Living the Dream My travel journal to help keep friends and family up to date with where I am in the world.

Well since my last blog a lot has happened. England were knocked out of the World Cup and I was at the Fan Fest in Gelsenkirchen to see all those disappointed English. Adam B was lucky enough to be at the game and was not the happiest Englishman afterwards either. Back in Dortmund the night before the city had been buzzing after the Germans won their match. Thousands walked the streets celebrating. It was an amazing sight comparable to when Australia qualified for the world cup.

After the English game we flew to Prague in the Czech Republic for three nights. Prague is a magnificant city with the greatest architecture I have ever seen but tourist ridden to the nth degree. It was like an ant hill when you disturb the ants and they go crazy with thousands of them running everywhere. Prague's nightlife did not live up to its billing but we had a funny final night when we went to a bar and all these black american singers turned up. It was hilarious listening to them speak just like on TV. We could not stop laughing but it's a story I will have to retell when I'm back home.

After a relaxing train ride north and a stopover in Dresden we made it to Berlin. The hostel is easily the best one we have stayed in. We have a TV for the first time, pay TV, Playstation, free Internet (on a Mac though;-) and good showers which we only share with a few people. The first night we met up with my brother Tristan for dinner and had an early night. Today we hired bicycles and rode through the main park in Berlin (Tier Garten) where the Fan Fest is and right through the middle of Berlin. We saw a few of the sites including Checkpoint Charlie where I ran into two people whom I went to highschool with. Small world as they say.

It was a bit crazy getting used to riding on the right side of the road rather than the left but we got used to it. We got caught in a storm as we made our way home and got soaked. After we made it back to the Hostel and had had showers I noticed I could hear some running water and a smell and suddenly realised our room, which is at basement level, was flooding. It was all hands on deck as we ran to put towels across our bedroom door to stop it making it there and grabbed everybodies stuff and got it off the floor. Adam P slipped over it it in the process and it was a alugh a minute. The hostel admin people came in screaming shit in German and ran aroun frantically for an hour stopping the flow and cleaning it all up. Apparently it was the whole area and some people's baesment had filled up completely after the local council had not done its job in flushing out the storm water drains so it all backed up. The local underground flooded as well. Made for a funny evening. Out on the town tonight though. As if a flood would stop us!