we were really exhausted from making this flag do waves. Near the end of a parade, on the main street, Kath was over an air vent in the street, and it was there they decided we needed to make the flag wave again, so everytime the gust of wind went under the flag the air was whooshed up from the vent in the ground.. I’m sure it must have been over a sewage line as it stunk really badly. We watched a few floats c0me to the finish area, then we decided to get something to eat and see what was going on in the Rainbow Village. We got some cool metal rainbow chook pins (I will put up a pic of the dressed up chicken) for free. We got some “famous Belgium Fries”. They were quite tasty. We went back to the centre of the Rainbow Village and Kath got a beer, we didn’t really like the music that they were playing so after a while, when it was starting to get cold we decided to get some dinner and go back to the hotel, we were completely exhausted by the time we walked back to the hotel.

Sunday

We left Brussels mid morning and caught our bus down to Paris. The trip was just under 4 hours. It was not a bad journey, this kid in front of us was really annoying though and he kept sticking his fingers through his seat and touching me jeans, eventually he looked up and Kath glared at him, he didn’t do it again, which was good. Then he started kicking the seat infront of him… He was just very restless and the mother didn’t give him anything to do or play with. When we arrived in Paris we made our way to the Hotel. It is quite nice. Unfortunately our room has a urinal in it, no toilet or shower, but a urinal that is practically in reaching distance of the bed… We went our to get some lunch and see the area around us. We saw 2 mini Arch de Triumps… we aren’t sure if that is what they are, but it looks like it. I have very sore muscles from bending down soo much at Pride.. It hurt a lot to walk today. Kath gave me a massage. We had a quite evening and watched a few movies and went to bed.

Monday

Today we got up and went to Versailles. My legs are much better today after my massage and it isn’t so painful to walk today.. The train ride to Versailles took about 30 mins. When we arrived we were quite hungry so we had some breakfast/lunch and then walked up to the Palace. It was really huge… Unfortunately there is a carpark right in front of it which ruins the impact of it when you first see it… As it is Monday everything was closed, except for the gardens. The main building has golden gates and some other golden parts, I would imagine in the sun it would be quite bright! We walked around one side and into the gardens, they were massive and had a “canal” in it. There were also several large ponds.. no fish though! There were lots of statues around the place, some were rather unusual and unbelievable (like a kid holding a bird, without any struggles… hmmm). Others were funny, from where birds had pooped on their heads or something… amusing I thought. The gardens were really well maintained, Kath wanted a go at carving some of the hedges! We spent a while wandering around the palace and then had a nice walk back to the train station. We are leaving the hotel tomorrow morning at 6am, so we have to pack and have an early night tonight.

Next update won’t be so delayed.. we hope!

Pics will be up in Poland, Belgium and France

Berlin and the trip to Prague

This blog was written by Cindy and Kath (so if we change perspectives – its more than likely it’s the other person and we aren’t going crazy)

Thursday

Our first day in Berlin we decided to do the Free Walking Tour. The crowds were huge and there were 3-4 groups of 30 in the English tour and a big group of like 50 in the Spanish tour. The first stop was at the Brandenburg Gate, where we saw the gate (the gate used to be in between the walls between east/west Berlin… It’s only fitting it now represents the unification of Berlin and Germany), the USA embassy, the French embassy and a really expensive hotel (apparently the one Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of the window)… In the square were Soviet and American “soldiers” dressed up and people were taking pictures with them(for a price).. We then saw the Holocaust Memorial, which was actually a memorial for all the Jews that had been killed during the second world war. The memorial was very unusual, there were big blocks all in lines, some got really high in the middle. It was pretty creepy to walk through there, you could so easily lose someone. There were kids playing hide and seek and adults standing on the memorial to take pictures, it was a bit disrespectful. We then went to a carpark – which was apparently above Hitlers Bunker.. where he finally ended his life. (You could not see anything, it was just a dusty car park – quite fitting)…

We then saw the old SS headquarters, which was apparently the only building not destroyed by the Soviets when they liberated Berlin, as the Soviets wanted to use it as their head of Government for East Berlin, it was the most hated building in Berlin for a very long time. The current government didn’t know what to put in there (due to the bad history), so they made it the Tax Office… (still one of the most hated buildings haha). We then saw a section of the Berlin Wall (fourth generation).. It was not the longest piece, and is starting to fall down. After some stories about the wall we saw “Check-point Charlie”, which is no longer a check point but rather a big tourist trap. Here there were American soldiers posing for pictures, it was like a fake check point that tourists love to visit… a very different picture to what it was like 20 odd years ago.

