Day Seven - Wet Wet Wet

I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes. Yes it's still raining in Berlin but yet again the weather will not stop this intrepid adventurer seeking out yet more sights to be seen.

My prediction that the Spanish lads would not be up to go out around the town was only half right, Lucas and Isaac were up and wanted to come with me, so the three amigos set out.

First stop was the Berlin Wall. Some of the artwork was incredible, and I even found one painted by a Scottish woman which was a nice little reminder of home. Of course the most famous of the paintings on the wall has to be the one of Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker kissing, which was destroyed in 2009 during the restoration of the wall. Thankfully, it has been repainted, it is a piece of history now and should stay there.

Next we headed for Alexanderplatz and the TV tower. 11 euros to go to the top of a tall tower with no good view because of the rain is a bit steep though, so we decided against it and headed for the Brandenburg Gate instead. After having a good look at that, and the neighbouring Reichstag, we headed for Checkpoint Charlie.

Checkpoint Charlie was the primary border crossing between West Germany and East Germany, and now there is a museum dedicated to the various methods used to escape to the west. Some of the methods were ingenious, one guy built a mini submarine from scratch and used it to escape across the Baltic Sea to Denmark, another created a zip line across the wall and escaped with his wife and child. On the other hand though, some people were not fortunate enough to make it to the other side, many were shot by DDR guards trying to escape, and some of the stories were very hard to read. Seeing the price some people were willing to pay to escape, really hits home how hard it must have been to live in the DDR.

After that we headed back to the hostel as we were absolutely soaking and knackered. After a hot shower and something to eat we were back in the game! No going out tonight for me as I needed to do some washing, so I had a few beers in the bar with the lads and a few games of pool. These boys might be good at getting the women chatting but they couldn't play pool for love nor money, at least I can do something right!