As a final fling before heading to La Rosiere in France for the ski season, we decied to have a holiday to Berlin and then head to Poland to meet up with Ed and Di for the weekend. After a 3.30am alarm we arrived at our hostel in East Berlin where all the action seems to be. We managed to catch up with the walking tour that day. It was run by an Aussie girl (reminded me of Lizzie) who was doing her masters in German history. It was a fabulous way to start our trip and great to have a run down of the history, see the historical sights (of which there are many) relating to WWII and the impact on the current mindset of the Germans.
The Christmas markets were just starting up at that point and it was lovely and cold - the gluehvein (hot wine) was perfect! The most unusual thing about Berlin for us was the fake buildings - yes, they have erected scaffolding several stories high and have dropped down great sheets around it with pictures of offices and shops! Apparently they are there to fill the spaces on the skyline Berlin has no money to actually build new buildings. Very sad but an ingenious way to deal with it! Spot the fake building in the photos above. The photos also include the memorial to the Jews killed in the WWII (the big concrete boxes), Checkpoint Charlie, and a wall of pictures and information about WWII, the Cold War and what it was like in East Berlin before the wall came down.
We were tired of cheap flights and long airport waits so we decided to get the overnight train from Berlin to Krakow. If you look it up on the internet, this route has a very bad reputation for theives and there are even stories of people being gassed and then robbed so I was a little nervous (Steve tells me not to be ridiculous as people train for years to be anaesthetists and it is a very fine line between people going to sleep with gas and being killed, so if the stories were true many people would have died - he's probably right-ish). One of our companions was asleep but the other (a German who could also speak Polish) cracked a beer so we had found a likeminded friend! After the few beers that had been brought had run out, our friend had a quiet word with the conductor who used all his power and sway to get us a bottle of very good Polish vodka for €10! We followed him up and down the train going through a whole lot of locked doors before he proudly gave it to us. He also found us an empty cabin and some blankets and plastic cups so we wouldn't disturb our room mate. We drank it Polish style (straight up) but it was very good and quite delicious.
Poland was the perfect follow on from Berlin in a historical sense and continued our WWII history lesson with a trip to Auschwitz, which was very moving. It was almost too hard to imagine it functioning. We also visited the Jewish quarter and a Synagogue and learnt a lot more about the Jewish religion. We also had a trip to the Salt Mines which was weird and wonderful.
We also ate a ridiculous amount of great Polish food, including one posh night out (still so cheap!). It was fantastic to spend some time with Ed and Di. We also saw our first snow for the season, and bought some snow boots, which got us ridiculously excited about going to France!
Steve and I stayed on an extra day and made the mission up to Mound Kosiusko (Tadeusza Kosciuski who discovered Australia's highest mountain is Krackow's favouite son - perhaps after J-PII - the former pope).
The final excitement of the trip was missing our flight and hanging about the airport for 7 hours until the next flight. God bless the internet or we would have gone crazy.
