It sounded pretty cool. I woke up at about 8:00 AM and started to write the story of the walking tour. I needed some cigarettes and remembered seeing a cigarette machine in the lobby. It was about 11:00 AM and my last cigarette was about 9:00 PM the night before. I went downstairs to investigate. I only had paper money and the machine only took coins. It's 5 Euro for a pack of cigarettes in Germany. I went to the reception desk to get some change and told the guy it was for the cigarette machine. He gave me some change and I tried to get some cigarettes but it wasn't working for some reason.
The writing was in German and I couldn't figure out what the display was saying. something about "Ziggi" or something. I went back to reception but there was a lot of people queued up to check out. I went back upstairs and continued writing. I chatted with a friend a little on Skype and my mum called me in between. .After about 35 minutes I assumed the queue would be clear and I headed back down to reception. I spoke to the guy at reception and he suddenly remembered he was supposed to give me a card to put in the machine that verifies I am legal age.
So I go back to the machine. It still doesn't work. I play around with it a little bit and finally it spits out a pack of Marlboro Red. I went outside and smoked one of the cigarettes and went back upstairs feeling dizzy as it had been so long since my last cigarette. I also bought a can of Red Bull from the vending machine. I finished writing the story then got ready for the tour.
I had to leave at about 1:00 PM for the tour. The meeting point was outside the Old Post Office building in East Berlin. On the way I needed to stop and buy a train ticket as the tour involved some sort of train trip. I chatted some more on Skype and then left for the tour.
There was a train station not far from the hotel where I got the taxi the day before. I walked to the train station and made a quick stop at the ATM on the way. I entered the station and tried to use a machine to buy the required ticket but I didn't know if I was buying the right one. I saw a DB office nearby and thought "I'll just get it from there". I walked in and got in line for the counter. I explained to the woman that i was told I needed an "AB Transit Card". She asked me "How long do you want it for?" I had no idea so we ended up agreeing on a day pass which was 6,50 Euro. I got the ticket and went through the exit on the other side of the station to get a taxi.
I showed the driver where I wanted to go on the map I had and off we went. I arrived at the meeting point about 40 minutes early, so I walked around East Berlin a little bit and looked for some food. I found a nice little bakery and bought a Ham and Salad roll and a bottle of water. I walked back to the meeting point and sat on the stairs and ate. "Great, that killed 15 minutes", I thought. So I stood around and smoked a cigarette while I waited.
Some more people started showing up and loitering so I assumed they were there for the tour too. About 10 minutes before the tour started, Mary the hot Spanish girl that I bought the ticket from the night before showed up with another guide. We all gathered around and a guy started asking me if he was in the right place. I told him to speak to the guide and off he went. He came back and we started talking. He was Lithuanian but living in Barcelona. He spoke English really well and didn't have much of an accent.
Grace (the tour guide) introduced herself and the tour and we all said where we were from. There were quite a few people. There was a big group of people from Israel. They were apparently real estate agents. There were a few Australians too. We headed off and Nedius (The Lituanian guy) and I chatted for awhile.
We visited a big old building known as 'Techeles'. Techeles was a squat that was occupied by a community of artists. They had set up a gallery and cafe and club out of the building, but were recently evicted by the banks and looking for a new premises. It's a sad story, but it's a fantastic site. They are still allowed to have a gallery of sorts on the grounds of the premises, but not allowed in the building. The Israeli group didn't appear to be too interested.
After visiting Techeles, Grace took us around and showed various grafitti and street art done by famous street artists. She explained the methods and materials they used and outlined what the message was in some of the pieces. I started talking to a girl from Sydney who was there with her sister. Midway through we took a break in this cool little bar that's down an alleyway where different artists have been allowed to legally paint murals. During the break I sat with Grace and the sisters and we talked about how she became a tour guide and Grace told some funny stories about the tours going horribly wrong. After the break, the Israeli group had disappeared, but as I said earlier, they never appeared interested anyway.
At the end of the tour we went to see the 'East Side Gallery'. This is a stretch of the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall that when it was brought down a woman paid to have it remain and street artists came and painted murals on it. It's very cool. This section you can actually touch and it was cool to touch the Berlin Wall. I walked some of the way along it and took in some of the artwork, but it was about 5:30 PM and it was freezing cold and starting to get cold.
It was a good tour. My friend Luke would have loved it. We saw some great pieces and I got to see more of East Berlin too. Berlins an awesome city and Germany as a whole is fairly liberal in it's views. As long as you're not hurting anybody, you can basically do whatever you want.
After visiting the 'East Side Gallery', I walked around for half an hour trying to find a taxi. Eventually I stumbled across a hotel and in front was a line of taxis. I got one back to the station near the hotel. We seemed to hit the Berlin peak hour and it took awhile to get back and cost 20,00 Euro. I was starving and knew there was lots of food around the station. I found a Burger King because that was the easiest to get too and had a Double Whopper meal. I was starving, all I ate for the day was that sandwich.
After leaving Burger King, I went back to the hotel and began packing as I was leaving for Hamburg the next day. It was about 7:30 PM by the time I returned to the hotel. I was a little disappointed because I would have loved to stay in Berlin longer, but one day I will return. I went to bed around 10:00 PM.
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