We then had our “break”. We got a hot chocolate, as it was freezing. Pretty much they gave us a cup of milk, then you had to add the chocolate piece they give you to your drink.. lame! We both burnt our mouths on it. After the break we walked past the Currywurst Museum and then we went to a square that had Frans Dom and Deutschen Dom (2 churches: the French church and the German church (of course the German Church is slightly bigger than the French one) and the theatre called Konzerthaus. We then moved on to the Book Burning Square(It’s not called that but it’s famous for its horrible history). When Hitler was in power he ordered all books written by Jewish, Communist, Homosexual authors and other books that went against the NAZI regime to be burnt, so students and professors from the University in the library threw books out into the square and burnt. The square had a memorial in the ground with a room with empty bookcases and a quote from one of the authors (Heinrich Heine) whose books were burnt that said “where they burn books, in the end, they will burn bodies”.. There was also a university on one side of the square, that 10 noble prize winners have either been a professor at or studied at, Einstein was there! Pretty good record.

We then went to the Unknown Nazi Soldier memorial (which is quite controversial), which was a big building, It’s a memorial to all soldiers that have lost their lives in any war. In the monument was a statue which had a mother holding her dying son. Apparently the woman who “created” this memorial was an author who lost her brother, son and husband in the war. It was quite a chilling memorial. After that we went to Museum Island which has a lot of museums. We stopped outside one for our final stop of the tour, and the guide told us about how the Berlin Wall finally fell… which is quite a odd story as it wasn’t even meant to happen. After the tour we were pretty exhausted so we went back to the hostel and rested our feet.

We went out to an Irish pub for dinner with Rachel and I had a new cider, Stowford. It was pretty nice. We all had really good meals and it was pretty cheap. We were all pretty exhausted so we had quite an early night.

Friday

The next morning we got up and headed out to go on the Sachsenhausen Memorial Camp tour. We met up with Rachel before our tour started. She was doing the Free Walking tour. It took about an hour to get out to the suburb that the camp was in. From the station we walked 2kms to the camp, the same route the prisoners had to walk when they arrived.

This camp was a slave labour camp then a death camp (although a huge number of people were murdered here). The camp was for men only, and only held political prisoners, homosexuals and real prisoners. It wasn’t until about 1942 that Jews were brought there for just being a Jew.

The camp itself held over 100000 prisoners and was only guarded by 200 guards. The camp is in the shape of a triangle, which apparently is a good design to have the most amount of prisoners with the least amount of guards. This camp became the base for all other camps that were built.

Only some of the buildings have been kept in tact even after the liberation of the camp. We fist building we saw was the SS Guards Mess, apparently they had a pub, casino, and other entertainment in the building, today it is just a broken wooden house. The Nazi’s build this for the SS Guard to keep their spirits high and to keep their mind of what they did to the prisoners.

The first area that we walked into was where the prisoners lost their personality, their heads were shaven, they were given their “uniform” and their name was now an ID number which was sewn onto their uniform with the triangle that represented the group they belonged to. There were some pretty awful stories that the guide told us about what happened here.

The camp was fenced of with 2 walls thick and then there was a barbed wire fencing in front of that, it looked pretty deadly. Prisoners who used to go in the 2m strip in front of the barb wire fence were shot dead or injured.

We saw the old Jewish quarters, there were bunk beds 3 stories high and very close to one another, apparently it was so full towards the end of the war they had to sleep 2-3 in a bed and still some on the floor. We also saw the tiny bathrooms that hundreds of men had to use.

We were then taken out to see the old ‘Torture chambers’. This building was in another area of the camp and was hidden by a big wall which separated it from the main camp. This camp was guarded by the Gestapo (secret police) where they kept prisoners who were meant to have some knowledge about things. We also heard awful stories of torture here.

