Day 3

Weather: 27'C

Up again early this morning, can't seem to sleep past 4am but we're making good use of the days by starting early. Took ourselves off to visit St Michael's church this morning, a Lutheran church and the most famous in the city. Initially built in 1647 but rebuilt again several times over, most recently in 1786.

We climbed the famous bell tower and although there is an elevator taking you up the 100 metres to the 10th floor I decided to walk up -

this decision may have had something to do with the rice pudding I had for breakfast. Although I did tell Hef he could take the lift, he trudged along behind me and grumbled all the way up the 10 flights (bless him). From the top you can see all of Hamburg so it was worth the climb.

At 1030 we hopped a train to Berlin and after some initial confusion with the intermittent allocated seating we were off to Berlin. Unfortunately the train announcements were all in German so we accidentally got off the train on the outskirts of Berlin (2 stops to early) and had to then pay for a cab to take us into town. The cab driver however gave us a guided tour on the way which was great.

Once checked into the hotel we decided to go exploring but it was a bit of a disaster. We were both hungry, it was 28 degrees and we were both still dressed in jeans and sneakers, we had trouble

working out how to navigate the train system, all the major land marks (Parliament and the Brandenburg gate) were fenced off and under police guard due to the setup of a women marathon being held on Sunday and I got attitude from a women whilst trying to order lunch in German. So after a small meltdown we decided to head back to the hotel and regroup. We ate, got changed, rested a bit, spoke to the concierge and about 2 hours later headed out again.

This time we did manage to navigate the trains, bought ourselves a 3 day pass and caught the train to checkpoint Charlie and the Jewish Museum. The Jewish museum was great, its has a new modern exhibition installed in the basement and it's very interactive. There is a space called the Voided Void at the end of a passage they call the Holocaust walk. It is a small, tall, dark, odd shaped concrete room with a tiny slit window right at the top being the only illumination.

Once the door is closed you can hear the muffled sound of the the city above you but otherwise it's eerily quiet and dark.

Checkpoint Charlie is a bit of a tourist trap now. Three rather bored looking 20 somethings have a part time job dressing as U.S. soldiers and taking pictures outside the small checkpoint box with scantily clad backpackers and the American flag. I'm sure all the people who died trying to escape over the wall would turn in their graves but we came, we saw, took some pictures and then decided to wander back to the hotel.

The unfortunate thing about being awake at 4am is that you get very tired by 8pm. We did manage to stay up till 9pm and am determined to try and stay awake later again tomorrow night however as I type this it is currently 413 am on Friday 19th so I guess it will be lots of

bad coffee for me again today.