Berlin

I’m writing this on the train to Regensburg. I figure I have 5 odd hours, so I might as well write some stuff about my time in Berlin. So, I arrived on Friday night at 9-ish, and met Tom at Kotbusser where he lives. The exact order of events is hazy, but we definitely had food and watched the second half of whichever game of football was on, then headed out to meet up with some of Tom’s friends. From there we headed out to some party in an old abandoned brewery – fairly standard for Berlin, but pretty damn cool from my perspective. We spent the night drinking, dancing and talking shit to friendly German girls and eventually got home at about 5:30. It’s been some time since I’ve been out all night, and this was probably the most memorable.

We got our shit together reasonably late on Saturday and eventually headed out to my high school friend Lincoln’s place, or his girlfriend’s place at least. It was his girlfriend’s birthday, and we spent the night catching up, drinking and talking shit to friendly German, French and Israeli girls. Something of a theme is definitely developing. It was awesome to see Lincoln again, and he really seems to be digging Berlin. Unfortunately we didn’t get to catch up again because I am a slack fucker, but he’s back in Sydney in August.

On day morning we went for breakfast with Tom’s boss, Timor, and his family. I briefly met Timor when he was in Sydney last year, but definitely didn’t know him well enough for him to feed me so well. Great people these Berliners. On Sunday night we just chilled and watched the football, for which my liver was thankful.

Monday was spent getting my tourist on, checking out the Bundestag/Reichstag, which while impressive, is really just another big sandstone building. As in Hong Kong, I got kind of bored just wandering around looking at stuff, although reading about the history of some of the places was cool. That night we went and watched Germany play Austria at the pub with 2 of Tom’s friends. Drinking, watching football and talking to friendly German girls – I could get used to that shit. Given that it was past 12 and hence technically my birthday they insisted on buying a round of champagne. I unwisely chose to check my emails when I got home, so if you got any incoherent emails from me, my apologies.

On Tuesday I hunted down some record stores to get myself some birthday tunes. The first place I went to was almost all vinyl, which was lucky because if they’d had all that music on CD I would have spent all my money.

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At this stage I got kind of motion sick and stopped writing, so I'm finishing this back in Sydney. The main things to say are that Berlin is a great city and to thank Tom for letting me crash on his floor and keeping me amused. I literally pretty much tripled the amount of shit in his room when I arrived, so thanks again dude, very much appreciated.