Day 20 - On the rails again.

Day 20 was our last day in Berlin, but we didn't really make the most of it. We slept in a little, finally left the hostel an hour late and went to the statue of victory near the Brandenburg gate. From there we got a very accpetable view for 1:50 which I really enjoyed.

After the pillar we headed to the reichstag to get some sun and relaxation before our train, basically we sun bathed, Mick slept. Sorry this entry is weedy.

We then went to the hostel, Colman nearly left his valuables behind, we then bantered out to the train station, late. Luckily the time we thought the train left was early so we "had time" for food. This sadly was a lie, and we ended up running anyway. Oh well. We didn't get four seats together but we got on a train, anyway.

Halfway through we switched to a compartment and bantered. We then got a tram in Prague and we are here.

Day 19 - Tours and shit art...

So today we finally reached that tour, it was the same company that had done the tour in Hamburg and what we discovered was that they followed an almost identical format. We started with some funny stories about the Brandenburg and Paris square, including the infamous Michael Jackson "blanket" balcony, and some humerous stories about the French. We then moved on to the Reichstag and along the wall, checkpoint charlie, museum island and loads of other stuff. He finished with an epic story in which he told us how the wall fell. It was like 15 minutes long so no retell here.

We then tried to use our cards in a cathedral, but they didn't accept them, so we moved onto the gugenheim, which was crap. One piece was literrally a white sheet on white canvas on a white wall. Its not too good to look at really. I kinda left glad we didn't payt the old 3 euro in. We tried another museum which was also full, wtf.

We then headed back home to Alexanderplatz, and the hostel. The lads (mick and lorcan) went to bed for four hours and me and Col basically just bantered around the hostel playing the piano, singing "With or without you" and messing with people. The other 2 got up and we went out to Vapiano, the same chain of restaurant we visited the last day in Stockholm. I enjoyed the pizza it must be said.

Back home and Mick wanted sleep, we went to the bar for a bit, before also hitting the bed.

Day 18, Schumahcer's Return...

Day 18 was our second day in Berlin, today we planned to basically hit as much as we could as quickly as possible, starting with a tour early in the morning, which we missed... lol. We then moved on to the Pergaumon museum which houses a lot of the stuff on our classical studies leaving cert course, annoyingly it also tends to lend it out. So we seemed to miss a lot of the things we initially would have liked to see.

We then used our museum cards to just randomly stroll into another museum which was actually pretty good, I enjoyed it. After that museum I think we headed back to the hostel, did the standard super-market run, I bought 10 boxes of matches for 25 cent and we played poker with matchsticks, before some pool and then we decided to roll out to TV tower for around 10 pm.

Tv tower after dark is quite amazing, its a 200 m high observation deck with a view over the whole city. Its a tower similar to a chimney, but 196m up there is a massive globe. When the Russians built the tower in 1969 they had no real trouble, but when the globe arrived they didn't know how to put it on. So they had to hire some Swedes on the sly to get them to do it.

On the top of the tower we started playing a game, we started getting people to pose in photos with us, usually getting someone else to take the picture. We would do a number of poses and things, and the groups grew, people were laughing and clapping after pictures and things. So what we did next was get Lorcan to shoot a few pictures, then get people to change poses, while we recorded it. Banter to the max.

At around 1am we headed to the Reichstag and then Brandenbourg gate too. Was good.

It's also important to note I got some extremely significant news today, Michael Schumacher will make a shock F1 return in Valencia to replace the injured Filipe Massa. Schumacher is my ultimate hero, so he's back to dominate, one thing is for certain, I know where I will be on the 23rd of August.

Day 17 - Ich bin ein Berliner

Day 17 was our first day in Berlin and our first day with our final member, our fourth wolf (in our wolfpack, first there were two, then Colman joined the wolfpack). We arrived pretty early on the baby train from Malmo and got lost in the train station. We eventually discovered where we needed to go, and decided that because it was too early to buy a more valuable group ticket we would just wing it then two stops to Luxembourg Plaza.

We arrived at our hostel, buzzed in, left our bags and headed out to the airport, the plan was always to ambush Mick, however we wanted someone to film it. Part A was perfect, we got him from behind, chased him down and knocked him over, part B failed as the asshole filming somehow managed to screw it up.

