From Paris to Berlin!!

Started off in Brum town, on the old bus. Got the coach to London, where it was snowing! And got on the Eurostar. It was full of French people. It had just sunk in that from now on everyone was going to be speaking another language!! We both fell asleep for most of the trip, and didn’t even see the tunnel! When we arrived it was just after 7pm French time. We were told to get the metro to where we were staying...Easy enough? Well, first Elliot gave away his ticket to some child in a scam! Then I got us on the wrong line...so clever. Good start hey! When we got to our stop we walked the wrong way down some dodgy side streets, then had to walk all the way back to the station to see we had gone the wrong way…got to our place about an hour later!! We were so tired, and our bags were killing our backs, but we WERE THERE! Wooo!

We met our host, Daniel when we came back from the shop. He was drinking red wine, and eating baguette wit h a wheel of cheese and some weird sausage…How French can you get?? He was nice enough though but we were tired and went to bed. YES we had a bed. Antoine gave up his room so we got the one room with the double bed J

We had a lie in cause were lazy, and decided to go for a wander. To our surprise it had snowed over night and Paris was looking pretty damn beautiful! We wandered to the park down the road and up the river to Notre Dame where we spent most of the day just wandering. Was nice to be around other tourists rather than snooty French! We wandered about the Latin Quarter and went to Shakespeare & Co. (which was ace, but expensive like the rest of Paris) then headed home. It was a tiring day as we had walked everywhere.

The next day we had set it aside for the Eiffel Tower. When we got there off the metro, it looked very quiet on the viewing platform, and soon noticed the signs saying it was closed due to the weather. It was a freezing cold day and snow was still everywhere and apparently the platforms were covered in ice…Oh well! We wandered up the road to the Arc du Triomphe and then down towards the Louvre. We spent ages trying to find somewhere for lunch. It was very frustrating but you literally cant ge anything to eat for less than €10! We knew we could get in the Louvre for free after 6pm sp waited around a bit. When we got in we didn’t spend too long in there, just saw bits, and of course the Mona Lisa. We were too tired to spend too long there so headed off to the flat. We found out they had the internet so spent the night online (losers? Lol)

I had wanted to go back to Park du Villettes where the Geode is, so we got the metro over there. It was pretty dead when we arrived and very icy! We wandered about and saw the Zeneth and the place where Soulwaxmas was. I had the most disgusting salad of my life in the Geode, seriously almost threw up! We then went off to the Montmarte, and the metro stop we got off at was right at Moulin Rouge. Montmarte for some reason had all the gates closed!! (Just typical for us!) So we wandered along the street towards Sacre Coure. The street was full of sex shops! Was really weird and I wasn’t expecting it… Some guy tried to usher us in to see a live sex show…no thanks! Going to Amsterdam tomorrow :P We got to Sacre Cour and there were LOADS of tourists. Walked up the million steps and wandered about. It was pretty cold so we went for a drink, and I had a crepe as my salad was vile haha. We went home to find Daniel in, we were sick to the teeth of French people by this point, as they had all been very rude and annoying so we went pretty much straight to our room. Daniel then came in and offered us some homemade carrot soup, and we felt guilty so went and sat with him. His friend Sophie came round and we chatted. She was lovely and seemed to actually want to talk to us! And when they spoke in French she would let us know what they were saying. Made me happy anyway! Daniel made us some horribly strong cocktail, then they went out. We went to bed as we had an early train to catch….

We got up and out sharpish. Headed on the metro to Paris Nord and queued for our tickets. When we got there, the man told us there were no seats on the direct 2 hour train! So we had to get 4 different trains….Only €3 but a pain in the arse! After a 2 and a half hour wait in the freezing cold station…We got the first 3 trains, no problem, but when we arrived in Brussels we saw that the Amsterdam train had been cancelled due to bad weather (thick thick snow!) So we went to Antwerp to try from there. But no such luck! We were told to go to Rosendaal as trains to Amsterdam were going from there, but the Rosendaal train was delayed, and it was already about 7pm, so we gave up and started to look for a hotel. We found a decent priced one and crashed.

Got up for another day of uncertain travelling!! We headed to the station to find the HUGE queues for the information desk. After queuing for about an hour, the man just told us to go to Rosendaal again. So off we went. When we got to Rosendaal we had to queue again to ask, and we were told to go to Rotterdam!! So off we went. When we got to Rotterdam, we were told to go to Schiphol Airport! So off we went again….On our way to Schiphol, we looked across the platform and saw a train about to depart for AMSTERDAM CENTRAAL! So we legged it onto that train….It was such a relief! We got to Amsterdam at about 6pm, about 36 hours after we left our flat in Paris! We dumped our bags and went straight out. The first beer was LOVELY! Still pretty expensive, but better than the €4 for under half a pint in Paris. We went along the Red Light District which was odd…The first woman we saw looked kinda old and ‘plump’ and we thought this was a sign of things to come, but as we walked along they got younger, blonder and skinnier. We sat in a bar and there was a window right opposite. The girl looked ssooo young and very very skinny….wasn’t very nice. We wandered about some more to find a reasonably priced bar. Went to a few more, spent quite a bit!! And headed back to the hostel by about 12ish…Everyone else was in bed in our dorm and we woke them all up WHOOPS.

