Hamburg-Berlin

New blog. I've decided that it's better for me to exercise english, and maybe some englishspeaking persons would like to read as well. Besides, english is so much cooler.

Now..Hamburg and Berlin! Kind of the trip of my life. Here follows our doings day by day. I know you've all been waiting for it!

Tuesday: Left Luleå at 10 o'clock. Spent some time in Stockholm, ate pasta and did some shopping at Urban Outfitters. Went to Centralen and Emil, a.k.a the borgarsvin with backslick had some red wine. I, a.k.a the teenage girl who had to show her id, had xider (which I later remembered why I do not drink.) After a pretty long busride to Skavsta and a flight with Ryan Air (in a plane terribly decorated in bright yellow and blue), we arrived in Lübeck.
After another busride..we finally got to Hamburg. Exhausted. The hotel was really nice and we fell asleep in enormously comfy beds.

Wednesday: Went out for some cheap and tasty breakfast. Unfortunately terrorised by one of Hamburg's many thousand wasps. Whats up with the wasps?? After that we took a nice walk by the sea, watching Hamburg's many lifting cranes. A city in total renewal. Later went to Neustadt (I think) for some shopping. Really great shopping district with beautiful canals in the middle of it. Even though I only did shopping at Urban Outfitters and H&M, I was impressed by the....supply, or what to call it.
Spent the rest of the afternoon in wonderful parks, i.a. the largest japanese garden in Europe. In the evening we went out and drank cheap cosmopolitans at a bar and later on delicious razz mojitos at fancy hotel East. After having only three drinks I got pretty drunk and woke up in the middle of the night not far from throwing up. So not used to alcohol.

Thursday: Checked out and I forgot my passport in the room. Who else would have done that?? Luckily I noticed it before it was too late. Went out to the same breakfas restaurant and were once again terrorised by a wasp. This one didn't even get the hint when we tried to kill it with cigarette smoke and mineral water. Unfortunately our efforts only resulted in my sandwich being totally wet, tasting tabacco.

Took the train to Berlin, checked in at the hostel in Kreuzberg and went to the Olympia Stadion for the worldchampionships in athletics!!! Our seats could have been better but it was nothing but a magic evening! Usain Bolt breaking his own World record and Blanka Vlasic beating Ariane Friedrich in a thrilling high jump final. Bought a lovely merchandise bag. Came back to Kreuzberg at 10.30 pm. and had a HUMONGOUS portion of Döner kebap.

Arrived the hostel (once again exhausted) and met our amazing roommates, consisting of two really funny canadian girls and an american guy, who basically had been travelling all his life. Only problem- didn't sleep so well at night. Shitty blinds, the loudest ambulance sirens I've ever heard combined with skyfall and thunder isn't a very good combination. Poor Emil also woke up with fleabites all over his body! Fortunately, I did not;)

Friday: Kind of rainy and cloudy outside so we decided to once again waste some money on shopping...At least for my part...project "saving money for Paris" doesn't run very smoothly. But this afternoon I succeeded pretty well, and only returned with three postcards!
Emil, who would never buy anything but branded clothes, purchased some underwear at Kadewe -Kaushaus des Westens.
After visiting the fancy stores in former West Berlin we headed for the Eastern parts and found some really cool streetshops and vintage stores. We also visited the Jewish Museum which among other things had an incredible photo exhibition.

Back at the hostel we met our new roommates, Christina and Julietta, from Argentina. Christina was in fact a psychologist, so cool. We also met model-looking Lars (swedish name!) and totally charming Joep from the Netherlands. Had some really cheap drinks at the hostel and were persuaded to follow them to Bang Bang club, which i will never regret! How often does one visit a club where every song being played is great? For example we had the pleasure of dancing to The Knife, Le Tigre and Sonic Youth. And yes....everything that happened on that club was amazing. I will never forget.

