Berlin, Germany!

Before heading up north to Hamburg to stay with my German relatives, we spent 2 nights in Berlin! Our time there wasn’t too eventful since it was super rainy and actually quite cold (it should be called Brrrrrlin….haaaa), so walking around and exploring wasn’t the most enjoyable activity. Of course we visited the Berlin Wall, the Reichstag, and the Brandenburg Gate. We also found Hannah’s grandma’s childhood home, back when it was still West Prussia, which was really cool except for the fact that the building was all covered up due to construction…  Other than that, we spent a lot of time hiding out in cafes away from the incessant rain. I was also feeling sick during our one full day there so we headed back to our hostel in the afternoon and took a nap. Once again we had a 4 person room and had a new roommate coming for the second night. Of course, he arrived while we were all curled up in our beds sleeping at 5 in the afternoon. In Berlin. Adventurous little travellers we are! Little did we know that in approximately 7 hours he would become our worst enemy…. We’ll get to that in a moment. After this, we went out and walked around to find a cute cafe for a little dinner and some tea to warm up. Sometimes it’s nicer to just hangout in coffee shops and imagine what it’s like to live in the city rather than running around seeing all the tourist sights. Anyway, we returned to our hostel later and got back into bed, hoping we would just be asleep when our roomie returned to avoid the awkward struggle of getting ready for bed with a stranger in the room. This just ended up making us look really stupid when he came back, at around 10 o’clock, and we were STILL in bed. It looked like we never even left!!!! We couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous he must have thought we were for staying in bed all day and night while visiting a foreign city. Embarrassing.  Now to the worst part. Our roomie, who’s name is unknown but we decided he looked like a José, is the worst snorer I have ever encountered in my 19 years of existence. I woke up at 3 am and truly believed there was an angry snorting hog sleeping beneath me. (I was on the top bunk) My goodness I have never heard such loud and awful noises escape the mouth of a sleeping human being. I can’t even express how obnoxiously loud these snores were. At one point, he snored SO LOUD that he woke himself up. I kid you not. He also went on these weird fits after he would wake up briefly where he scratched (?) himself or wiggled around so viciously that the whole bunk bed was jiggling. I don’t even know how an individual can be so unpleasant to sleep in the same room with. I wanted to die. Even with headphones blasting music in my ears, I could still hear it. This is not an exaggeration, it was BAD. If you couldn’t guess, I got very little sleep that night. Maybe 5 hours. José was not the ideal roommate. Thankfully we were out of there the next day. See ya never, Jos.  And that is all I have to report for our time in Berlin! Up next: Hamburg (aka mostly other small northern Germany towns)

Tal