The plan the next day was to book our train to Dresden first thing, as we were supposed to be leaving at about 7pm that night. We managed to get it booked after yet MORE queuing….The hostel didn’t have a store room for our bags, so we just had to leave them in an empty room and get them a couple of hours later. We had a chance to wander about, we ended up right at the opposite end of town after taking a wrong turn so had quite a long walk! We got our bags and headed to the station. We couldn’t be bothered wandering around with them so went to check that our train was going, which it was :D SO HAPPY! We got on, and found that we were in a cabin with 6 bunks. 2 Chinese guys on the top and we were on the bottom. It was very exciting as it was a first over night train. But the excitement soon wore off and so did our warmth when we discovered that the heating was broken in our car. All the others were fine and were lovely and warm when we walked through, but ours was FREEEEZING and everywhere was still covered in snow and ice so it literally was freezing….We tried to sleep, fully clothed, thermals, hat, coat, blanket and sleep sheet but was still too cold. When we got to Germany a load more people got on and 2 people came into the other 2 empty beds. The conductor came round for tickets and I asked him about the heat to which he just shouted “DEFUNCT!” to which I shouted back “but its freezing, we can’t sleep in this cold” and he just shouted “DEFUNCT” back and walked off….HOW LOVELY! I cried cause I was so cold and angry that we didn’t even get anything extra for sleeping in the freezing cold. Got about 2 hours sleep in the 12 hour journey!! When we got to Dresden we were exhausted and COLD so treated ourselves to a taxi to our hostel . Luckily we could get in the room early and we just slept for hours.

When we woke up at about 3pm, we decided we should really go to the Christmas Markets as it may have been the last day of them. We headed out and shopped a bit for one another. The markets were ace. SO big and so many things….Lots of wooden decorative items, and LOADS of food stalls. We headed back to the hostel, and had a few drinks in the hostel bar. Cause we were staying there we got a whole 50cents off drinks! Woo! We ended the day with a Kebap and went to bed watching German MTV in our room.

Christmas Eve appeared to be the day Germany celebrates Christmas as almost everywhere was closed on this day. Our hostel reception and bar closed at 2pm and almost all shops were closed too. We realised we had nowhere to eat Christmas day so went into the old town to find a restaurant. We found the most Christmassy building that looked like a toy shop or something! And booked ourselves in. We headed back to our hostel and realised all the food shops were closed so we had no FOOD! Luckily there was one tiny one open so we grabbed a few bits there (including some frozen pizzas which we then had to tale back as we realised we had no oven in the hostel kitchen!!) We went for a drink at the Shisha bar and went to bed after watching CNN (the only English speaking channel).

CHRISTMAS DAY! We let ourselves lie in abit. We opened our few presents in bed and got ready to go out. Before we headed out I rang mum on Skype. While we were down there some dodgy Russian was banging on the door, and when we answered he barged in, asking us all sorts, but in Russian. We had no idea what the hell he was on about and it seemed to change half way through. He ended up asking us via a map how to get to the hospital?! Random….So I told him the way and off he went. Very scary man as he looked like a Russian chav with loads of cuts on his face! Ergh… we went for dinner which was SO lovely, and wandered back as it was freezing and really windy out. When we were back in the room, we heard the same banging that the Russian guy was making again. Assuming it was him we ignored it and locked our door! The hostel was dead, don’t even know if there was anyone else staying! And reception was still closed so we tried to ignore it…That night our contact in Dresden from Couch Surfing had told us about a party down the road at a club called Metronom. We headed down there, at first it seemed like a skins party with youngish kids all in weird clothes, neon things, glow sticks, but the music was shit. Kind of minimal house…very boring. We decided to leave after we finished our drinks, but just as we were about to leave they put on Proxy remix of Digitalism “we have the biggest party ever at home” and everyone went mad and started chanting and jumping, was so crazy! From then on the music was awesome, so loud and dirrrty. We stayed til about 2am I think…? Was ace….made me happy. What a random Christmas day!

The next day we let ourselves have a duvet day as we figured we weren’t going to get the chance again as we were in dorms from now on. So we watched the VMA awards on MTV J We eventually got up, went for a walk and for tea. We went into the hostel bar where we could get good wifi signal and talked on Skype, and I went on FB while Elliot read his book. Was nice and relaxing.

On this last day in Dresden, I wanted to actually SEE some of Dresden s o I made Elliot go on the tour bus thing with us. Just as we were about to get up to get ready to leave, there was a knock at the door and the receptionist was asking when we were checking out! I had clearly messed up the booking and booked our stay a day short! I had to go down and get us another room, which was a dorm room, but she booked it out fully for us. We were gutted as this room was all single beds and had NO TV! Which we had been totally taking advantage of. When we eventually swapped rooms (our room was a MESS) we headed out for the tour J It was really good with English speaking commentary of all the places. Dresden has some very interesting history and amazing buildings! I was gutted we hadn’t seen more of it as many of the places the bus went were lovely. But we decided everywhere will have been closed anyway due to Christmas!! Made us decide to do a tour of Berlin on the FIRST day to see what we want to do early on in the stay. On the walk home we saw a more traditional restaurant and went there for tea, where we had meat and potato bohemian dumplings and beer! We decided to sit down in the hostel bar again, but this time it was very busy so couldn’t go on Skype. After this we went to bed in our single beds.

We got up early to get the tram to the main station in Dresden and get on our train to BERLIN!! We arrived in Berlin and treated ourselves to a taxi again...MADNESS. Found the hostel which seems pretty cool, the guy who runs it has invited us to go to the cinema to see Avatar which is nice :) Think we will be doing that tonight! Just sat in a hostel bar at the minute having a drink, Elliot watching the football...Its a nice bar, and CHEAP which is always good.

Anyway....That's the trip so far in a not so compact way! x