Don't mention the Wall!

Berlin! I think I'm in love! I ought to start by mentioning my parents never taught me 'stranger danger' and i am so thankful!

I travelled to Berlin by means of carpooling with strangers...it's called mittfahrt and is big business here, and, along the way, met a middle aged photographer who was about to open a Mexican restaurant in Berlin while married to a Bochumer. Not only did this kind fellow keep me entertained the whole way by discussing methods and means of photography and commenting on my shots, when we reached our drop off point in Berlin in the pouring rain and close to freezing temperatures he practically held my hand and guided me through the city's underground, ensuring i knew EXACTLY where i was going and double and triple checking to see if i knew where i was to go when i get off the train. Once i disembarked i never saw our old pal Adan again but his help and generosity was the start of a magical time in the divided metropolis!

I head to a tiny kiosk to pick up keys to someone's apartment who i have never met before. The guy behind the counter looks me up and down but is satisfied that my backpack and beaming smile look like they belong to a 'carol' and hands me the keys in an envelope. The envelope has my name and a welcome note printed in neat little letters and my heart goes all warm already. I ascend slightly delapidated stairs through a graffitied and underlit stairwell not knowing what to expect...i have my sister on the phone the entire time talking me through finding the place as she, too, has crashed on her now husband's school mate's couch. I find the unnamed door...no one in germany really uses numbers but, rather, their names beside the door for the the postie...and open the door into a caramel lit, 1930's deco apartment which i instantly fall for! There is a vase of fresh-cut yellow flowers on the table and clean towels on my made bed. I suddenly am overcome with traveller's guilt. I come to crash and seek city insights and have nothing to offer in return...eek!! So 4pm finds me slopping through the rain trying to find Australian wine and trying to compose a relatively easy meal idea to show my gratitude..(keeping in mind Poles express their love by means of food and the rule is the quality of food is directly proportional to the magnitude of affection) i found wine at Aldi...but then got home...opened it and had to venture out in the rain again...and again when i realised i forgot the canned tomatos....and again for phone credit. So, finally, wet, red faced and giggling i start to prepare what i hope is going to be the best fuck-off spag bol anyone has ever tasted...i was sure it would be after my trip to Bologna...the key is salt! Ha ha! What a wank! Anyway...i am disappointed to find out there is some trick to turning on the gas burners and compose a half cut message to my host asking him to reveal the secret. With the instructions sounding too complicated i decide to wait patiently until he returns from a rough day's work to help out this imbecile who has taken hold of his kitchen. Anyway...upon his return i stand like a fool laughing and trying to cover my shame at failing to follow instructions while he shows me how to work that cooking thing. Meal done and dusted my eyelids are heavy and he suggests heading out. Now, one of the few pieces of advice i was given about this guy was 'if he invites you to go out...GO' being a jazz muso in one of the coolest cities in the world is a big plus! We head to so many bars, tucked away inside apartments blocks, nestled in courtyards, pitch black....i cannot recall any of them in complete detail. Nor do i have any idea what time we returned home...all i remember is my brain fading to black as i lay on the polished floor boards of the warm flat listening to Nina Simone croon on the vinyl. The hangover i do remember...not the film...the real one. But my far too accommodating host, let'S call him Andreas...for that is his name... took me on a walking tour of Berlin to clear my head. Along the river Spree, past fragments of the old wall, through the Tiergarten, which, during the war was used as a huge farming field to grow potatoes and other earthy euro gemüse when times were tough, and through the Brandenburg Tor into East Germany. With evening and the temperature descending it was time to warm the heart and soul with a visit to one of the many Weinachtmarkt's in Berlin! In a twist of fate fellow Aussies Andrew and Stephen were in town and joined us for grünkohl (mushy green cabbage with sausages and vinegar..amazing!) and a steaming Glühwein. With the city buzzing around us and steam rising with our words life was grand. With bellies burning and feet itching it was time to explore the city's famed underground nightlife, with our musician tour guide leading teh pack.

All i know about where we went next is this...semi-legal. Someone's cellar. in a ramlbing courtyard in a quiet deserted street. Crawling over rubble and bricks, down rickety steps and suddenly you are shoulder to shoulder with Berlin's true underground dwellers. Experimental band; 10 handy cams set up playing footage of the lead singer singing/narrating from a broom closet behind the stage and the entire facade of the 'stage' draped in canvas on which was being projected interpretive sketches which were being drawn by a beanie wearing left hander sitting on a stool with a lamp beside me up the back. Amazing! The night follows the lead of many with a crazy hazy hue of beer cigarette smoke and vinyl jazz and finds me wake up the next morning a full hour after my train to Krakow has left Berlin. Just my luck to get an extra day in this crazy melting pot of...everything!!!...no really...i really was lucky.

