Back to Germany, hanging out in Berlin

So I know I haven't updated this blog so much lately, hell I wasn't even online for a day and a half due to long traveling and not really wanting to pay a Euro for internet for an hour...wtf. Today I paid 5 Euro for 24 hours, since I don't plan on doing anything other than sitting here nursing an aching foot.

My right foot started hurting while we were walking around in Amsterdam the last couple days we were there, it's now swollen up like a baseball is inside it but I can't see any bruising or anything that would indicate it being broken anywhere. I am just sitting here keeping weight off of it in hopes that it's only aching due to the shoes I've worn the entire time I've been here. I don't think Nike Airmax are the correct shoes to wear... I think sandals woulda been a better bet to at least where some days, it's been a hot bastard for most of our travels...lol. I've yet to see a doctor and would rather not, so as Anthony is out doing a walking tour of Berlin, I'm sitting here in the common room of this huge hostel we're staying at. Let's hope it's not actually broken since I don't want to wear a cast for the last couple weeks of our trip.

Yes, only a bit over two weeks left in Europe, the time has flown it seems. Lots of fun and after discussing this earlier, we've drank every single day of our trip thus far. No, not just a beer here and there, but at least 3-6+ drinks a day...every day...haha.

I know that one reason for this is that EVERYWHERE you go, beer is cheaper, and colder, than sodas or even water in some cases. If you get a soda, it's fairly warm, and God forbid you want ice, it's like pulling teeth some times. We can't find an ice machine anywhere, so we're exhausting our resources of where to get free ice near our hostel here...lol. I've had more Heineken than I'll ever admit to anyone, it seems like everywhere you go, they have other stuff on the menu, but then tell you that they're out, and Heineken is all you can get... Other than Germany of course, lots of good lager beer here, but I do miss the occasional Drop Top or Drifter from Widmer. Oh, and for what it's worth... THE most expensive beer EVERYWHERE???......Corona. How funny is that? It's seriously the most expensive beer we've seen in our travels, and since they don't sell in .5L bottles, it's even worse because you only get around .3L bottles for the price of half liters of other beers, like our regular 12 ounce bottles in the states.

Alright, so the trip to Berlin from Amsterdam absolutely f'n sucked. We get to the station around noon, take a trip to the Central station in Amsterdam, then catch the train to another city in Holland. After we change trains, we are an hour or so into that trip when they mention that the train is stopping in some other little town due to lightning strikes and tornadoes the day/night before. So, they tell us that no trains are going into Germany... Oh crap.

We get off the train with a ton of other people, really, a whole lotta people traveling back to Germany the day after seeing the Dutch play the final of the World Cup. They tell us that we're going to take a bus to a city in Germany and go from there to wherever it was that everyone was going. So we wait for around an hour and a half, see one bus, that takes a fraction of the people there, then wait another half hour for the second bus... at which point I was like, dude, we're not going to make it to Germany today...lol. Then about 4 buses roll up and we hop on, and take a 2.5 hour trip on the roads of Holland into Germany. I guess it was a bit of a welcome thing to some extent though, we had yet traveled anywhere long distance other than by train. Not to say I liked riding the bus... it was still a bus and the dude next to me kinda stunk a bit...lol. We have first class tickets for the train system for a reason, it's been really nice too...lol.

So, we get off the buses, sit around and wait for a train to Hannover, where we need to change trains again to Berlin. We lucked out in Hannover though, we got off our train and thought, oh cool, that train right there is heading to Berlin... let's go!

So we hop on the train that just seemed to be waiting for us only to find out that the train had no conductor and was going to be running a bit late anyway... like an hour an a half. WTF. Luckily, our part of that long wait was only for 30 minutes since the Conductor made it by cab to the station. The entire train system was pretty much hosed in Northern Germany that day, I looked at the boards where all the departures and arrivals were and everything had *** next to it along with how late they'd be. The funny part of that of course, was that it was an extremely beautiful 80 degree and sunny day out... I was waiting to see crazy thunderstorms but saw nothing of the sort the entire time in our travels. That morning we were going to wash laundry before taking off, but it was drizzling and I didn't feel like walking 2 miles in the rain to wash clothes. Instead, we walked a few hundred feet to the train station and started our day on the rails/roads. I imagine if we did our laundry, we'd have stayed in Amsterdam at least one more night since the rails were so hosed, they probably wouldn't have let us leave to get stuck in the middle of nowhere. So, about 13 hours later, on a day when we should have been only traveling for about 6 hours... we made it to our hostel in Germany.

