I saw "Berlin F*cking City" on a t-shirt, a take-off of the NYC one, in THE candy store in Prentzlauerberg. Sam said that this place *might* even out-cool New York.
Berlin Berlin, so much to see and do here.
The cut-down Christmas crew consisted of Chuck, Owen, Wil, Vanessa and myself. (Michel and Ben arrived a day after). We jumpped on a bus from Maastricht to Aachen on the German, Belgium, Netherlands border. There we caught the 4-odd hr train to Berlin.
With a quick bus ride we found our hotel - Hotel Transit. Unfortunately this was no Heart of Gold. The guy at the desk was rather friendly and had our booking, thank god. Imagine the cold streets of snowey berlin, New Yrs, all hotels booked out......
On New Yrs Eve, we decided to hit the shops before they closed early for revelling that night. Having been here before, I found our way around the S&U-Bahn without a hitch. We shopped Mitte, Prenzlauerburg and had a general walk around town. Wil managed to procure some legal fireworks, just as all the kids in town had.
After freshening up at our hotel, we went out again to meet Kathrin and Matthias.
We had a great dinner at the Thai Restaurant Sam and I had been to before on Oranjienberger St. Cocktails there were so delicious and cheap, we were all very happy by the time we finished. Deciding to reject the Brandenburg Gate idea, we went back to Michael and Ben's ***** hotel for a drink before heading out. Their hotel was amazing and so we stayed for longer than intended. As we headed out for plan B to watch the fireworks on one of the City's main bridges, Kat and Matt did a sneaky and headed up to the roof. From there we had an AWESOME view of the city and so stayed there for the count-down. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We headed off to a party of a friend of a friend. Wil managed to chat up a very young girl on the train, we have photographic evidence!
We arrived at the party only to find it was pretty much over (oh so much for the partying image of Berliners!) So we all headed home around 3am, some more drunk than others - VANESSA!
Chuck and Owen headed home early and so the next day, Wil, Vanessa and I split up to do our respective things. I shopped a bit more through Mitte and met up with Kat and Mat at their favourite Pizza place. It was really good pizza so I'll have to get them to take me there again!
That night Vanessa, Wil, Michael, Ben and I had dinner at an Indian place close to our hotel. We had heard that Indian was pretty good in Berlin so we decided to give it a try. In addition to that, the cocktails were pretty cheap so we all sucked down a couple. The food was good but not grrrreat.
Wil and Vanessa planed it to London and I jumped on an overnight train to Firenze.
General Rating: ***
Repeat Visit: ****