We went into the Kitchens, it was a huge building and there was a massive (about 4 bathtubs) sink which is where the potatoes were peeled. As we walked through the grounds hearing these stories it was hard to believe that such awful things had happened, and that people are capable of doing that another human being.

In the industrial part of the camp, outside of the wall again – the Nazis had a pit which they used to shoot the soviet prisoners of war. The Germans realised it was very costly looking after the prisoners of war and because Russia hadn’t agreed to the Geneva convention – they killed Soviet prisoners. This way of killing people (having to stare them in the eye and listening to their pleading) made it hard for the SS Guards (whose average age was 20.7 which is younger than us) to kill them.

The Nazi’s then built Section Z, which was the more creative and successful extermination bunker where Soviet soldiers were brought to be killed unsuspectingly in mass. In Section Z only the foundations of the rooms remained. You could see where a gas chamber was (it was very small and apparently only 5-10 people could fit in there at one time), this wasn’t used much. They told the soviets that the building was for their health check up. They had a waiting room that played very loud music, where Soviet soldiers were made to wait for their “health examination” before taken into the next room by a ‘doctor’ in a white robe that would check their teeth (check for gold fillings), check their weight and then their ‘height’, when their necks were exposed they would be shot unsuspectingly. They would then clean the room and bring in the next soldier. In the back of the building they also had 4 big ovens, where they used to cremate the bodies. The guards used to make the prisoners move the bodies and put them in the ovens.. It was very sad in that area, and very hard to look at, especially to think over 12000 people were killed here.

After that we saw the Pathology Building, where bodies of prisoners were taken for an “autopsy” after the prisoners died, they were all issued death certificates, obviously not with their real cause of death, but one randomly chosen from a list of 7 things, like TB or Cancer. The Nazi’s did things like this because it was widely known that these labour camps were in operation… they used propaganda to show ‘prisoners’ being rehabilitated (that’s what they called the camps) and let out after a few weeks. Even organisations like the Red Cross visited the camp several times over the time of it being operational and because they had things like the pathology lab and hospital, the truth of the crimes committed here were never brought to light.

The camp was very sad and quite heart wrenching to be at especially hearing the history and stories of what happened there and what the prisoners went through.

We got back to the hostel at about 5 and went to the supermarket for some dinner, we were too exhausted to go out as we did so much walking. We had our dinner and played some games before bed.

Saturday

On Saturday morning we met up with Rachel again and we went to the East Side Gallery and saw the Molecule Man. The Molecule Man was built as a symbol for the East and West Berlin reuniting. The East Side Gallery is the longest remaining part of the Berlin Wall. It has paintings that artists have painted representing the struggles the creation of the iron curtain and the wall has caused the people and also paintings of the freedom.

We walked along the river and from East Berlin to West Berlin where we had lunch in a pub which was very cheap and good. We then went to the Reichstag and waited to go up to the glass top, it was pretty cool to get 360 views of Berlin but you couldn’t really see into the parliament below.

It was getting quite late in the evening so we made plans to catch up the next day and then headed back to the hostel.

Sunday

Today we didn’t have any plans but it was a beautiful day so we met up with Rachel and went for a walk around Berlin… we found a small market and wondered through there and ended up in a nice park where we lazed and chatted in the sun for a few hours. There were so many gypsies walking around trying to get money (quite annoying) but it was a great morning sitting in the sun and just relaxing. Early afternoon we decided to go to a German pub where I had a curry-wurst and Cindy had a Burger… It was pretty good and filled us up.

It was late in the afternoon and we said our goodbyes to Rachel and headed back to the hostel where we packed to go to Prague.