Leaving Berlin was hard. Even harder though was my ten hour train trip to Krakow...

The trip that keeps Dublin and Dublin in saize!

UK take 2. With the 90 day limit of my Schengen visa drawing ever closer it was time to bail on the union of nations which have decided to abolish border control and head to the land where they are above all such nonsense....England!!

Now, as I had been invited to spend Thanksgiving with some nuuuuuuu members, it was neccessary to bring a gift which would satisfy rain-sodden countryside dwellers. Gingerbread! Just my luck that a Lebkuchen Schmidt outlet had opened up in Bochum for the Christmas markets! Goodie goodie goodie (back track to photos of gingerbread porn in München for Lebkuchen Schmidt goods). I bought the biggest hamper i could possibly fit in carry on and carried it proudly home. Coming through security at Düsseldorf, however, i wasn't as proud any longer. I was the only person to be going through security as it was early morning. My bag was stopped and 6 hard-looking security personnel gathered around the computer screen to inspect the hazardous material i was attempting to smuggle. All i caught was a smattering of rough sounding German, with me thinking 'what is happening to you from behind?', before they broke out in a chorus of 'Ah, Lebkuchen Schmidt!' as they passed the hermetically sealed box amongst themselves before finally letting it throughh. Phew! I thought i was going to lose my precious!
With that drama over it was time to board the good ol' Bombardier Q400 LEGO plane to London!

Met, once again, by my partner in crime, we hit the road from Stansted heading north to the land of rain, sheep and rocky outcrops across which one imagines the unhinged King Lear crossing in foul weather...WALES!!! After hours on the grey tar of the M1, and several pee/gingerbread latte/chocolate treaties stops we finally hit countryside which made my pudgy face beam! Despite it only being half past three in the afternoon, dusk was already descending and the stillness of the surrounding woods was eerie. Real woods, the kind with a thick bed of leaves and trees so dense Little Red Riding Hood would be a mere scarlet flash! Turning off the paved road found us crawling up a muddy gravel path amidst stonewalled paddocks filled with fat sheep and flouro green grass; heading towards a stone farmhouse, we were ushered through gates by wellington-clad Chris, breathing steam and eager to get us in front of the fire. Thrusting the smuggled Lebkuchen into our lovely hosts, Penny and Chris' hands i didn't realise until a couple of days later that neither can really enjoy the treaties as one is a coeliac and the other can't eat chocolate! In your face gift giving!


Day 2 in the Welsh highlands was taken up searching for pie and laughing at Welsh signs as we travelled the scenic route to Beddgelert (prounounced Beth Gellet) through swooping valleys, along winding main streets of scattered towns, where the largest building was the local inn and the main grocery store backed on to a babbling brook, before sitting down to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The whole shebang. Turkey, Cranberry sauce, Roast Potatoes, Pumpkin pie, Pecan pie, grapes, cheeses and all cooked on a coal fired stove, dubbed AGA, circa 1929. ( which also happens to be the source of heat for the hot water system, brilliant!) It took well over 14 hrs to sleep off the food hangover and by the time we regained consciousness it was already time to gather our belongings and board the ferry from Holyhead, in the north west corner of Wales to the Port of Dublin! But not ferry in the ordinary sense, this is like Brisbane's City Cat on mega steroids, with duty-free shops, bars and a currency exchange bureau, mental! Following a pleasant journey, sipping wine and stuffing smoked salmon and olives down my throat as fast i could, we arrived in Dublin and this is where trouble starts. Of all the passengers on board, it was me and my terrorismus face they bothered to stop and inspect my passport. An entire boat load of jerks with their maroon UK passports were herded through and yet, here am i, still being scrutinized and having an entire page of my passport defaced for a 7 day visa! Wassat ma love?? Mental. So we miss the ONLY bus into town but think, hey, it's cool, we'll just cab it. haha. Fat chance! Little did we know that our dinghy, industrial estate looking port was competing with Beyonce at the O2 arena AND a rugby match. Shiiiiiit...so fast forward fifty min, find us sheltering from pouring rain in near pith-black darkness, me befriending the vending machine (sweets are ridiculously cheap in the UK, about a third of the mainland prices!), we finally hijack a cab and head in to town. Thinking we would easily find a room in a central Dublin hotel on this dreary Saturday night we rocket along towards the centre of town. Calling ahead, however we discovered that our hotel of choice was fully booked. Ok. No sweat. Any recommendations? 2nd one is full to the brim too...eek...this is where the amazing generosity and likeability of the Irish becomes apparent. The cabbie suggests a hotel which might have space but is a bit out of town, calls call-connect on his own phone, gets connected to the hotel, asks for a room for us and when told they, too, are at full capacity asks for any further suggestions and calls the only hotel in town with any rooms available and finds us space!! So it is to this cabbie that we owe the fact we had a roof over our heads for the night!! So exhausted from this ordeal we decide to stay in and giggle at Irish television. This also happened to be the night that my nephew, Oscar, arrived which brought on a fit of squealing so extreme that i was politely requested to tone it down for fear of it being miscontrued for rape! My bad!

