Fall of the Wall

Its cold, cloudy, and I am lucky to be inside sheltered from the elements writing this update. After spending a few party filled days in Dresden, taking the afternoons to explore the re-built old town, my travels took me up here to Berlin, where we ran in to a bit of bad luck.

(our new friends in dresden)

The original plan was to stay with these crazy Germans living East Berlin that we met in Budapest and partied with for several days. We exchanged several emails and I thought every thing was going to be nice and easy, they even wanted to come pick us up from the train station when we arrived, but as it started getting closer to our arrival date they stopped responding to my emails.

I'm sure its not intentional, merely bad memory or something, but it turn out with Braden and I arriving in Berlin with no where to stay and no phone number to contact. We had a recommendation of a good hostel on the other side of the city, so with no better plan, we grabbed the U bahn across the city to find the hostel, only to discover that it was fully booked. Not only that, but he told me that every other hostel in the entire city was booked as well, and he had turned away no less than 50 other people that night alone! This was cause for concern.

(Berlin)

The first course of action was to find an Internet cafe and start doing some searching. Sure enough, hostelworld.com (the main Internet database for hostels in any country) listed every single hostel in Berlin as unavailable for that night. Unbelievable. After about an hour of some stressful head scratching and brainstorming, we decided that the best course of action (one of the only available courses of action actually) was to try and book a hostel for the next night, see if they could hold our bags the current night, and party till the sun came up and we could officially check in. After some cross referencing we found a place that was close enough to walk to that was available the next night and agreed to hold our bags for a day.

(All Braut, no bun, the way real Germans eat it)

Luck was finally on our side. We headed out to the place and talked with the guy at the desk and explained our story. He did a bit of investigating and discovered they had one remaining free bed, and one woman that was double booked, meaning we had two beds free at the hostel! Booyah! We quickly claimed them, excited that we would not have to stay up until 3pm the next day, when the check in hours started. After that it was time for a nice celebratory dinner and a few pints.

(Brandenburg gate ready for the festival)

Turns out Berlin is completely booked out right now because tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, quite possibly one of the most significant events of our time. There will be a huge celebration tomorrow at the main center of town, including a symbolic display of 1000 gigantic 9 ft high dominoes that run along the old path of the Berlin wall that they will knock down. Excitement is incredibly high right now every where you go, and I can only imagine the scene that will occur tomorrow. Mikhail Gorbachev and Kofi Annon are included as guests of the event as well.(the Berlin wall)