The Trip:   I have been looking forward to my Air Berlin flight for ages!   And today we took the Stansted Express train from Liverpool Street station to the Stansted Airport...   which is about 40 miles out from London.  I was really surprised how well organised I was and how quickly Andrew got organised at the last minute.   I need ages to get ready...  he packed in the last 10 minutes  (but has since borrowed moisturiser, toothpaste, sleeping pills and money).   But it was Andrew who got us onto the right buses, made us walk up the right streets and get us good directions. 

Day 01 - Stars Guesthouse:  I think I have found what I want to do with my life.   Become a houseboy in a guesthouse.   Today we finally found our way to the Berlin Stars Guesthouse and met Marcus the guesthouse houseboy.   The place is beautiful!  I would love to run a place like this sometime in the future.  It's in a great area, it's sparkling new and so so quiet.   Andrew and I dropped our bags, had a tour of the guesthouse and then headed straight out to check out the area.  And it wasn't long before I had spent 200 Euros in Rob Berlin...   a fetish/leather store nearby.   My suitcase is now officially overweight.   I am going to have to ship some things home before I leave Europe.   Tonight I am staying in my lovely guesthouse room whilst Andrew goes to visit some old friends across town.  We have a BIG touring day ahead.

Day 02 - Berlin Tour:   Today we met Tom our personal tour guide.  Tom took us on a 5 hour walking tour around Berlin.  It was the most interesting day of my holiday so far.  I had no idea of how interesting the history of Germany is.   Tom took us through some amazing places that survived the 2 world wars and told us loads of stories of how Berlin came to be the place it is today.  I took stacks of photos (below).  We ended the day over in east Berlin checking out his leather store and finding our way home on the U2 train.   And later that night we went and checked out a few bars.  It seemed to be a pretty quiet night out though....   maybe we were looking in the wrong places.

Day 03 - Working Out:   I'm a little behind in my updates so let's see if I can remember what happened 2 days ago.   Andrew headed out to see some museums whilst I went with Marcus to the gym for a work out.   The gym we went to was amazing.  Every piece of equipment looked out into either the park or the huge indoor swimming pool.   We worked out for over 2 hours...  possibly the longest work out I've ever done.   Then later on I wandered through some of the Berlin department stores along with the Saturday afternoon crowds.   Saturday night...    acting on some good advice we started our bar hopping at 11pm.   We went back to Scheune which was much busier than Friday night, then we spent way too much time at Tom's.   We realised later that the reasom why Tom's seemed a bit boring was because the backroom doesn't open till 1am...   that would explain why all of these people were just standing around.    At 12.55pm we left and headed over to Connection where the place was packed.   It turns out that every bar in Berlin has a cruising area.  I'll repeat that...   EVERY bar in Berlin has a cruising space.  Eventually I left at 4am to get some sleep.

Day 04 - Steamy:   I work up early (to make the early breakfast timeslot at our guesthouse) and join Andrew for a little walk around the city.   The city was so quiet!   The shops do not open on Sundays here so very few people were about.  So instead we headed to the Steam Sauna and spent the next 6 hours there hanging out and making new friends.
Sunday night...    our last night in Berlin.   We headed all the way over to the Reichstag to check out the city at night from high up in the new glass dome.   We were very lucky, the place was closing for the night and we were the last group to be let in the security doors.    Berlin is a very large city and is quite spread out.  There are very little highrise buildings here.    The place is a little more quiet than I expected and quite cool.   But it does have a lot of character and the people here are very friendly.  I would love to spend more time here sometime.   In the morning we head to Prague.

PHOTOS

Our little Fokker 100	The weary travellers	We got the "Pop" room	These adorn all the guesthouse walls	This is a little spooky	The start of our day tour with Tom
Andrew and I in the park		Some of the statues here are amazing	It's a toilet block
		Berlin Culture house with an art installation out front	The day this building burned Hitler was given more power	A modern government building
					This is where the Berlin wall was
This is the hotel where Michael Jackson hung his baby out the window	The Brandenberg Gate used to sit between the East and West walls		The foyer of a modern building		That concrete thing with the grass on top is the entrance to Hitler's bunker
This is where Hitler's dead body was burnt.  It's now a children's sand pit	There are still some buildings looking like this on the East side	The communists ruled from this building	The only remaining portion of the Berlin wall	Checkpoint Charlie draws in the tourists	The crosses remind us of the people who tried to cross the wall
An East Berlin car	Some fancy chocolate work		Me in the Chocolate shop	Mmmm...  truffles
		This is building is brand new!  Rebuilt to make it look like the original		Acid prints at the end of our tour paint a pretty grim picture
		The ugliest fountain so far	Andrew poses with Celine in our bedroom	The bombed church in the city	Tucking into the saurkraut
The main train station	On top of the Reichstag building at night	Views from the top of the Reichstag		The new viewing dome on top of the building
	These mirrors inside the dome send light down into the government offices		The Brandenburg Gate by night	The spooky Jewish war memorial at night	The Berlin underground trains
The Berlin underground map	McDonalds milk