It's been a while, which may be a good thing so people had time to catch up on the extremely long posts I've been dishing out of late for those who have survived reading to this point. Last I left you I had been in Amsterdam in the midst of looming decisions; prostitutes, hallucinogens, marijuana, gouda, ferris wheels, and more.
I'll begin with me reserving my train ticket to Berlin, it was a story I accidentally omitted last time. I headed over there looking to make sure I'd be able to get out at some point. I got in line, got to the desk and then heard a giant commotion behind me. I turned around to see one guy yelling at another, in what appeared to be friends joking around. The one dude getting yelled at had the look of I just pissed my friend off, but he'll get over it as he chases me, but like a person realizing they may die his face turned to a look of terror. The other guy took a big swing nailing him in the face. I was semi-amused until the woman helping me let out a blood-curdling scream. At first I thought this was security procedure, see a fight, scream and get security, but she was visibly shaken. At that moment from behind a wall this huge Indian guy about 6'6 and 300 pounds of pure muscle got in between those two guys. The one who instigated the fight got thrown back, he thought for a brief moment to fight the Indian guy, but he quickly realized he'd be dead instantly. Within another minute security rushed over and separated the two. The woman helping me was broken down in tears (she was in her 60s, and I don't think used to violence) and I had to be helped by someone else. I stuck around for a while to watch them get interviewed. The guy who started the fight ran away before being detained and I couldn't understand the language so had no idea what happened while they spoke with the kid attacked.
As for my last day in Amsterdam, I woke up early to walk around. There was not much more to see museum-wise, and I wasn't in the mood for that stuff anyway. I read about a cool music store went there, they had thousands of records, CDs, and tapes. It was a small store and you basically had to walk around boxes on the floor of records. I spent a little time in there and then I headed on to the Pancake Bakery my sister had been telling me about. I wasn't sure if she was just stoned when she had the pancakes to make them great or if they were that good, so I thought I'd try them out myself. I got there and the place was pretty busy, but very big so was easy to get a seat. I went with a banana and chocolate syrup pancake, one of their house specialties. It was similar to a crepe, but when you got towards the middle it had a solid fluffiness to it at well. I ate it up pretty quick, it was very good and headed on my way to walk around. I decided I'd actually do something that night and once again took my sister's suggestion to see Boom Chicago so I picked up a ticket to that and headed to the hostel. There I finally met a new roommate, so we hung out for a bit, got some dinner and he went on his way. I saw Boom Chicago, it's an impromptu show with all Americans as the cast. There were definitely some funny parts and I like yelling shit out for people to do. I was the random drunk kid alone in the front row, a solid role for myself. After that I decided to meet up with the kid I had met earlier. He was only in Amsterdam for a night so he wanted to walk through the red light district and then hit up some bars. I must say on a Friday night the quality of window girls improves a lot. I was convinced, so I paid about 50 euros for the best 20 minutes of my life, kidding. We did about a 10 minute walk and then did a bit of bar hopping around the city and called it a night.
I woke up the next day with the realization it was my last few hours in Amsterdam and I had choices to make. I apologize to those I mislead into thinking I'd be snorting coke off hookers. I decided against getting high and sitting on a train for 4 hours, I figured I'd be way too panicked. I bought some cheese for the ride and headed on my way. I wanted to get to the train early because I had to switch somewhere. I got on the train and then had about an hour wait at the next track. From there Berlin was an easy ride, getting to the hostel not so much. I tried to follow the directions from online, but couldn't find what they were talking about. I decided to take a chance and start walking. Not the best decision. With my backpack gaining strength as I weakened I knew after 45 minutes of walking it was time to find a new way. I found the closest metro and after switching three times was able to find my hostel, except I went into the Circus Hotel, not the hostel. So finally after being pointed in the right direction I got in to my hostel around 9 p.m at night, and it was Saturday, so I immediately ran to get food knowing I had little time before my night began. I went to a Mexican restaurant, in Germany, I know how sad. I got a chicken fajita knowing that was hard to screw up. I engulfed my first meal of the day and set up camp back at my hostel. Saturday was the NFL draft, so I sat on my iphone skyping with my dad for a few hours and tracking the in betweens on my phone. It may not be what most people do on their first night in Berlin, but I have priorities and obsessions.
