So yesterday was a really great day. Everything went very smoothly - I found my hostel after checking out of the hotel, was able to check in early, Val got some smooth rides and arrived early as well, and we walked from East Berlin to West Berlin and back to the East again. At one point we were at the border (delineated by a line on the ground) and jumped several times from the east to the west and back to the east. It was all very historically significant and juvenile.
We originally had planned on renting bikes, but as with all my bike-renting travel plans (remember Ayutthaya, Asa? ;)) it remained largely a plan and in walking around looking for a bike-rental place we walked all over the city instead. I guess it's just as well as I was able to really take a look at the city, and Val and I were able to talk much more than if we were cycling. It is incredibly handy to have him translate all the German signs and words around! I also replenished my database of useless German words and phrases - yesterday I learnt how to say "tastes like [...]", [...] being any noun that I know. (Possible nouns include: Snow White, blackheads, ass, marijuana etc.)
Oh and we walked past this little kid who was having a small yard sale, and he was so cute! So Val bought two shells (and gave me one) and I bought a single lego brick. Val was also very impressed that I said "how much does that cost?"in German to the little kid, although I didn't get his reply (it was 2 cents). We walked away from the stall feeling very happy that we made a little kid's day.
This was after we visited a squat and got very rudely snubbed by some leftist bastards. They were so incredibly rude - deliberately turning their backs to me when they knew I was approaching them (I tripped over a glass bottle and made some noise), and when I asked them if I could take pictures of the really cool graffiti on the wall they just said no in the most sullen way possible, and turned their backs again. Val and I spent a good 15 minutes fuming over the elitist leftists and how they would never change the world to be a nicer place if they're so nasty to other people. And then we met the yardsale kid and everything was sunshine and rainbows again.
I'm typing this in a hostel called Rixpack Hostel, it is only 10Euros per night per bed and the rooms are awesomely basic. I mean, in place of a carpet they actually have a tarpaulin sheet on the floor, and we're sleeping on makeshift camp beds. But the atmosphere is good, the hostel owner is charmingly eccentric (we are staying on Level L, which is Level L only because the hostel owner was too lazy to use the masking tape to shape any alphabet that has curves to it. So there's Level F, H, K and L. Which makes perfect sense if you think about it - but that's very unGerman of him.), and we met a nice Frenchman with a sad love story - guy moves to another country because of girl, things don't work out and guy is left in a foreign country not really knowing what to do. Hmm. Sounds very familiar with how someone ended up in Singapore.
And we also drank copious amounts of beer, Val and I (and later Ben, the Frenchman). Beer is so cheap here. The cheapest beer that we got was like 60cents for half a litre, and if you bring back a bottle they give you some rebates. I was buying some water in the supermarket before that for 21 cents, and at the cashier Val gave his bottle back which entitles him to a 25cents cashback, so we actually got my bottle for free with four cents back. Sweet!
In fact, Berlin is not expensive at all. A pizza and a pasta in an eatery cost us 7.80euros total, and that was a huge meal. I had a falafel which cost only 2euros and it was so huge that I kept half of it for later. Beer is cheap with diverse choices and makes everybody happy after 5pm, the socially accepted time to start drinking. The subway is like 2.10Euros for a two-hour transit to wherever, and sometimes I just forget to buy the tickets because there's no turnstiles or whatever. And of course, a 10Euro hostel bed? That's actually cheaper than what NZ used to cost.
Anyway, it's 7:36am, Val's still asleep and perhaps I should go back to bed too. Onwards to Prague later today!
