Germany was not a country I was interested in going to. So when Ben suggested going to Berlin for a few days before going to Hamburg to celebrate his friend Liam's 21st I agreed with no particular enthusiasm.
Then a few days before we left I started to get a bit excited. As I might have mentioned, my interest in history - especially the two world wars - is increasing as I age, and I decided I would like to see the Holocaust Memorial and the Berlin Wall.
So I was in a good mood when we arrived in Germany, and the few days we spent there were fantastic.
Ben got his head round the U-Bahn train stations quickly and we ended up filling our days up to the brim with excursions and adventures.
But I'll try to start from the beginning.
The hotel was really nice - although, like the rest of Berlin, they seemed to have found the look they wanted to go with back in the 70s and decided to stick with it. I recommend it, if you go - the
Agon Aldea Hotel - clean and comfy and pleasant.
From there we visited the Potzdamer Platz, where we grabbed some interesting looking pastries for our first breakfast. Ben did ok, but I managed to chose something that appeared to basically be cherry crumble on a doughnut. Awesome? Yes; healthy breakfast? Not so much.
On Liam's recommendation we opted to spend one day taking a bus tour around the city. We though this was a good idea as we could hop on and off, and we chose a rainy day to go so that we wouldn't have to trudge around too much outside.
Unfortunately, like the hotel, the bus we ended up on seemed to have been made in the 70s and not updated since.
We hopped on and attempted to sit downstairs, but the driver stopped us with some expressive yet gutteral grunts and jerked his thumb up the stairs. The meaning was clear; get up to the top deck or I might murder you.
We acquiesed to his request.
Upstairs the canvas roof of the bus that peels back on sunny days was loosely strapped down. The important word in that sentence is loosely, as everytime there was a particularly enthusiastic gust of wind it flapped up, allowing all the rain that had collected on it and the rain still falling to drop squarely on my head. Soon there was a mini tide flowing up and down the aisle and we gave up on trying to hear the recorded guide through the tinny headphones and started concentrating on staying dry.
This is not usually what one expects to concern oneself with on a bus tour.
Luckily we had actually managed to find most of the important things on our own anyway; though my appalling lack of knowledge on certain subjects meant that I didn't quite grasp the historical relevance of the Brandenburg
Gate until it was explained to be later, and just thought it was a nice looking monument. Wikipedia tells me pitingly "It is considered one of Europe's most famous landmarks"; thanks Wikipedia, I felt silly enough already. You didn't have to rub it in, you know-it-all online encyclopedia smartass.
The Holocaust Memorial was just round the corner, and at least I knew more about that then the American blog writer my friend Tim just told me about, who refers to it as "some sort of Jewish memorial. You could climb on all the blocks like a giant game of Q-Bert!"
Although Ben did quite enjoy playing hide and seek whilst I was trying to be melancholy and pensive.
We were sad to leave our hotel room but the train ride to Hamburg made up for it - they gave us free muffins, orange juice, and then a little chocolate in a box for no apparent reason.
Liam seemed to get the better deal of this year in industry thing - rather than living in a little room with an interfering busybody upstairs and a drunk man downstairs, he lives in a huge seven bedroom house with one other person, surrounded by beautiful countryside. If that isn't bad enough, they have two washing machines and a dishwasher. I shook my fist at that, I can tell you.
We spent a day in Hamburg, where we accidentally happened upon the celebrations for the 321st anniversary of the harbour. I would have liked to have seen more of Hamburg than we did, but my wishes were granted when Ben and I rocked up to the airport check in on Sunday and were told we'd booked a flight for Monday.
"Do you want to go back to the hotel in Berlin?" Ben asked ruefully. "We could say 'Please let us stay, we used to have a reservation, it
was for last week, but can we stay anyway?'"
We never found out if that plan would have worked, as a quick visit to the internet found us an awesome hotel that Ben only picked because they offered free bathrobes and slippers.
"Slippers! Slippers, Amanda, slippers!" he cried gleefully, his little face lighting up.
Who could say no to that?
