The keyboards in Europe are so weird...

I am a complete idiot and have already managed to lose my camera battery and the tulip umbrella I bought in Edam. The camera battery sucks big time, since it was right before the two cities I would most want my camera for - Berlin and Prague. I am quite clearly completely retarded. We’re stopping in Dresden on the way to Prague too, and I am the fool without a camera.

Berlin has been relatively low-key. After the night out in Amsterdam, I was somewhat of a wreck and after dinner went and checked my email, amnd then just crashed. We had some randoms knock on our door at 3am, only for me to answer it and have some random Germans speak random German while I stared at them blankly.Then we got a phone call at 7.30am as well. There is clearly a large number of the German population smoking crack.

We did a walking tour in the morning, which I wouldn’t have missed. Despite Berlin being painfully cold (local government should really do something about that) the tour really was fantastic. I love the city, if only for the incredibly history it has. All these restored 15th century buildings standing two or three streets down from ugly Communist flats. I think the Communist remnants intrigue me more than anything else. The contemporary yet totally alien concept of it makes it so interesting - it happened only 15 years ago, yet it seems like a throw back to a whole other time. To imagine what it would be like to live under such a regime is impossible, yet it still existed in our lifetime. The Berlin Wall was another surreal kind of experience - the symbolism of these stretches of concrete is impressive. The idea that communism could be so horrendously misconstrued is incredible, too, though I can only say that with the benefit of knowing something of the real theory of true utopian communism. How can such an idealist ideology be warped into the repressive hell that far more closely resembles fascism than actual, pure socialism? Berlin was fabulous for that quality - how closely fascism and communism mirror each other in one city with such a short timespan. The capital of Hitleràs fascist regime, with persecution and fear, book’burning, deportation and then suddenly Stalin’s puppet city with just as many political prisoners, repression and fear. The city (or at least the East) just traded one tyrant for another. It must be so resilient, it was only 1990 that it reunified, yet it stands as a fantastically vibrant town. I loved Berlin. I am going to have to go back, the day we spent there was not nearly enough.

Meilz and I hit the Jewish Museum, which was far bigger than expected. Quite haunting, too. The Holocaust Tower was the eeriest thing. It was this massive steel tower located at the end of a hallway, through a heavy door and you just wander into the hollow tower. Its completely dark, about five metres across, fifteen the other way, tapering into a corner. It was about 20m tall. You can just hear faint echoes from outside, but it is just mostly the echo of your own footsteps and they fall in the strangest way. It was quite intense. Meilz and I were both rather unsettled by it, but it was incredibly effective as a memorial. The memorial in town, with the concrete blocks, was very impressive as well, where you walk into the blocks the ground kind of becomes uneven and the blocks get taller and suddenly you’re surrounded by 3 or 4m of concrete blocks and you can’t see anyone around you or how to get out.

I love that Hitler’s marble was turned into a train station, as well. Just one beautiful red marble train station in all of Berlin.

Meilz and I totally mastered (yeah, mastered is the word I'm going to use) the Berlin tram system. We’re amazing. We absolutely did not catch a tram in the wrong direction. Of course we didn’t. We also didn’t have to walk back to the other station we initially came from in order to find a tram in the right direction. We’re not stupid or anything. By the end of the night we totally had it sorted, though, we were all over it.

There are some nice people on tour, but also a fairly signifcant number of total wankers. There were some dickheads at the back of the bus getting pissed (one reminds me of Joey...not a nice first impression to make) and just being total tossers - in that typical group of six or seven boys all together in one place with a pack mentality and some grog. Aside from them there are a handful or really nice people who don't seem to be missing a vital part of their frontal lobe.

Still no snow. I thought it was supposed to be winter!