Who gets up at 4am on a Saturday? Someone who has a train to Berlin, that's who!

I may be a little while off before coming home again, and there may be obvious moments where I miss my family, since I’m reliving often various parts of my childhood in playing with young children all day, but I can honestly say that after over one month, Germany has stolen my heart- although with all of my past in exposure to German culture, it was easily won over. My language is improving, thank heavens. Just have to continue to work a little harder.

This week in particular has flown by, likely because I’ve spent every waking hour in quiet reflection over my most recent excursion to Berlin. Yes, I finally made it to the Hauptstadt, and it only took me three visits to Germany, on three separate occasions, to achieve it. I may have only spent 3 days and 2 nights in the East side, but with my beloved travel partner, Leslie, I managed to see a lot! And by a lot I mean that I only got a total of 7 hours sleep the entire time; but that is where long train rides to and from the city come in use. After a minor hiccup in booking my train ride, I ended up taking the “slow” train on Saturday (Sept.25) there. It was 7 hours long and required 3 train changes, but the ride offered me a fantastic view and a lot of time to think. I can’t remember when the last time was that I just sat and thought. Usually I’m working, and I did bring some homework that I had intended to do, or I’m the one driving and thus can’t safely stare out the side window for hours on end. I say fantastic view because most of the trip there afforded hilly, green scenery, with plots of farm land here-and-there, and super beautiful images of stone structures. It was incredibly historic and even the old boarded up buildings caught my fancy. The only area that I could not stand was between Wetzlar and Kassel. While I love Wetzlar, the train area is positively hideous, and any local will attest to that; who designed our train station? Really, they ought to be ashamed. Or at least the people who are taking care of the area ought to be. Come on, Deutsche Bahn! Anyway, that small area between is incredibly industrial and littered, and it reminded me of the industrial areas of North America – I’m of course trying to escape North America for a while. This train ride also happened to begin at just before 6 am, so being incredibly tired did not elevate my mood for the first jaunt. Then came Kassel into view. A friend had already suggested that I go to Kassel, and as we approached I could see why... gorgeous. Old stone buildings, little streets (probably a nightmare for drivers), and also quite a bit of activity. From there on it continued to get better and after a cup of coffee and a light doze on the train I was in a much better and excited mood again. I also had a really amazing view of clouds hanging among the trees in the not too distant hills. At first it looked like billows of smoke, and I could imagine fireplaces in the early morning, sprouting smoke signals to the sky from ancient little houses buried among the pine.

I made it to the main train station of Berlin at approximately 14:00 (one of my trains was 40 min late to the transfer to Berlin – what happened to German punctuality?) and was met there by Leslie, who had arrived about 2 hours ahead of me. I always love meeting up with that girl. We have very similar interests when it comes to travel, and I get along with her very well overall in terms of personality (that’s right Leslie, I adore you!). We’ve actually only known each other for a year, but it feels like many more. I learned then that there was a major marathon going on in Berlin, which suddenly posed a huge problem for us; we had no place to stay, and finding one was going to prove to be ridiculously impossible. Three and a half hours of walking around, we actually spent most of the time trying to find hostels in the first place. One would think that in a big city like Berlin, close to the train station, one would find them everywhere. No such luck, and the ones that we did find were of course booked for the night. We did eventually find a little (smelly but clean) hotel, and Leslie was very much ready to convince me to stay there, but on a note from the receptionist I forced her to walk a little more down the street to see if we could find a hostel called “Circus” that MIGHT still have beds. We actually never did find Circus. Seriously, these places are impossible, but I saw through a window a small computer cafe area. I intended to use the computer to find where Circus lay, and while I did that, Leslie went to the front desk to ask if there was room. See, this little computer cafe was actually a hostel, Wombats, and as luck would have it, one that had room! Thank heavens. After 18:00 and we were tired and wet (have I mentioned yet that the entire trip was rainy). We got our room numbers, fresh linen, and a key card to the doors and private locker (room 302, my locker was #2), and settled in. Upon entering the room we saw clothes EVERYWHERE. Messy roommates, but didn’t matter. They were actually very awesome people: 3 Australians (Alistair, Lee, and Dave) and one German (Dave). Alistair would later join Leslie and I on our touring about Berlin seeing as he had never been before and his mates were very much about the partying all night and sleeping all day. On the top floor of the hostel was also a skybar with a rooftop terrace overlooking Berlin. We all spent many an hour there after walking around all day, to have a beer and to meet some of the other guests. I met a fantastic Irish man, Mathew, two more Canadians, Sean and Denis, some Americans, and a lot of other Germans. I also was introduced to A LOT of Australians; they dominated the hostel’s population. All-in-all, this hostel was the greatest find, and I had an unbelievable amount of fun in just this one building in the east of Berlin (I actually quite enjoy the east more than I do the west). I recommend it a thousand times over if you’re visiting Berlin. Very clean too and each room has its own clean bathroom – major bonus all around.

I didn’t spend all of my time in the hostel, though. The Sunday following would see the beginning of our touring. We had intended to tour that day that we got there but the hostel fiasco took up so much of our time that eating, having a beer, and getting to bed early (or so we had intended) was the only thing left on our agenda. Of course we stayed up in the skybar till maybe 2am (correct me if I’m wrong, Leslie), since the conversation going around was just too good to pass up. But day 2 of Berlin is for another blog; I need to go pack for Mannheim.

-Candles