Euro Trippin' w/ Mel - Leg 2. Hullo Berlin!

So, after Denmark the crew split up and we all went our merry ways, Tim & Glen to Latvia, Mel & I to Berlin, Andrew back to London & Andrew's bag to Florence!

Mel & I had our first official couch surfing experience with Andreas, a CS friend of Tony's. Andreas is awesome and he was an excellent host, staying with him was a great introduction to the world of couch surfing.

Again, here are the pic's, they can say more than I!

The Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche, an old German church near the city centre, it was bombed in WWII and left as a reminder.

We went up the Europa tower which had pretty sweet views over the city, not that we really knew what anything was by this point.

And look! a roof full of air handling units! Don't worry, I'm purposefully being geeky

We went to the Jewish Memorial Museum, it had some fairly spooky aspects to it that drove the whole Holocaust thing home. Personally, I feel that growing up in NZ you are quite insulated to the effects of WWII and it doesn't really hit home until you go to these things.

This area of the museum is called the Holocaust Tower, they shut you in this concrete chamber with a small sliver of daylight coming through the top. Quite daunting, except for the fact that you're in there with half a dozen loud-mouth American tourists (no offense, loud-mouth).

I didn't actually read anything about this but it got the message across

The watchhouse/guardhouse or something. I just thought this was a nice photo!

Mel & Anderas chilling at his place. The 3 of us, and a freind of Mel's went out for a few beers in a nice area one night which was sweet!

Some punks getting all disrectful on the Jewish memorial

Checkpoint Charlie.

Berlin was a really nice city, I have to say that staying with a local and getting the pointers on what to do from them is an excellent way to discover a city, it also gives you an idea of what the city means to it's inhabitants.

btw. Did you know Berlin is dirt cheap to live in? Andreas pays about 2/3 of what I pay in London, he gets a nice one bedroom flat in a nice suburb, I get one room in a four bed house in a dodgy neighbourhood. seems good to me! All I need to do is advance my german...

We're now in Prague, staying with Jirka who is very kindly having us to stay with him. Stay tuned for the next exciting update!