Saturday: Woke up really late after another night's not so good sleep. Feeling ashamed by the fact that the Argentinians had gone up at 8 o clock to visit every thing worth seeing in Berlin, we decided that it was time to do some cultural stuff. Together with Lars and Joep (who mostly had been partying all week) we headed for Alexanderplatz to meet up with the free tour and be guided through Berlin and its historic buildings. Having coffee at Starbucks, which was said to be the meeting place, we waited, and waited some more

Unluckily though, we couldn't find the free tour guide and were convinced of that we had gotten the message wrong.
Downhearted we walked through Kreuzberg, and visited some more vintage shops. The weather was lovely and we went to a park of which I can't recall the name. It was a really shitty place full of stoned people, in fact ressembling of Christiana. Except for the soil covered with fag-ends and caps it would have been pretty nice if it wasn't for the crappy sacpipe player. Fuck experimental music!

In the evening we had Falafel/kebab as always, got back to the hostel and ordered vodka shots for 1 euro each that we mixed with orange juice. Went out really late and Emil bought Chianti that we drank in the street. I'm not a fan of red wine but Chianti is not simply a red wine! After a while Joep went "home", maybe because he got fed up with us walking slowly like snails.

Emil, Lars and I started queing for bar 25. After a while we got to pass the line because our looks were so stunning. That has never happened to me before so I guess I didn't contribute to it. After all, I don't look like a model, and neither am I a fancy gay guy wearing Alexander Mcqueen. And the club didn't disappoint us! Sat by tha water and danced to electro music for some hours. Left at 7.30 am. and at the time people were still queing to get in.

Sunday: Woke up pretty drunk but still convinced of taking the free tour. Thought that the meeting-place instead might be at the Brandenburger gate. Headed there but found no sign of guides whatsoever. Anyways, Emil got a balloon with the EU stars which he was very proud of, and we walked to the Reichstag building to give him some insight in Berlin's political life. The building was surrounded with a nice park where I could have spent quite a lot time. Then we went to the holocaust memorial that consisted of gigantic stones. A crazy kid jumped across them back and forth all the time. I was content with only jumping once.

The sun was still shining bright and we got back to the crazy park. This time there was some lame karaoke thing going on. People were applausing the crappy singers and in the middle of it all stood some hippie woman waving with a huge ..ehm kind of..wand! ATROCIOUS!

Our last stop was Check Point Charlie and the walk over there was a GARGANTUAN task. Too bad that the only thing I accomplished was two lousy photos.

Emil and I were fighting a HUMONGOUS hangover but as Joep and Lars should be leaving in the early morning and had no place to stay during the night, we simple had to come and party with them.

The evening didn't have the most fortunate start as the receptionist lashed out at us for drinking wine in the hostel. But with some more wine we made it to a bar called The Visionaire or maybe...Der Visionäre. Strange things happened there. Among other things we met a stylist for Vogue who lived in Paris (and thought my french was already good!) who turned out to actually be from Västerås. Small world. For me though the evening didn't end so well. Threw up like ten times in the small "lake" and had to take a cab home. That's what drinking three nights in a row does to you. Or...to me. I guess I'm weak. And not used to red wine.

Monday: Woke up at 12 am. Both of us feverishly hot with sore throats and nausea. We used all our strenght to get out of bed and join the Alterative Free Tour of which the purpose was to discover the grafitti and street art of Berlin. The tour was great and we didn't regret our efforts even though I sometimes felt for throwing up, and the guide once asked us if we were okay, ha ha.
In the end though he wasn't that thoughtful when we according to him gave too little tips. The Free tours always turned out to be a "Free" Tour. We tried innocently to tell him that this was our last day and therefore we were out of money, but still he spapped at us and made faces. After the tour we had our last meal of Döner kebab and went to bed early. I lay awake almost the whole night thinking of what to do with my life.

Tuesday: Got out of bed at 5.50 pm. Took the U-bahn to the airport, and started what felt like an endless home journey. Exhausted, sick and dehydrated we finally arrived in Sweden.

Summary: Great week! Witnessing a world record is unforgetable! Staying at hostels is highly recommended. Especially Berlin is a wonderful city with interessting contrasts between the trashy East and the classy West. Wanna party all night at super awsome clubs? go to Berlin!!!