Monday

Our bus trip wasn’t until 3:30, so we went to tier park and wander through there for awhile before slowly making our way back to the hostel to get the bus to Prague. Our bus was late getting to Berlin but we got on easily enough and got a seat together. The bus ride was pretty good – we watched a few movies (as this bus had screens)… we saw the end of one which had Richard Gere in one where they hunted some fugitive… Then saw a lame one called the ‘dangerous man’ with Steven Seagal which was like a porn movie but with action… every minute there was a very lame action sequence with blood and gore… We then stopped for a break where Cindy and I had egg sandwich’s (with boiled eggs we had cooked that morning). We stopped in Leipzig and Dresden before heading to Prague. When we arrived in Dresden the bus driver asked if we would sit at the front so they could keep the front seats available for the drivers (there were 3), we said sure – they were cooler seats and they moved over so you got more room and the driver put on Avatar for us and turned it up so we could actually here the English. It was a good trip, when we arrived in Prague at around 10:45pm – we found an ATM and got 3000 koruna out (which sounds a lot but its like 1 euro = 25 koruna). We caught the metro to the closest stop and walked to our hotel.

We checked in – didn’t pay or anything and was up in our room at around 11:30pm. We saw the kitchen door which was meant to be free was locked and Cindy went down to ask why it was locked – the guy said it was 6 euros a night… He didn’t speak much English so we decided to ask the next morning. We found out we got free breaky here though… so that’s a bonus.

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That’s the blog for now… we’ll put photos up soon for Brussels, Hamburg, Berlin and Prague.

Talk soon.

Hamburg & Berlin

Tuesday morning was a small lie in and headed to make breakfast. We saw our friend Rachel and chatted to her while we ate breakfast. She was doing the free walking tour as well that day but she left with the guy for the hostel pick-up. We finished our breakfast and went and got ready, then caught the metro to the start point for the tour.

The tour guide was really good, he was from the Netherlands and has been living in Hamburg for awhile now. The tour itself wasn’t as exciting as some of the cities we’ve been too… there’s a few old churches, lots of counting houses, lots of things were destroyed in the great fire of 1842. We saw the building where the gas was made for the Nazis during WW2… I hadn’t known that they used a pesticide and altered it to suit their purposes. We then continued to the old port and the new port. It was a nice walk around the city and it was a lovely day.

After the tour we said goodbye to Rachel and we then headed to the K-Z-Neungammen Camp, which was just outside of Hamburg. It took a while to get there… but we arrived at 4 to realise they closed at 4 (the buildings with the exhibitions). So we walked around the grounds, a lot of the buildings had been torn down over the years. The German/Hamburg Government actually put a penal system (a jail) on the grounds after the war (so that was only torn down in 2003). The ground was quite eerie… we read the information board around the ground and the conditions some of the ‘prisoners’ had. The camp was both a camp and a slave labour camp – as they used to make bricks and dig coal and stuff there. It wasn’t a death camp as such but a lot of killings still occurred, it was quite sickening to see where the ‘camp brothel’ was and the site of the camp crematorium.

After an hour or so, we caught the bus back into the the train station to get the S-Bahn back to the city. We picked up some ingredients for dinner (spaghetti) and headed back to the hostel, the hostel had cooked too much chicken for the school kids that were staying there so we grabbed a lot of chicken and Cindy got the meat of the leg bones for chicken sandwiches for the train the next day. We invited Rachel to have dinner with us and we had a good meal and a good chat… we also started talking to a Canadian guy too.. Rachel gave us some apples for the train the next day.

We had a reasonably early night and this morning packed our bags then headed down and ate breakfast. We then went back upstairs and got our stuff together and went and hung out downstairs until check-out. We saw Rachel and said goodbye (we’re meeting up with her in Berlin in a few days). We headed of the the Hamburg HBF (central station) and am now at the Mc Donald’s drinking an Orange Juice… we just missed the breakfast menu – so just an OJ. German Mc Donald’s are lame as they charge 8 euros for the wi-fi. We don’t know if it’s just Hamburg or all of Germany.

Our train leaves in an hour so we’ll just hang out in Maccas until they kick us out (if they do or not).

Train was very nice and speedy. We ate our chicken sandwiches (they were okay). We found the hostel reasonably easily and the girl on the desk was very nice and upgraded us from a 6 bed female to a twin room (as we’d have to change rooms throughout our stay)… the rooms quite crampy but we have our own bathroom and TV. We went and found a supermarket and bought some stuff for dinner and afternoon tea. This afternoon we looked at tours to do here and stuff to see here in Berlin.

Skype tomorrow – no promises about the speed of the net though.

Photos may be posted for Germany and the last day in Brussels tonight.