Catch Up - Tuesday 26th August

We left quite late on this day, and having bought lunch from the local supermarket, we decided to find a park on the route to the day's attractions in which to eat our lunch. The hostel's locality was less than savoury so the "park" we ended up in (arguably a grass verge) was about as alluring as Bristol's Castle Park at night. Dan soon became acquainted with the toughest gang on the block - tiny, striped and ready to sting without warning. 

From here, we walked to Checkpoint Charlie. The famed sign announcing one's departure from the American quarter greeted us, and we queued up for the museum. Once inside, we found ourselves a little disappointed. The curators had essentially cut up a textbook and plastered it to the walls - there was so much writing that we soon gave up on reading everything. The content was really interesting, but the layout let it down. Nonetheless, we spent an hour and a half looking around until Dan reached the point where he was napping in a corner. 

The strain of this visit, the closest thing to study we've partaken in for months, called for refreshment. After disdaining a wasp-infested bakery, we sat down in McDonald's for a frappé/McFlurry/full meal. 

We could see the Berlin TV Tower from the McDonald's, so we followed its direction, taking a detour along the way to a square with green-domed buildings and a fountain. Here, we watched some string-playing buskers play a suite of German classical museum, because we're classy and cultured like that. 

We walked past lots of old buildings on our way to the tower, and Mitch bought some wurst. At the tower, we bought a ticket to the top, but had a two hour wait so we bought some Hotcha-esque takeaway Chinese food. Dan was in his element. We also paid the princely price of €1 to use the metro public toilets, but were fascinated by the self-cleaning toilet seats and automated taps, soap dispensers and anti-bacterial hand sprayers. 

It was soon time to scale the building in Europe's fastest lift. The lift operator looked much like the butler from Aristocrats, and, surprise surprise, it didn't take long to reach the top. 

Windows look out over every direction, and panels under the view describe the area to be seen. Siânwent round reading every piece of information (probably having withdrawal symptoms from books, poor lass) whilst the other three looked at the world outside. On the whole, we all had a nice time up there, and as it started to get dark, we began our walk back to the hostel. 

Along the way, Mitch tried on Siân's glasses and found the whole world to be in sharper focus. From this point, every time there was anything distanced to be seen, the spectacles went between the two so everyone could benefit from the view...