Berlin, Germany

Lizz is currently sitting in hyde park watching some shirtless lads play football…

I know I’m not technically in Berlin anymore, but most of this post is about Berlin, so it counts. I really enjoyed Berlin. It is incredibly edgy. They have a culture of graffiti. I’m used to associating graffiti with a really bad part of town. In Berlin, it just means, you’re in town. There are no parts that aren’t graffitied. I also felt as if I was seriously lacking in tattoos and piercings. My hair wasn’t ridiculous enough and my clothes weren’t torn enough. Despite the fact that I didn’t fit in, I really loved the feel of the city. Unfortunately while I was there I didn’t really get to go out much. My room was mostly full of one group of people from the UK. They pretty much stayed to themselves. Listening to their conversation was fairly entertaining though. They decided they were going to get a van to travel the rest of Europe. While they were talking about what they wanted in the van they started off with really practical things that would be necessary to keep the car running. They quickly digressed to things like fuzzy dice and fake grass, beanbags, and a shower in the back. One guy even drew a picture. I have to admit if they actually manage to pull it off it would be a pretty bad ass van. Not that I would want to travel Europe in it.
While I was in Munich Tina offered to do my laundry for me. I accepted this incredibly kind offer and gathered all my dirty things into a laundry basket she gave me. I didn’t put my towel in there, it didn’t need to be washed. When I came back from the day out all my clothes were hanging up drying. I immediately noticed that something was different. They were all pink. Tina had thrown my towel in with the rest of the laundry. The towel is red. It wasn’t too much of a problem for the things that were pure white, they just turned really pink. But I had some blue things in there too, and those just turned the nastiest shade of gray. I wore all my pink things through Munich, and Frankfurt. In Berlin I broke down and went shopping. The other mistake I’d made in coming to Europe was packing only 4 pairs of underpants. I thought, “Oh, I can just wash them every few days’. THAT IS HORRIBLE LOGIC. WHY DID NONE OF YOU TELL ME THAT IS TERRIBLE LOGIC? No one wants to wash their underwear every three days. So I bought more. A couple of tank tops, and a going out dress. (Libby it was a dress that you would have made me try on and they I would have told you I have no where to wear it and then you would have made me buy it anyway).
This made things interesting for packing to come here to England. The airline I was flying with is really strict about size of baggage you can carry on. And you’re only allowed one carry one. Checking luggage is like an extra 40 euro. So I was dead determined I was going to get everything down to one bag that would fit. This meant ditching my travel book (I tore out the pages that were still relevant to the rest of the trip). It also meant cutting off my old jeans into shorts. They were just too bulky to carry around anymore. Especially because it was starting to get warm here. That was an adventure. I’ve never cut off jeans before. The whole hostel room got involved. Figuring out where to cut, and how to fold them. In the end they look pretty awesome. They might be my new favorite shorts.
I take a bus up to Leeds tomorrow, and Ads is supposed to meet me at the bust station. Nick joins us on Saturday for our fourth of July party. Then on Tuesday Nick and I are taking a bus back to London to sight see.
So far I really like England. I kind of wish that I was staying here longer, or that it wasn’t so expensive to stay here. Although I’m sure I’ll be back.