The next day I woke up feeling I should meet people. I had met my roommates, 6 people traveling together from Spain. They seemed like a fun crew and were taping a weird movie of themselves singing American pop songs, but I never really spoke with them much. I decided to go on a Sunday flea market tour with my hostel. It'd be a good way to meet people and never know what I'd find. I woke up anxious that morning unfortunately so the ability to meet people was hindered by my own mind. The goal was to fight that feeling. We got to the first market around 11:30, I had yet to talk to anyone, but decided I was gonna wander myself anyway. There were some incredible music collections at the market. It pretty much seemed like a giant garage sale, which made the feel cooler. It wasn't just crap clothing, but truly random stuff like old video games, toys, music, books, and any random thing you could think of. I even saw an Ernie doll I used to have back in the day as a kid. My real mission though was to start trying some of the 1500 kinds of "wursts" that exist in the German culture. I immediately went for one of the most famous, the curry-wurst. A brat smothered in ketchup, curry, and paprika. It was quite fantastic, I was surprised because normally I'm not a huge catchup and sausage combo person, but worked well. We were all slated to rejoin as a group shortly after so I headed over to that area, grabbed a straight up bratwurst on my way this time and sat down with the group. Finally I started meeting a few people, who were all leaving that day, but at least I was able to talk with people for a few hours along the walking. They were students studying abroad, nice girls. I didn't buy anything at the markets, decided I'd head back with the girls who had to catch a train and do some site seeing on my own. I went to the Jewish museum there to see what kind of crazy Jew stuff they would have in Germany. The architecture on the building makes it real interesting to begin with, it's a very interesting set up. The museum took a couple hours to go through, the history was stuff I remembered learning, but they had some real cool actual art, some great history, and nice dedications to the past. The holocaust tower was quite terrifying though. I didn't actually read what it was, I just walked over there, opened the door, watched it shut behind me and realized I was in a pitch black empty cement room. The only light was a sliver of sun left from the outside. It definitely had a real eery feeling and got the point across. After that I walked around the area a bit more, walked down to checkpoint Charlie, took a few pictures. Walked around other parts of Berlin, passed by the holocaust memorial, saw their famous synaguoge and church and pretty much called it night. For some reason I was exhausted, it was pretty late. I grabbed some pizza around the block for real cheap and headed to sleep. On Monday I woke up a bit early, I wanted to do a walking tour, but I didn't make it on time to the first meeting place of the one I was going to do. I went to the Potsdam area, where they have a crazy Sony Center, a giant lego giraffe in front of lego world, and an overall creative area of architecture. I explored and by the time the other walking tours would begin I was too far away. I decided to do the Reichstag, it's free and you get an awesome view of the city. From there I headed back to the hostel after walking around a bit more and met all my new roommates.
One of the new roommates mentioned a pub crawl he was planning on going on. And so me and someone else decided to join along as well. It was a solid decision to go, met some awesome people and had a real fun night for my last night in Berlin. I figured I was recovered enough from my cold 2 weeks ago now that I could drink heavily and be fine with little sleep. I even met a dude who goes to Wisconsin, I finally know someone there. We got to the meeting place around 8:15 and nobody was really there yet so we hesitated for a while. We finally joined along, got our free beer and began. I ended up with 2 beers, and by 8:45 I knew I could be in trouble. We got to the first bar around 9 and immediately someone bought jager bombs. I had never actually had one, but after about 5 attempts at taking it down I finally did. From there the crawl leader handed out our "free" shots (they were like a thimble). The first shot was some good tasting cherry thing, second one was jager, not so tasty. Being that I was sufficiently drunk already I decided not to partake in the absynth shot that took place. During that time I struck up a conversation with some girl who I ended up hanging out with for most of the rest of the night. She wasn't about taking the shot either. We headed to the next bar shortly after where I was immediately handed a "party" shot. Not sure what was in it to be exact, but I had about 3 over the 45 minutes we were there, whoops. I chatted with people, we all took a lot of pictures, and then continued on to the next bar. At the bar the girl kept saying some weird term about getting drunk, I couldn't understand her, but next thing I knew she bought my a long island iced tea, so I wasn't turning that down. With every drink you get a free shot as well, so I figured this would be my last alcoholic endeavor for the evening. I took the shot, drank the long island and was still standing, a great sign. We all headed to the next bar, some semi-beach club type set up. I don't remember much about that place. I ended up on my own for a while as I stumbled drunk into the 16 different sections of the bar/club. I danced a bit, joked a bit with some people, and time flew by. It was finally time to head to the club, so that's what I did. I do remember one of the guides for the pub crawl looked exactly like Matt Nathanson though, it freaked me out. It also allowed me to introduce more people to the wonderful world of Matt, jackpot. The 20 or so of us headed on to the tram, I reconnected with people instead of stumbling around and we made it to the club. We all got to the club, I danced for a while with the girl I met and the others from the crawl. After about an hour at the club everyone got hungry, we all took a cab back to the hostel and ate. The girl had a 5 a.m train to catch and stayed elsewhere than us, so after I bought her the meal (I wasn't gonna let someone buy me a drink and not reciprocate) she had to go. I gave her a hug goodbye, realized I had probably established myself in the all too familiar friend zone about 3 hours ago (or 10 minutes into actually meeting her), laughed at myself and went on my way. We all passed out around 4, but was definitely a fun night.
As for today I hung out with a few of the people from the night before, ate a croissant, ate some sushi and went back to the reichstag with a friend of mine. He needed to know where the train station was and we were right there so we headed on up, it's free and the views are awesome so I enjoyed going again. Afterwards I headed onto my train and took off. I arrived in Prague around 9 p.m, I was a bit nervous. Other cities at night I was fine with arriving in, but this had a weird feel to me. The language is even stranger than others and the directions from the website were a bit odd. I walked through the park they told me to head through after going on the metro, got onto a tram, and finally found the place. It was a lot easier than imagined. I dropped my stuff off, went to a bar across the street to eat. Went with some beef goulash and Czech potato soup, both very good. I liked the place because it had old St Andrews Hall poster for a few concerts as well as other music memorobilia. Anyway, the computers are shutting down here and it's late. I think this was a bit shorter than in the past, maybe I'm doing less or forgetting more. Anyway, I'll try to be back soon. Hope everyone else is well out there.
-BK
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