A foggy day in London town...: Euro Trip Day #3: Berlin, Germany

Thursday 16th December

Ich bin ein Berliner – the famous words of JFK.

I arrived in Berlin with a flourish of excitement and trepidation. This would be the first time I would be in a non-English speaking country without a local with me to translate. This was the ultimate test to my crash course in German from Jan and his family!

After wandering around the train station for what felt like an age I finally figured out where I was going and how I would get there! Across town and to the hostel was my first priority! I found my lodgings nestled between the North Korean Embassy on the right and a coffee franchise attached to a newer upmarket shopping complex on the left. God bless capitalism and irony…who said the big guy didn’t have a sense of humour?

Bags dumped and off I went in search of the free city tour that would keep me entertained most of the day. The weather was a little depressing but it cleared up towards the afternoon. The tour took me around East Berlin and filled me in on the history of Germany post-WWII.

Coincidentally, and rather surprisingly, another student from QUT was in Berlin for the weekend. Hannah, yes another Hannah, is at Leeds as well at the moment. We caught up that evening and checked out some of the “posher” markets that Germany had to offer. They were incredible. Nobody does Christmas like the Germans! We wandered around for quite a while eating, looking and listening to a choir singing carols in various languages. As we stood watching the choir the sky opened up and it began to snow…very atmospheric…perfectly timed…Hollywood moment!

Eventually it got to a point where we could no longer fell anything below the ankle so we called it a day and headed home where I met up with some other friends, also from QUT/UQ and studying at Leeds/Leeds Met who were staying with me.