L-I-V-I-N Quit working to go travel around the world for a year

July 1st: Woke up the next morning and saw one of the modern art museums before walking mom to her train and saying goodbye. All in all a good trip with her, but definitely ready to move on and do my own thing. Took a bus to the hostel I was staying at for the weekend. I opted to split things up a bit in Berlin….2 nights in a hotel with mom doing the tourist thing, 3 nights on the weekend in a known party hostel, and the rest couchsurfing with canadians (more on that later). I was pretty proud of myself successfully navigating the buses as I usually try and avoid this and stick with the subways. Found my place, and definitely one of the nicer hostels I have come about (as advertised) but expensive just the same ($30). This place had a rooftop bar with cheap happy hour prices. The most popular thing was a pitcher they had hung from the doorway behind the bar (maybe 5-6 feet away). You can throw money in it and for each one you make you get a shot. .50euro was 1 shot, 1 euro was 3 shots, and if you made a 5euro bill then you won 25 shots. Possessing the dart skills that I have, I of course sank a few of the .5euro coins and won myself some shots. Problem is when you get drunk you start missing them so I’m sure they came out ahead after the weekend. The other problem is that they don’t give you a real shot, just some pre-mixed kamakazi thing that wasn’t really worth the .5euro it costs in the first place….but at least it was fun. Easy place to meet people and chat. I took a wonder around the neighborhood and eventually found a little park to chill out in and had a kebab and beer. One of my roomates in the hostel was from new york but teaching english in Moscow. It was his birthday so I bought a bottle of vodka but he didn’t show up at our designated meeting time so I took a power nap and headed back up to the bar. Met some brazilian guys, australian girl, a 19yo australian named Jos that I hung out and drank with for a few days…never got our shit together to become facebook friends though…too bad as he had invited me to come to Adelade to do acid (not my cup of tea mind you, but would still have been a good contact) . I ran into my roomate on the way down from the bar and we gathered a few people together to head out. By the time we made it downstairs it was just the 2 of us and had managed to lose like 5 people who were planning on going out with us. So my roomate and I (I have no idea what his name was after the fact) wondered down to some random bars and then I followed him around to meet up with some people he had met the previous night. Found an american from D.C. and he wondered around with us. To be honest, we started taking shots and I don’t remember much from the rest of this night other than bar hopping. July 2nd. Pub Crawl Woke up hungover, Slept in until about 1:30. No fucking air conditioning of course. They did have a standing fan in the corner which I took and set on top of the table and pointed directly at me. Finally just had to get out of bed. I took a stroll down the opposite direction today and found a little pizza café to have a meal at. Was hot as fuck and still hurting slightly so did some internet stuff for a while, then back to happy hour around 6pm. Joss was there so it was good to hang out with him. We dranks happy hour beers and pizza, took shots that we won from throwing change in the pitcher. We decided it was pub crawl night and had 3 different flyers of ones to do. There were about 8-10 of us that was interested in doing it. After flipping a coin to decide on which one we were going to do, we then decided to meet downstairs in 5 minutes. Everyone got up but…after 10 minutes only 4 people were there. We decided we couldn’t make the pub crawl as it was getting too late to make the one we had picked. We went down the street to a bar instead an had a beer and watched some soccer. Kind of boring, so I took the initiative and said I was going to the other pub crawl which started a bit later and was within walking distance. So me, Joss, Kyle and Dan (from New York) made our way down and met out front. Eventually another 6 people from the hostel caught up and joined us. Good mix of people. The pub crawl had an alternative theme in that were to be going to weird bars that you might night come across on your own. Lots of drinks, shots, a bit of dancing, and a few dark bars. After several hours of bar hopping, we ended up taking this tram for about 20 minutes across town at almost 4 in the morning. We go there and the leader girl (who had been drinking and making out with one of the guys from the group) said “Ok, this is the end, hope you had fun”. I asked how the fuck we were supposed to get home and she said “you’ll figure it out.” What the fuck. Grabbed a Beck’s, walked through the dance floor only to be run into and subsequently drop my beer. Got another beer..wondered around a bit with the few people from the pub crawl that remained, and decided we were tired and ready to head home. Hopped in a cab with 3 others and 15 euro later we were home. Someone else paid for it, so I bought us Kebabs and we called it a night. July 3rd Fanmeile (fan mile) Met up with Kyle and Dan who were the only 2 people from the previous night that showed up at the agreed upon meeting time. I had packed the rest of my vodka bottle from the day before, a camelback, and