Germany

Guten Morgan Deutschland. Another train day today. But before that we had to walk to the station past this thing. No idea what it is, but it’s quite beautiful.

5 hours to Berlin. I think we like the train days so much because on the non-train days we get up, have breakfast and then walk around in the cold for 6 hours looking at buildings. On train days we just walk to the train and then rest until it’s time for a beer. Much more civilised. For most of the trip we had a cabin to ourselves.

We arrived in Berlin in the afternoon, which was quite lucky because the trip I was planning saw us arriving in Munich at about the same time. It was only because I checked how far it was to the hotel from the train (5 hrs 14 mins) that I realised my mistake.

Obligatory Fawlty Towers Joke

“Don’t mention the war, I mentioned it…” you get the idea. But actually they don’t stop going on about it here. Every bloody street corner has something about the war and they are all deep apologies. One park here is dedicated to saying sorry to all of the kittens teased by the Hitler Youth. We get it. You are sorry. Move on.

Berlin is another definite favourite of ours. It’s bloody cold and today it decided to rain, but its got a lot of character. I don’t think there are any German’s here though. It seems to be overrun with Poms and Russians. Well you can’t have everything.

At the end of the war the allies didn’t know what to do with the spoils, especially the city of Berlin, so they turned to the wisdom of King Solomon. “Chop the fucker in half.” he said, “Works every time.” So they did. They divided the rubble into 4 equal piles. Russia grabbed one, America grabbed one and Britain and France both went home with a bag full of rocky souvenirs. Then America and Russia spent 16 years glaring across the city at each other and saying “No, you’re rubbish” to each other before Russia got the shits that everyone was leaving to join the American side because of chewing gum and denim jeans. The Russians build a huge fuck off wall and told everyone on their side that they were free, but a bit like Cathy Bates in Misery they would have to kill them if they tried to leave. Then East Germany won everything in the Olympics because it was the only way to get out of the country (although I think even average pole vaulters could have managed it having had look at the Berlin Wall close up).

Then in 1989 Roger Waters knocked the wall down and in 1991 the whole country was reunited. But true to form by 1999 they had taken over Europe again only this time all the countries they hadn’t conquered were desperate to be included and were jumping up and down shouting “Me! Pick me!” while Greece kept very quiet and apologised for not being able to contribute more to Europe but it was out of work and have you seen Athens? It’s our capital city and it looks like Berlin in 1945.

The Berlin Wall

A bit like how everyone in Scotland has a piece of grass that they got from the time Scotland beat England at football at Wembley and some smart arse thought to bring a spade to the game, there are bits of the Berlin Wall all over the place.

In case you weren’t sure this is the American side, it has a MacDonalds.

I don’t know how Hitler managed to torch the Reichstag in all this rain.

Of course we did a bus tour.

We also thought we’d found another shitty little model-of-this-city thing.

But it turns out they sell Mini’s in Berlin.

And Tub came triumphantly through the Brandenburg Gate just like Hitler and Napoleon before her, but they didn’t have tourists with them at the time, or come to think of it maybe they did.

Annoyed at having missed out on the Elgin Marbles, Napoleon nabbed the statue off the top of the gate and took it home to put on his patio. He may not really have been as short as history likes to depict him, but he was a serious klepto.

Lunch

We went to a restaurant underneath the train arches. I was expecting it to be full of bald Cockney’s fixing “mowtars”, but it was like I imagine 1930s Berlin to have been.

There was a group booking in the corner.

Then we went to ‘The Museum of Being Extremely Sorry’ and looked at some stuff about the First World War. The only thing they aren’t taking the blame for is Rammstein.

It was pretty fancy. Shame they didn’t have any exhibits. They were sorry about that too.

But they had a genuine piece of the Berlin Wall. Who’d have thunk it.

Plumbing

I don’t know why, but in Berlin they seem to be moving all of the sewage above ground.

