Berlin - Day Twenty Eight

Twenty eight days later...

The past month seems a bit of a blur when I think back on it now. A very good blur though. I've managed to cover a lot of ground on my interRail ticket, but I still have a few days left to sqeeze a little more value out of it.

We said our goodbyes at Centraal Station in Amsterdam a little after midday, after Rusty and I had been the only ones capable of making it down to the incredible Hilton breakfast - I ate enough free food to keep me going for a few weeks. Even though the weekend hadn't gone entirely according to plan, it is always a pleasure to see these guys, and I'm always sorry to say goodbye. With Avvon, Byron and Rusty, it was a fairly standard deal - I'll probably bump into them again in a few months when I'm back in the UK (if I ever come back that is...), but Ryan is supposed to go back to Australia - it's not certain for how long - and Dan is going to India, and then emigrating to Australia himself for anything up to five years. It's hard to say goodbye when that sort of time scale is involved.

I waited an hour or so for my own train, then borded a comfortable German ICE (inter city express) to Berlin.

It was another long trip - 10 hours or so - and was the first time I have been asked for my passport as we crossed the border into Germany. I was shaken awake by a German policeman, gun at his belt and two partners in the aisle behind him, who told me to take my feet off the seat and show him some ID. Not the most relaxing way to wake up.

Got into Berlin Hauptbahnhof at about 10pm, with no hostel reservation, and had to politely but firmly decline the offer of staying at the house of an old man who started chatting to me on the platform. He seemed a nice enough old guy, but told me he had spent the 1960s living in a cave in Crete, that George Harrison used to stay at his house in India, and that his house was in the countryside beyond the city "surrounded by fields". Creeped me out a little. In the countryside no one can hear you scream...

I was booked into a hostel by 10.30, but everyone in my eight bed dorm was already fast asleep by then. I was a little wired from the trip, so went down for a beer in the hostel bar, where the bored bar staff seemed grateful for the company and gave me some free drinks. It's been a long day.