Day 6
There he was, strolling through the Amsterdam train station while I was waiting patiently for 2 hours. Rolling his bag and shading his eyes with giant white rim glasses, the man of the house himself, Mr. Macaulay Culkin. Totally made the wait worth it. And after that sweet celebrity sighting, I had to sprint to my train. I made it with 30 seconds before the doors closed and grabbed a seat on the train to Berlin. After 7 hours of no open-able windows, no A/C, and a 45 minute delay to switch engines, we finally made it to Berlin. I met a few cool guys from Canada on the train, but we parted ways after arriving in town. Luckily my room mates at the hostel were really cool, Jamie and Patrick from Northern England. We had a drink in the pub on the roof of the hostel and started talking to some ladies, Mary Ann and Annie from Kansas City, and Bernie from Calgary. We eventually left the pub and made our own impromptu pub crawl through Berlin. Fast forward now until 7:30 am and we are watching the sunrise, drinks still in hand, in Bernie's room from her balcony (BTW, Bernie got a sweet suite room at the hostel and it became the party room for the weekend, Rm. 307 FOREVER!!!!). Allegabembem becomes the word of the weekend as Patrick and Jamie chant it whenever the mood strikes, which only makes the rest of the group chime in with equally excited Allegabembem chants and Cowabunga chants. We were pretty obnoxious.
Day 7
I wake up around 12 in the afternoon, my stomach turning, my head throbbing, my mouth burning. I have never had a hangover as bad as this. Berliner beer messes you up proper. After taking the day off to sleep and just generally recover, Bernie and I head out to find a place called the "White Trash Cafe", it is apparently a blend of American and Asian cuisine all with a tacky motif. We couldn't find it after an hour of searching, so we end up stopping in out of desperation at a tiny little hot dog stand. Let me tell you something, the chili cheese dog at this place was the best hot dog I have ever had. We make it back to the hostel just in time to meet up with the gang to go out on an organized pub crawl. The crawl took us to a gothic bar, a ping pong bar (which reminded me of the Fight Club basement with a ping pong table and a DJ), a bar with a live SUPER stereotypical 90's German band, a bar with a giant screen playing "The Birds" as the center point, and a reggae dance club in the middle of an abandoned warehouse area. So, even though Bernie and I vowed not to take shots, and to call it an early night, we all ended up watching the sunrise over Berlin from the 307 balcony again and getting to bed around 6:30... after about 5 shots on top of our beer.
Day 8
Luckily, this morning I woke up a little slow, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. Bernie and I decided to do some sight seeing since we both wasted the day yesterday sleeping off hangovers while the others saw the sights. We headed out to the Jewish History Museum, which was really powerful and quite an experience. The building that it was in was equally intense, purposely designed to disorient you as you walk through it. We also saw Check Point Charlie and ended our sights with the East Side Gallery on the Berlin Wall. Some of the murals were powerful, others funny, but almost all of them were amazing to see. We walked the whole thing, checking out the murals and taking some nice pictures. On the way back, I went to the train station and bought a ticket to Brussels for tomorrow morning. Tonight is my last night in Berlin and Bernie and I made yet another "Call it an early night" pact, we will see how this one goes.
Trip update:
I am still unsure of the status of the trip, I feel like I am getting my travel legs now and I am having a lot more fun than in the beginning. The only difference that I can see from before and now is that I have some sense of permanent friends since I have been with this group pretty much the whole time I have been here in Berlin. So looking at it that way, I am debating cutting the trip short, saving the money, convincing a friend to go with me, and going again with them at a later date. I have honestly already gotten everything that I wanted from this trip, so anything from now on is just pushing myself further.
What I wanted from my trip:
1) Prove to myself that I can be happy on my own..... Rocky start, but now, check
2) See some areas that I have never seen.... Check
3) Meet new people..... Mega Check
4) Experience different cultures..... Check
5) Have experiences that I will remember forever.... Check
6) Grow more confident and become a more rounded person.... Check
7) Get better at approaching strangers.... SUPER Check
7) Lose some weight from walking so much and forgetting to eat (HAHA)..... Check (I look good already)
The whole "Going around the world" thing grew out of a desire to see as much as I could thinking that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I now refuse to believe that I will never have a chance to do something like this again, so I am not afraid to call it early this time, only to come back and continue at a later date. I am not afraid of being a "quitter" by going home, and I know that whatever I do is the right decision, so I am going to keep going until I feel like coming home, and at that point it will be my beliefs and experiences that tell me I am ready to go home, not my fears. That point may be tomorrow in Brussels, or it may be in Thailand when I decide that "I am ready". Either way, I will be happy to go home because I will be ready, and I will not regret leaving. I now realize that I love traveling, but it is not my style to travel alone. I don't see this as a bad thing, just something that now requires more planning, since I need to plan another person's schedule into my trips. I now know that in a pinch I can travel on my own, but I want my next trip to be with a friend and see how that goes. So let this be known, I am looking for a like minded travel buddy to go with me at some point in the near future, most likely to Asia. Let me know :)
Picture update: As usual, no pictures in this blog, but I posted the pictures from sight seeing in Berlin today to the flickr account. My camera died before I could download the pictures from partying the 2 nights prior. Those will hopefully be up soon.
