Checkpoint Charlie and the chocolate factory

We reached Berlin Ostbahnhof (eastern train station) yesterday afternoon and met up with Dave's friend Ralf soon after. We would have gotten to our hostel fairly quickly if it wasn't for Ralf's friends, locals who seemed to be lost in the metro system, and kept arguing about which train to catch to get to our hostel.

We eventually reached the "Heart of Gold" hostel, which carried a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme. After getting settled in to our dorm, we headed over to Postdamer Platz to see about some tickets to Berlinale screenings. We managed to score a couple of tickets for tonight and a massive burger at a sports cafe.

We didn't really know what to do for the rest of the night, so we decided to go on a pub crawl. We managed to meet up with Ralf and his friend Stefan halfway through the crawl. Anyway, I don't remember much of the night due to the free vodka, but it somehow involved me stealing matches, a lighter, and spraining my ankle (and Dave stealing a pint glass) and, somewhere in between that, dancing with some Dane who loved crown princess Mary of Denmark. Twas a good night.

Today we woke up pretty hung over from the night before, but still soldiered on to do a walking tour of Berlin. It was a very informative tour, and the highlights were the book burning memorial, a meal at Schlotsky's, and hearing about the uprising leading up to the tearing down of the Berlin wall. Two small but very interesting details also managed to stick with me from the tour.

1) A prominent Nazi building now houses a Russian travel agency and a Chinese peking restaurant; and
2) We visited Checkpoint Charlie, where there was a stand-off between the East Germans and the Americans that nearly prompted WWIII... AND we also checked out a famous chocolate store in the same tour. Freaky, no?

Anyway, after the tour we had a bit of rest back at the hostel then headed off on our mini Berlinale tour. We first watched "The Night Listener" starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. It was quite a good film, and I really enjoyed the Q&A with the director and writer of the original novel at the end of the film.

After having some feed at Cafe Adler (the former CIA spy cafe at Checkpoint Charlie), we headed over to the Reichstag, the house of parliament, to see some night views of the city while admiring the architecture of the dome at the top.

We ended the night by watching another film, a German film called "Lenz", which was a very unique and interesting film. It was a shame that the Q&A afterwards was in German, so we couldn't really understand any of it.

It's now about 4:30 am and, since our flight leaves at around 9:25 am, meaning we'll have to be at the airport at 7:25 am, we have decided to do the responsible thing and just stay at the 24 hour bar at the hostel drinking beer until 6 in the morning.