We’ve seen this at quite a few places. If any viewer knows the reason for this or has access to Google, please send in your answer on a stamped addressed envelope to “Berlin Sewage Quiz, PO Box 2134, Munich. I mean Berlin”.

We loved it here.

Well as JFK famously said when he addressed a crowd in Berlin during the Cold War, “I fucked Marilyn Munroe. Top that.”

Next…

Only 10 more hotels to go and this holiday will be finished. Boo.

Tomorrow is Frankfurt, the home of the sausage.

I’ll leave you with some random shit off the internet. It’s old but still makes me laugh.

Frankfurt

Tuftsy points out in the comments below that JFK did indeed make a speech in Berlin in which he called himself a pastry. Had he gone to Frankfurt, who knows what he would have described himself as. To be fair though, German is a tough language. For some reason back in the 90’s Tub and I decided to try to learn German. I have no recollection of why. We spent all of the money we had on a complete box set of cassette tapes sold to us by a nice man in an ill fitting suit who arrived at the door one day. There were about 25 of them in total and they took you through a long story about a family meeting a friend at the airport, going home, going our for dinner and then doing a thousand other things before dropping him back at the airport. We never got the poor fucker out of the airport in the first place, tape 1. To this day the full extent of our German is:

“Haben Sie etwas zu verzollen?” [have you anything to declare?]

“Ja. Eine Flasche Wein.” [yes, a bottle of wine]

Luckily this is all you need to get around Germany so we are glad we learnt the language.

So goodbye Berlin! We really liked it here.

The bloody train was 40 minutes late. At least this won’t happen in Italy.

I’ve been to Frankfurt before. I came here with James Wartho when Macquarie was looking to buy a German bank. It was the height of the financial crash and we watched them take down the UBS sign from the building next door as people explained how this was the perfect time to buy a European bank. They bought it anyway and it lost $10M a month until they finally flushed it down the toilet. Happy days.

I wasn’t keen on coming back because I didn’t think there was anything to do here. But we came anyway. Which was a mistake. There really isn’t anything to do here other than buy banks. Just to give you an idea, here are some of the top things to do in Frankfurt according to TripAdvisor.

No 43 is a building that you can’t go inside.

34 is the Tourist Information Office.

At 33 is a church. “Worth spending a few minutes…”

24 is worth a look.

At 23 we have a bridge.

Up at 17 we have this, which is actually quite a nice building.

I know this because we visited it. It was hard not to, its the fucking train station. And there really isn’t anything worth visiting any higher up.

The last hotel was the Berlin Hilton, this one is next to a second hand gravestone shop at the side of a freeway.

So the evening consisted of:

Crap curry

Walking around closed shops until we found an Aldi.

This is actually quite a drinkable Rioja for 4.99.

We know this because we had a bottle with our curry. I cost 33 Euro in there.

Then we walked back to the hotel along the road and passed the closed brewery.

We spent the rest of the night watching BBC TV in the hotel room. We watched a program of people being filmed watching TV. That seemed an appropriate point to declare the holiday suspended until further notice.

Yup. That’s it. No sightseeing. No tour buses and no ”˜I Heart Frankfurt’ T-shirts. It’s off.

Wednesday

Today is just Wednesday. We aren’t on holiday, we just aren’t going to work either. But we did go to Wall Street.

Not that one. This one. Where the laundrette is.

And I went for a much overdue haircut. Unfortunately when he asked me how short we had a misunderstanding about the units. I meant centimetres and he meant microns. I should have known it would be a bit too short when he brought out the orbital sander. After the first snip it was too late.

This afternoon we did the ironing and watched Countdown and Come Dine With Me. This evening is going to be bridge. With any luck the holiday can start again tomorrow when we go to Amsterdam for a few spliffs and a windmill.

Frankfurt isn’t as bad as Sofia but it is a shithole. I’ve nominated the Laundrette on Wallstrasse as one of the top things to do, lets see how many votes it gets.