The 4 of us then basically headed back to the hostel before heading out to Berlin. We went to see the Jew museum. Now I am not anti-sematic, but I do disagree with this museum. I don't see the reasons for having an exhibit to many semi-notable Jews and a number of completely non notable Jews just because of their race. It somewhat annoyed me. The architecture was interestign though.

We basically headed right back to the hostel and hit the bar, at some point in between we got food or something.

Day 16

Day 16 was always going to be a travel day, which means it should be cheap. But oh no, it wasn't. Our train to Malmo was booked up in second class, meaning we had to fork out 55 each for first class. So I was already 10 euro over budget for the day. For breakfast I had 2 crossiants and 5 bananas in order to save cash. We then got our train, 5 hours of free fruit and wifi. We had about 30 minutes in Malmo, but the train was delayed quite a lot.

Once we reached malmo I had to buy internet so I could look up the reservation number, we did this printed the tickets then tried to spend our last Swe Krone in Burger King, however this was the world's slowest fast food, and we ended up sprinting for the train, hopping on at the very back before strolling up to our couchette.

We basically ate our food before getting into the beds and trying to get some sleep, but before we dozed off, I shit you not, our train boarded a fucking ship. Yes I know, it makes literrally zero sense, Europe has cheats. Thats the only logical explanation.

Day 15 - Theme Park

Right so we got up at 9 am just so we could be first to a theme park nearby, we had free entry on our card so it was banter. We just hit the rides real quickly. We started small, with the biggest free fall in Europe. It was called tilt and we couldn't work out why. So when we finally reached the top of the tower we were ready to fall, and didn't expect the seats to all drop forward so we were looking down, scary shit. I was moving so fast I couldn't hear myself scream.

We then moved on to one that was a just a kinda standard roller coaster but the carriages were like spinning as it went making it really interesting, at some points we were pulling 3.6g, this just went to show how sick the sport of F1 is, they pull that in most high speed corners and can still manage to drive a car.

We then went to some shops and things before hitting a pub for the grand prix, was a goodish race, I guess it was a little boring after the start. We then headed out to the Nobel museum before switching hostel. Our new hostel was near our first and was real banterous, we talked with a Swede and some Dutchies, got some food and came back. On our way back in we met the Dutchies with 2 Germans and a Canadian heading out so we went with them and hit a pub. The night was banterous really. But at the end of the day we ended up in a nearby fountain getting soaked.

Day 14 - Warewolves

Day 14 was to be our last day in hostel before we switched into the city center. We left kinda late, I dunno why really.

We started the morning with a boat tour around the Islands of the Archipeglo of Stockholm, saw some of the nicer sights and all for free on our stockholm card. The tour was savage we just managed to see a lot of the Stockholm as the city is based on an archipegelo of like 14 islands.

We went to visist this Island park called Skansen which was a bit of a mystery to us, we knew there were like old style buildings and animals there, but no one could say if it was a park a musuem or a zoo. We ate there which was probably a bad economic decision, before heading into the park, not entirely thrilled with the inital look of the place. However we headed across the park to the animals and it was kinda cool, we saw some wolves, bears and elk and stuff, then moved on to a lemur enclosure where we could just walk around with them, then various baboons and a things, before a small aquarium.

Once we left Skansen we went back to our old hostel and lay around before heading off to our new one with no directions or anything. Banter, we reached the old town Gamlastan and started walking around trying to find the place, after several failures I whacked out the laptop and found some wifi (thank you Sweden) and within minutes we were in our hostel, or rather outside it. Too late for check in, I had to do it over the phone. The place was small but nice, and more importantly bang in the center of the old town.

Half the old town was a pub club district which was dominated by Irish pubs, places like "Temple Bar" "The Liffey" "O Leary's" and "The Dubliner" were all down there, however everything closed at around midnight there. We met some South African lads and bantered with them for a while before heading back to our hostel.

At around 12:30 we went off to the cliffs on the islands opposite to see Stockholm from above at night, it was amazing. While up there we met some of Stockholms less well off young citizens. For some reason though they didn't mug us just sat and talked and told us they hated Stockholm. Was an experience.