Farewell to Berlin

22.12.06

Hard to believe it's our last day "on the continent" - we fly to London tonight... as long as the fog doesn't prevent us landing!

Berlin has been interesting. The only city on our entire trip that both of us had visited previously, and we still dug it. However, it's a tough gig being the last stop on a long journey... Isco and I are a bit travel-weary and heartily sick of living out of backpacks. Thankfully there's plenty to see and do here and it's very easy to get about and to communicate with the locals!

We spent the first day on a walking tour with a bloke called Terry Brewer, somewhat of a Berlin institution as he's lived here for 25 years and has being taking people on tours for much of that time, I think. The guy is 71 years old and first came here as part of the British diplomatic service back in the 1950s. So he had some pretty interesting things to relate, and took us to parts of the city we probably wouldn't have visited, such as the Olympic Stadium (where the World Cup final was held this year), Spandau and the WW2 Commonwealth Servicemen's cemetery.

Terry also took us to the "cheap beer and cheap food" part of town at the end of the day, so we had a well-rounded Berlin experience (and very full stomachs).

Our next couple of days were filled with sightseeing and shopping. Isco bought a cool leather jacket and we tried to view the main attractions. But I'm left feeling like I've somehow missed something, which is probably quite true. Sort of wish I'd planned what to do here better, but it's hard to sort these things out on the fly, well I find it is, anyway!

I think there must be a funky area of town with a bunch of Melbourne-ish cafes and Newtown-ish boutiques that I didn't manage to discover. I'm sure I saw it out the corner of my eye last time I was here! We did spend an afternoon in Krauzberg, but it was rainy and miserable, and nothing seemed that great there. Ah well... next time!

Can't remember when my last group email was, or what it related so here's a quick whip through the highlights:

Brasov: An excellent city at the edge of the Carpathians, would love to go back there any old time. Isco and I managed to find a fun local bar and spent a fun night hanging out with the locals. Also saw the main attractions and did a day-trip to Bran Castle, which is very pretty, although it was freezing so we couldn't quite do it justice before having to scuttle off to the nearest indoor attraction to get warm.

Bucharest: Much better than everyone (mostly other Romanians) warned us it would be. Despite the Hostel Minorita experience, we really liked the place. Romania as a whole though seems very un-ready for EU membership, for a host of reasons I won't go into here. But what a fascinating and beautiful country. Really feel like it's a place I could go back to and consider living in for a while, if purely for the "Year in Provence"-style novel you could write about the experience: drinking homemade palinka (plum brandy, very strong *koff*), hitching rides with local horse-and-cart driving farmers, checking out the medieval castles, ruins and painted monasteries, drinking the local wine (very good, and cheap), picking up the language (not too dissimilar to French/Italian so seems relatively learnable, unlike, say Hungarian, eek!), etc.

Vienna: I had somehow thought it would be a bit twee and nicey-nice but it was cooler than I expected. Had an oddly satisfying morning doing laundry at the laundromat (OK so domestic chores are fun after 3 months of leisure!?!). Also saw plenty of Klimt, which was even more beautiful in 'real life' than it looks in reproduction, although many of the pictures are almost too big/high up to study them in detail. Visited several palaces and such, but avoided the "Mozart toilet", where you could do your business for €1 accompanied by music from the maestro!

Vienna to Berlin: Ran into annoying EU regulations about max 100ml liquid can be carried in hand luggage so had to ditch a brand new bottle of moisturiser (ironically bought to save money, as we figured it'd be cheaper in Romania than anywhere else). At least we know this now, so we won't be caught out for the London leg. I saw a guy who had to throw out a bottle of expensive cologne because it was 110mls, they're pretty full-on about it. Kinda funny though as you could pretty much take whatever the heck you liked into the EU from Romania on the flight from Bucharest-Vienna, so still a bit miffed as to how/what they're preventing with their silly 100ml rule.

Wow, OK, I guess I'll sign off here. Hope you've enjoyed the ride with me.