The first night in this hostel was probably the most miserable night of sleep I'd had since Heidelberg, for the same reasons... Extremely hot and humid with no AC and the window was only able to be cracked a little bit. We are in a mixed dorm, that night there were 5 guys and 3 women... nobody was bashful about sleeping in their underwear on top of their covers... there was just no way to survive wearing anything more than a little. It helps that all three women in our room are pretty hot too...haha. :-)

The second night in the hostel was much better, after getting everyone in our room to sign a waiver that they wouldn't jump, or throw anything out the window, we were able to open it up. That helped a lot, I also made sure to be as drunk as possible when I went to sleep... just to make sure I'd pass out...lol. It's weird here, most of the hostels we've been in have been with people traveling from other countries... this one of course, is the exception... everyone here is from Germany. Mostly kids traveling to Berlin to party it up all night...etc. We've noticed big groups of youngsters 17-20ish tops, with a few chaperons, but everyone is still drinking etc... so other than telling the kids to shut up or quiet down at times, they're not having to chaperon too much, it seems. I've talked to a few folks here and there, but it's almost too big of a hostel with big groups of people that know eachother already, so it's been different than the ones we've been to prior to Germany. The one in Munich was a bit like this, but at least there we still met people from other parts of the world. I'm pretty sure I recognized a few English guys I knew from Prague this morning when they were checking in.

I know 4 of our roommates checked out today so hopefully the new ones are pretty cool. We have one guy from Bulgaria who doesn't speak a word of English or German, getting him to sign the paper saying he wouldn't jump out of the window was like playing charades with a blind guy... it wasn't working. The Brazilian couple were trying and thought he spoke German, but it wasn't even that...lol. at least German I could have somewhat got it figured out. So I ended up drawing a stick figure and a window and putting an X over them while handing him the paper to sign... so he finally did, and last night our window was opened... Thank God. It was much more bearable.

So I think we have two more nights after today here in Berlin and then we're off to England to pick up Bobbi in London. (Anthony's g/f who's totally going to die if she doesn't see him soon)...lol. ;-) We'll spend the first night in a hostel in London, then probably a hotel for a few nights so Bobbi can get her internal clock converted to Europe time. Perhaps we'll do what we did when we got to Romania... travel for 26 hours and go out til 3am and get shitfaced...haha. Ok, maybe not. But I won't count that option out. :-) It'd be pretty awesome if my foot decided not to be screwed up anymore before we leave Berlin. *Crosses fingers

I have got out to see at least a bit of Berlin since getting here though, we took an open top bus tour of the city yesterday that was pretty cool. It was a way to see the place and not have to walk much... at this point I'm ALL about that. I do feel bad but told Anthony I'd rather not keep him from checking the city out, so he's out and about today doing a walking tour for 4 hours or so, and I think he mentioned going to see some concentration camps tomorrow too. I'll probably sit around on the internet watching hundreds of youtube vids... unless my foot feels better, but I won't hold my breath on that.

I've been looking at the prices for taking the ferry to England from Holland on Saturday, and by the looks of it, we may end up just flying from here instead of having a full day of travel. It will cost a bit more, but in the long run it makes sense... just looking at time tables for trains and the ferry to England.

While I'm thinking about it... I've been meaning to put this in the blog for a while but it never comes to mind when I'm on here...lol.
If you ever travel to Europe, one of the first things you want to do is get a handful of Euro's in case you have to go to the bathroom somewhere. Seriously, in train stations it costs about .40-.70 Euro to use the bathroom. Kinda like paying 50 cents to a buck to take a piss in the US. And that's practically everywhere in Europe. Oh, in Amsterdam there are the random pissers situated all over, where you just walk up, take a wiz, and hope you can find somewhere to wash your hands later. We have telephones on the corner, they have a little wide open place to piss... brilliant if you ask me.

That's one of those things that would be too shocking to see in the US because Americans are scared of stuff like that...haha. Earlier I saw a city bus with a topless woman on it. As an American I find it funny, but again, it's stuff like that which is totally normal to people in Europe. It's awesome really. You get a feel for the way the US tries to sensor everything as much as possible because it'll turn us all into villains... If that were the case, why are Europeans not nearly as screwed up as so many Americans...haha. Ok, we all have crazy bastards, but it's not like people here are doing any more crazy or dumb stuff than people in the US are.

Anyways... I'm sure I may edit this later on due to complete boredom since I'm doing nothing else...lol. But that's about all I have to say now.