some sprite. They brought a bottle of vodka and some orangejuice. We took the metro and walked to the entrance of the Fan Mile in the central park in Berlin. Tens of thousands of drunken Germans had been there for several hours. We wondered up and sure enough they were checking bags for alcohol and glass bottles….of which we had both. There were a few hundred beers, water bottles, etc piled on the ground outside the gate. Not wanting to let go of our $15 worth of party supplies like everyone esle, we wondered through the woods to try and get them into the fenced off area. This was not a simple fence mind you, it was like 8 feet high, and had German polic patrolling it. This fence had to be like 3-5 miles in circumference to wall off the entire park. I figured if anyone knows how to make a wall and keep people out, it was the Germans….I dubbed it the “berlin fence). My friends wanted to just throw the vodka over the fence, but there was really not any place to do it without being seen. So, we opted to drink the remainder of my bottle of vodka while chasing it with the OJ. Getting close to starting time for the game, so we opted to stash the other vodka bottle and Kyle’s Vuvuzela in the woods. The vodka we put in a hole and covered with leaves. The vuvuzela was behind a tree because Kyle was too lazy to bury it like me. So we headed in through the gates and made our way immediately to the beer stand and found a spot in some shade under one of several large screens. We were dressed in German leis and flags which we bought for cheap. The place went crazy every time a goal was scored: beer was thrown in the air, Germans picked me up and hugged me and people jumped around. At half time we decided we were going to go chug some vodka (great idea, right) and come back. Sure enough the vodka was still in its place but the vuvuzela was gone. After some debate, we opted to pour the vodka bottle into my camelback and risk them finding it. We put in a flag and shirt and the sprite bottle in the main pocket, then hid the camelback full of vodka in one of the smaller more hidden pockets. The idea is that they would find the sprite bottle and make me take it out…thus thinking they had succeded in thwarting another american trying to bring liquids into the park. Sure enough, it worked. Of course this meant drinking vodka from a camelback so we bought a beer to chase it with. By the end of the game the bottle of vodka was basically empty and the Germans had destroyed Argentina 4-0. The place was a crazy mess of drunk, shirtless Germans chanting and yelling. Kyle managed to sprain his ankle in the process of celebrating and by the time things were done he could barely walk on it. We used the german flag he bought as an ace bandage. We sat him down on the side and me and Dan played some foozball they had set up…we were winning until the Germans swapped out for some other guy who then kicked our ass. We opted to take a taxi home which was really cheap….like 8 euro for a 10 minute ride. The driver was from Hong Kong and super cool. We headed directly back up to the bar because we figured they would be the most likely to have ice for the ankle. Everyone kept drinking, and of course it gets a little fuzzy here. We met some spainish girls and we all tried to talk in drunken, broken spainish. I met a canadia girl named Briana and we all headed down the street to Volksbar to watch the Spain/Portugal game and eat 2-euro steak sandwiches. Back to the bar after and it was getting pretty late at this point. The spainish girls took off with Kyle and Dan. Briana went to bed so she could get up and sight see in the morning. I told her I would meet her downstairs at 8am (after drinking for 12 hours!) and I don’t know how serious I was (more on that later). The only people left in the bar was this swiss guy from the pub crawl the night before and 2 girls who had just gotten in. I forgot where they were from but they were pretty cute. I told them I was calling it a night, but the Swiss guy talked me into going out again as his wingman or whatever with the girls. We took a cab down to this giant bar in some old building. I had no cash on me so they got my cover and I offered to buy the first round of drinks. To the bar… we all ordered a round and I pulled out my credit card. To my surprise you can’t pay with a credit card. I asked where the nearest ATM was and they pointed me out the back. I said I would be right back. I wondered out the back, down some creepy stairs, through some other room, out into an open area where ther e were more bars and wondered around and in and out of several places but no ATM. At this point I was probably gone line 20 minutes. I felt bad not being able to pay for the drinks, so I said fuck it and headed home on the subway (2 stops). Feel like I took a little karma hit, but there wasn’t much else I could do at that point… Went home and crashed at like 2:30am, woke up at 7:30 to meet up with Briana. She said she was surprised to see me and had given me only a 40% chance of showing up. Little did she know that I was still drunk so I wasn’t hurting yet! We sat in the breakfast place for a few minutes and talked about what we wanted to do. I looked over her shoulder and the 2 girls from the night before were sitting there…I slid over hoping they couldn’t see me out of embarassment. I’m not sure if they did or not, but we left shortly thereafter…