After packing up the car, we left Raspberry Hill around noon and set off for Berlin. We drove through the countryside and finally got on to a main highway. We had a little bit of a ‘lost in translation’ misunderstanding at the cafeteria at the services and ended up going to the next one down the road!

We drove right through Berlin to our hotel and parked at the nearest car park which was at the Waldorf Atoria – very fancy, the lobby was beautiful with a pianist entertaining the guests, so we walked out the front door (with envy) to out budget hotel (which was very nice). We unloaded the car and then went in search of a park and ride. Arriving a bit late we didn’t have a map of the city or underground so after finding the park and ride we were a bit lost. Luckily we found a young couple from London who pointed us in the right direction. As per our usual arrival routine we had a quite night in the hotel.

On Monday we slept in and missed the 2pm walking tour, so we explored the main shopping street which our hotel was located next to. However, we then missed the 4pm walking tour! After no internet for a week, we needed to apply for jobs in France rather urgently. As the connection was too slow in our room we went from McDonalds to Starbucks in search of WiFi and then back to the hotel lobby. We did get them submitted in the end (fingers crossed we are successful). That left us with a few minutes to get ready for a night out in Berlin! We ‘crawled’ our way through 4 pubs and a club – it was lots of fun, especially for our first night out in Europe! We thought the underground ran all night but it turns out they stop at 12.30. We ended up splitting a taxi with a fellow Canadian – good thing too as it was 25 euros!

We awoke on Tuesday with a bit of a hangover. We managed to make the 4pm walking tour. We saw lots of the city, such as a section of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie. We learned a lot about WW2 – it was so sad that no pre-war buildings really survived. They had made an attempt to rebuild some of the significant architecture but it wasn’t the same. We came back to have a quick bit of dinner and then went to the B Flat jazz club! We heard some great jazz from an Australian band called the Vampires.

On Wednesday Natalie went for a journey to find the car. Unfortunately we didn’t make a note of the bus stop so after waiting for the bus, the bus driver saying “take the underground”, finding the right platform, changing trains it took an hour to find it but so worth it for the savings of 10 euros a day to park!

After checking out of the hotel we drove just north of the city to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. This was a camp that was built in the early 30s on which most other camps were modeled after. It was a very grim yet fascinating afternoon – we were both pleased we took the time to visit, we only wished we had a few more hours to spend there.