Lindsay and I woke up very early at the crack of dawn…7.30am! and said a sad goodbye to Beer and hopped on a tram to the train station.
We got our Eurail tickets validated at Den Haag and hopped on a train.
Here is a blog I wrote while on the train to Berlin:
Today we caugh our first Eurail train. It was a bit scary at first, because where the train leaves from and when is actually a secret! Shhhh don’t tell anyone but the 10:57 train from Amsterdam central to Berlin actually leaves from Hilversum at 11.22! Hilversum is a 25 minute train trip from Amsterdam. Its a bit like arriving at central station to catch a train and finding out it actually leaves from Chatswood!
Nowhere is this posted or advertisted that the train is leaving from Hilversum instead of Amsterdam. No, in order to find out how to catch the train you must ask bad tempted women who I am postive are just mean and grumpy to encourage us to keep the secret! I am so sure they hate having to pretend they have an attitude problem and that they actually find sitting behind a desk telling lost tourists that the train they want to catch is at another station 25 minutes away a truly pleasent and life enriching job.
Another thing I have learnt as a brand new eurailer is follow the other backpackers. If they hop into a car of someone you don’t know…you can stop following them. We got to Hilversum, a random little town in Holland and were totally WTF?! What do we do now? After looking at the timetable and realising that it’s really a decoy to confuse everyone we followed 3 dudes with backpacks. The dudes asked for information from the ticket lady (also a very happy soul) as they too had fallen for believing that the information in the timetable booklet was real and not a decoy. We followed them to the platform. The sign on the platform said that the next train was going to Berlin! (surely it’s against the rules to actually tell travellers where the train is really going!?)
On the platform next to us was an older American couple. They were teeny tiny, normally I wouldn’t point out if someone was teeny tiny but for this story it is vital! These teeny tiny Americans had suitcases that were so huge that the 2 of them together could have fit inside just the one suitcase. When the train arrived no one was sure how to open the door. We stood there staring at it willing it to open. (the doors over here don’t open automatically. One bright spark pressed the button and the door opened.
Everyone stood back and let the teeny tiny old Americans with their huge suitcases up first. But being teeny tiny and having elephant sized suitcases was a challenge for these 2. Poor things couldn’t get them on the train. I couldn’t help either because I looked like an overworked packhorse. They pulled and pushed and got them on. Then couldn’t get the giant suitcases down the aisle of the train. This would be no problem if there wasn’t 3 other people standing behind Lindsay and I swearing and freaking out because the gaurd was blowing the “get in the train because it’s leaving” whistle!
When we were in holland all announcements were in Dutch, English and German. We crosses the border and the German staff came on. They obviously figured, that we were now in Germany and everyone who speaks Dutch had promptly forgotten the Dutch language and thus there was no need to make any announcements in that silly Dutch language (ignoring the fact the Dutchies spoke German for them). The deeper we got in to Germany the heaveier the german accented English got. The last annoucment in English sounded like someone a terrible actor pretending to speak German. Towards the end they pretty much gave up on the English altogether.
We arrived at Berlin train station to find they also didn’t believe in signage. So after a long time of faffing about and asking at information we worked out how to get to our hostel. Upon arriving at the hostel we found out we had accidently booked for the following night! But they kindly let us have one of the empty apartments for half the price which was excellent!
Despite the graffiti
the hostel was really nice!
On our first day in Berlin we did a free New Europe Walking tour, with a guide called Maria. She was excellent and had a background in drama so was a great story teller!
This is the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony
the Brandenburg Gate
Victoria is looking at the French embassy with scorn because Napoleon kidnapped her and took her to Paris!
We then went to the place where Hitler’s bunker was,
there is now only a car park and a dog park where residents in the surrounding apartments takes their dogs to do their business.
While we were there at the site, 1 girl fainted and another got stung by a wasp! So we left pretty fast because its a evil place.
Next our guide took us to an old Jewish Department store
it was riddled with bullet holes and has been abandoned for many many years.
We then went to the square where the Nazi’s burnt all the books in Berlin that were written by Jewish or Gay Authors. There is a memorial to these books
you can’t see it because its underground. You look through a glass window in the ground and all you can see is rows and rows of empty bookshelves.
We stopped at this memorial from WW1, the roof above the statue is open, so when it rains it looks like the woman is crying for her dead son.
Our tour finished by this cathedral
Lindsay and I then made our way to the holocaust memorial
the place is huge, and so intense.
walking through the concrete blocks you can’t see anyone, its really cold and you feel like you are all alone. If you are walking with someone its so easy to lose them
It was scary losing Lindsay but I was always happy to find him again
That night we walked up the glass dome of the Reichstag
where the camera let me take 1 photo
before running out of battery…but the view was amazing.
Up next, Berlin continued.