Berlin - 3rd to 6th August

The home of Hitler's reign, great beer again and an ever changing city... that's the city of Berlin. We arrived the week of the annual Berlin beer festival, streets full of marques with beer tents and schnitzel. Of course our pilgrimage around Europe and having a drink every night continued.

The next day we had arranged to meet with our local Berlin friend Mira. For those who don't know, Mira was an exchange student who became friends with Michelle (Dee's sister) when they were both in France. She took the day off from work to take us on a free tour guide of Berlin. She took us to the sites of Checkpoint Charlie, The Berlin Wall, Postdamaplatz, the German and French churches, aswell as the area of the Zoo (which contained a shopping district called KaDaWe with a 6 story shopping centre with views of Berlin).

That night involved a pub crawl jumping from 3 bars to end up at a club. Between jagermesiter and absynth shots, we had a great time.... except the fact the tour guide left half the group at the third bar and we had to navigate our way to the next place in no state to do so.

We hopped on a bike tour the following day, well we missed the 10:30am one because of the pub crawl the night before so instead chose the 3:30pm one instead. As Berlin is so flat it is great way to get around town. We explored many of the same sites we had done the day before with Mira, however we did take the fastest lift in Europe at the Daimler-Chrysler building which ascends the 90 metre building in 8.5m a second. Good views from the top to be had.

The unexpected highlight of our trip was when Mira told us she had arranged to show us the hotel she worked in after her shift finished that night at 10:00. Hotel Adlon, yeah so you might think just another hotel... not really... this is the hotel where the who of the who stay, so much so that Barack Obama had stayed just a week before when he made his speech to 200,000 plus Berliners in the main square of town. This is the infamous hotel that Michael Jackson stayed at when he dangled his baby of the balcolny in 2002. George Bush, Sharon Stone and more... and she showed us the Presidential suites and standard rooms (a little trivia for you, Obama only stayed in a standard room and refused the presidentai suite). Prices for standard room 350 Euro (AUD520) a night, Presidential suit with bullet proof glass and butler 12,000 Euro (AUD 18,000) a night. At the end she organised a drink drink at the bar for us both, which involved both of us ordering a 17 Euro (AUD25) cocktail and James eating a wasabi bean and nearly throwing up with the taste, all this as a posh lady was walking her poodle on lead through the lobby just next to us.

We enjoyed Berlin, however Prague is calling and that's next our next stop!