Berlin, day 3

It's up against some strong competition, but day 3, Sunday, was by far my most favourite day. Firstly, we actually went and did some sightseeing. We headed up to Mauer park for the open air market and spent an hour or so wandering around there in awe of the great crafts and utter crap on offer. Up the road from that is the Wall Museum, that chronicles the course of events leading to the building of the Berlin wall, its function as and symbol of totalitarian oppression, right through to its destruction. It has a replicated stretch of wall and 'no mans land' over the road, complete with watchtower, that can be observed from the top of the museum.

We'd planned a route to walk back towards the Brandenburg Gate and, completely by accident, stumbled across the Topography of Terror, an outdoor and indoor museum charting the Nazis rise to power, located on the previous site of the SS and Gestapo headquarters. I know my pre-world war 2 history pretty well, but it is such a captivating and informative exhibition that I was overwhelmed by so much I'd never heard of before.

We finally made it to see the Brandenburg Gate, after our abandonment of it the day before, and then wandered round to the Bundestag, the parliament building of the German government. On my previous trip here we just had to queue up the steps at the front to wait for our turn to go up into the building's observation dome, and that was even during election time, but now access is permitted by reservation only and the entire front of the building is fenced off and heavily policed. Instead we walked to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a striking and imposing monument of 2711 concrete blocks. It's almost pleasant and communal in spirit on the edges, where the blocks are low and accessible, but as the ground slopes down towards the middle of the monument and the blocks rise higher into oppressively large and claustrophobic obelisks, it creates an overwhelming and isolating atmosphere that is only relieved as you approach the other side and the outside world and traffic thankfully come into focus again. Or until your respectful mate jumps out at you from his hiding place behind one of the blocks.

The gate

The Reichstag Bundestag

The memorial

We headed back to our hostel to collect our stuff, as we were booked into a different hostel for our final 2 nights, and then made our way to Alexanderplatz. I'd chosen the One 80 Hostel on the sole basis that it looked utterly cool from the pics on the internet, and in that respect it did not disappoint. We dropped off our stuff in our room and in the process woke up a poor girl who was having a nap on one of the bunks. To make it up to her, we invited her down to the hostel bar for happy hour, and instead of swearing at us for disturbing her, she actually accepted.

Amy was waiting for her friend to join her before starting their week's holiday in Berlin, and we learned a lot about her in the meantime. I quickly realised she was insanely cool, and I do literally mean 'insanely'; do any of you know a white girl who made a conscious decision to move to Iraq for fun?! I thought we'd all go our separate ways after Sara (pronounce that any way you want, she won't mind) turned up, but we just continued drinking together for the rest of the night. The hostel had a photo booth in which we messed around for a while, and pretty soon (well, 4am) the bar was closed, so we ventured out to find a place to keep going.

Sach had been given directions by the barman for a club, and he adamantly lead us out into the night to find it. After a while our confidence started to wain, so we stopped at a kebab kiosk that sold beer, thinking this was the best we were going to get. But no, 'onwards' cried Sach, and eventually, after getting some pointers from some pissed Aussies, we found a place Sach assured us was the one we were looking for. He tried to act like he had been vindicated after we had all doubted he knew where he was leading us, but I could tell he was just relieved.

The bar was an utter hole. We came to a unanimous descision that every misshapen dropout there was on day release from either prison or a psychiatric ward, and the DJ played the worst possible songs in an even worse combination. We still drank and danced like idiots though, and asked a random stranger to take a picture of us all with Sara's phone, even though he could just have easily done a runner with it. We even asked for one more song when the crap DJ stopped, but I think he had lost the will to live with his performance that night long before we had the chance to. We finally headed back to the hostel just as the sun rose, even though I definitely did not want the night to end. But I needed the rest, as I would find out the next day.