Grudgingly I left the Mexican temptress behind (my aftershave didn't work, damn you Giorgio Armani!) and headed for the station to get the next leg of the journey underway!
Hamburg - Berlin
I got on the express train only to find that all of the seats were reserved even though no one was sitting in them, and when I asked the conductor if I could sit in an unused seat she told me no, clearly she's never heard the Burt Bacharach classic "A chair is still a chair, even when there's no one sitting there". The hard nosed bint, you wouldn't get this rubbish on good old British Rail would you? Ended up chatting to some liverpudlian lads in the same predicament (I say chatted, they spoke while I frantically looked for a google translator for scouse), and we decided she could jam it, and sat down anyway. A good long chat about footy ensued, the boy told me he hated Walter Smith because he ran over his foot once and broke it, I personally would have been honoured if Sir Walter had run over my foot. The conductor came back and told us to move so we told her to jam it again, she wasn't amused but she didn't come back, a victory for the British!
The weather in Berlin is absolutely shocking, torrential rain. Even more shocking was that my first though wasn't "shit I'm going to get wet", it was "hoho someone's in for some flood claims if this keeps up". Once an underwriter, always an underwriter.
Eventually I got to my hostel and up to my room, to find all the other beds occupied by lads spark out sleeping. So I decided to take a nap as well as I was going nowhere in that rain. Woke up about six and they were all still sleeping, so decided to go and get something to eat. CURRYWURST! I had forgotten how good it is, a meal of champions if ever there was one.
By the time I got back to the room the rest of the lads were up, 7 mentalists from Madrid, and possibly the nicest guys I've met since I've been away. After 5 minutes they were telling me to come and stay with them in Madrid and they would show me all the party hotspots, and they were now my Spanish family!
To go off on a slight tangent as I am known to do at times, the British attitude to foreign languages is shocking. Yes they make us learn French or German in school, but what use are those languages other than for their own country? Half the bloody world speaks Spanish and I can only barely order a beer or some ice cream in that language. The arrogance of most of our (glorious) nation in expecting everyone else to speak English is a disgrace, I shall be writing a strongly worded letter to the education authority upon my return!
I decided not to go out as I wanted to get a good sleep for plenty of sight seeing the next day, so I said cheerio to them and they went out to get smashed. Watch out Berlin, tomorrow night Pedro is hitting the clubs hard with the Spanish posse!
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