Sunday found us in much better spirits, perhaps all the Irish blessings were seeping through our skin, but nursing a severe bacon craving ( as we had forgotten dinner in the haze which had replaced the previous evening). We relocated to our hotel of choice in the centre of town and were recommended a little breakfast nook around the corner to satisfy our bacon urges. Oh wow! If i could bottle and sell the feeling of those first gulps of bacon sliding down my throat...the scrambled eggs wobbling on my fork and the way the pancakes soaked up that maple syrup i would be a millionaire!! Following our mammoth breakfast (which was ocnsumed in a dangerously short period of time) it was time to visit Dublin's #1 tourist attraction...the Guinness brewery! The Guinness didn't taste nearly as bad as i had remebered from my Melbourne Irish pub crawls and sitting in the bar constructed at the highest point of the brewery and, coincidently, the highest point in Dublin tourists are permitted to go, life felt oddly peaceful. The 360 deg view of the landscape was gritty and monotonous yet strangely endearing. We sat gazing absent mindedly across the factory roofs and into the fields of Dublin county with a pint in hand, i felt so content! And as if my evening could get an better....dinner!! We found the most authentic looking restaurant in Temple Bar and dove in from the cold. After a hearty mum-cooked meal of Irish beef and (of course) Guinness stew it was time for dessert. Now, i could cry recalling this moment...we were handed the dessert menu and only managed to get a quarter of teh way down the list when our eyes were caught by Banoffee pie. Wassat ma love? What? Carol...you have never eaten Banoffee pie? Treaties...and no dummy...the name is not Indian...it literally is a mish mash of the two ingredients...banana and toffee in a shortbread pie crust! It was heaven! I was silenced by the sticky, mushy goodness, cheeks puffed out due to my oversized mouthfuls. Wow wow wow!

Thinking our evening had been topped by banoffee we started to waddle home only to be sidetracked by a phenomenal jazz trio playing in a nearby shop front bar! More wine...live jazz...sugar coma...I heart Dublin!

But all good things come to an end and it was time to farewell our old Irish neighbours, but not before another killer breakfast to tide us over, and it was back on the boat and back to Wales.

With my Welsh adventures over it was back to East London (is a vampire) to drown my sorrows of my rapidly concluding European holiday. So i hit the books. Well, bookstores. Charing Cross road is a bookworm's paper dream! Foyles, amazing, Borders...well it was closing down. I frolicked up and down, from Tottenham Court Road, up to the three story Paperchase flagship store at Goodge Stret, back down Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square, past old Scotland Yard ( which was the location for the visitor's entrance of the ministry of magic in HP5 fyi) all the way to Westminster and to my old pal, Big Ben! All this wandering had given me a killer appetite, however, so it was time to search for a suitable place for pie. An underlit, vine covered bar in a side street, surounded by overpriced vintage stores street thai food stalls was where i found my drug. A giant steak and ale pie, with chips, peas and GRAVY!!! Washed down with an Australian red even the carols cd wasn't bothering me!!

Well Friday came and Friday went, with Carol's memory and diginty spent. I dimly recall trying to out-promote the promoter of the bar my cousin was playing at and having a 50 something lady cry on my shoulder as she walked past. The rest of Friday does not exist. Saturday's flight, however, does. 'Randomly' stopped at security, questioned and drug swabbed...ok so it was morning and i was wearing sunnies and i may have been oozing alcohol out of my pores and have suspiscious travel movements...let me live!