Long weekend at hostel in Berlin.
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The story is very detailed since I might use the information myself if I would like to return.
My father fetched me at 4 p.m. and we drove into Gothenburg city to fetch also Reeta. There were queues on the highway already. You can miss the plane if you are unlucky and get stuck in such a queue caused by a car accident. You should probably take off from home maybe up to an hour earlier if you have to drive into the city during the time when people drive to or from their work.
We used AirBerlin and you can check in on their website. I tried it but you had to give a code. I asked them about the code during the ordinary check-in at Landvetter and was informed that you have to be a member.
I had planned to avoid eating candy during the vacation but ended up buying expensive candy already at the airport in Sweden. It had been better to buy it earlier at home. We had as usual bought sandwiches but we had put them in the luggage we checked in so now we also bought expensive food at the airport which was stupid.
The plane departed 19:30. Onboard the plane you were only served something to drink together with some nuts.
We arrived as usual at the smaller terminal C, used by AirBerlin, at Tegel airport. You fetch your luggage in a room you find as soon as you enter the terminal building and then you just walk out without any security or passport checks. It is easy and quick.
You have to walk a couple of hundred meters up to the main terminal building where we bought Welcome Cards. They sell both Berlin Cards and Welcome Cards. The Welcome Cards cost one euro more but have much more offers such as reduced entrance fees at museums. We didn't visit any museums so it would probably have been better to buy Berlin Cards.
They have different kinds of cards depending on how many days you plan to stay. We bought 5-days cards which cost 31 euros each. We stayed 6 days so we also bought single tickets for the trip to the hostel. A single ticket costs 2.30 euros and I think it is valid during two hours so you are allowed to use it in one direction and you can change between for instance bus and subway. The Welcome Card is valid from the day you stamp it in a machine so you just wait until you plan to use it. Don't forget to stamp it when you start to use it.
You can take bus 109 or X9 from Tegel airport to Jakob-Kaiser-Platz. Bus 109 stops a few times while bus X9 goes directly to Jakob-Kaiser-Platz. The difference is minor so just take the first bus. You don't have to show the ticket for the driver so just stamp it in the machine inside the bus. You take your luggage with you onboard the bus so you don't have to worry that it will be stolen which is a risk if you have to put it in a special baggage compartment.
At Jakob-Kaiser-Platz you change to the subway line U7 in direction to Rudow. Go off at Möckern-brücke and walk a couple of hundred meters to the hostel. The whole journey from the airport to the hostel takes about 45 minutes.
The German people are really very friendly and helpful. People helped Reeta with her luggage up and down stairs before I even had a chance to do it myself.
I had booked the hostel earlier than Reeta. The hostel was almost fully booked and therefore they unfortunately were not able to place us in the same room. We had even asked them about it by e-mail some weeks earlier. We had booked 4-bed rooms and Reeta wanted a room with as many girls as possible so we switched rooms. I got room number 208 and she got room 308. She had a boy and two girls from Singapore in her room and my roommates were two guys from England and a girl from Italy.
We packed up our things and went down to the reception where we bought a couple of sandwiches which were left over. We got both of them very cheap for just one euro. We also bought Cuba Libre drinks at the hostel bar for four euros each, probably about half the price compared to Sweden.
We walked to the festival area near the hostel. There were a lot of activities since they were putting up the tents and making all ready for the festival which started next day.
The hostel didn't have any keys or plastic cards. They used instead codes and you had the same code to the door down at the street, the door to your flat and the door to your room. It was nice since I and Reeta could then easily visit each other.
I went to Reetas room in the morning and she was already up. She told me that she hadn't slept well since the guy in her room had during the night went over to one of the girls and they had made a lot of noise in that bed during the whole night.
In the morning we ate salad which Reeta had brought from home. After that we walked to the festival area around 11 a.m. It hadn't started so we decided to take the metro to the most famous warehouse called KaDeWe. It was very exclusive and quite expensive but they had a lot of nice clothes. We went out after just a short time and searched for ordinary shops with ordinary prices. We walked along the Kurfürstendamm street which a guy at the hostel had recommended for shopping. There were a lot of well-known shops such as Zara and H&M but nothing special compared to home. We decided to take the metro back to the hostel where we ate one of the sandwiches with egg and hamburger which I had bought in Sweden.
We walked to the festival area again which consist of four roads with numerous tents where you can buy food from all over the world, handicrafts and clothes. We looked at all tents on three of the streets and then we were so tired that we decided to go back to the hostel. First however we ate some Indian food which they served at one of the many tents.
Back at the hostel I talked with the Italian girl in my room who was very nice. She was on her way out to the club Berghein which is famous and many think that it is the best club in Berlin. It is located in an industrial-style warehouse and there you can dance to the type of music she liked. I have planned to visit that club and hopefully it will be the next time I visit Berlin.
We rested our legs, took a shower and prepared Coca Cola bottles mixed with vodka which we took with us out. In Berlin people drink very open and it is common to see people drink for instance beer onboard subway trains. Half past eight we were back at the festival area where we checked the shops at the last road and we also ate some more food. The festival closed around midnight and then we walked back to the hostel.
We went up around 10 a.m. Reeta was 'almost' ready so I wrote my diary and read my book while I waited. The nice Italian girl checked out and took the train back to Netherlands where she lived now. A girl from America who lived in France came instead later that day.
I wanted to buy a better hat for the Kit Kat club that evening so we visited two shops called RoB and Butcherei Lindinger which I had found on Internet. I thought that they should be similar to the nice shops called www.shock.se/, www.grothica.se/ and xplosion.nu/ in my city, Gothenburg. I didn't however like the shops at all. I don't know how you shall describe them, maybe hard core gay shops for men. I wanted to go out as soon as I entered but to my surprise my girlfriend said 'wait' since she wanted to have a closer look at something. Sometimes she really surprises me!
We went to zoo around 1 p.m. and we walked around for 5 hours until some parts of it closed at 6 p.m. The whole park closes an hour later.
The zoo is huge so you need more than 5 hours if you want to see everything. It is easier to find everything if you have a map such as the above photo.
One monkey was really cute and spent the time looking at all visitors.
The funniest part is probably where they keep all the monkeys. We stayed there for some time.
Another interesting part is where they keep all the cats. It is however pity that they keep them in quite tiny cages. A woman who worked there actually put in her hand and caressed both the lions and tigers. Two male lions started to roar and the sound was incredible high. It was like thunder and it was almost like the whole building started to vibrate. A young boy got scared and started to weep.
We went back to the hostel and among other things rested some hours before we went to Kit Kat club 22.30. You take the U1 line to Kottbusser Tor where you change to U8 line and go off at the Heinrich Heine Strasse subway station. The station has two exits and you should go to Köpenicker Strasse. You cross Heinrich Heine Strasse and Köpenicker Strasse and then you reach a place where you can buy Kebab the whole night. It is at the corner of the two streets diagonally from the subway station. If you have the Kebab place on your right hand you just pass it and turn directly right at the corner and walk maybe 100 meters on Brückenstrasse. You find Kit Kat club on your right side. The entrance is under a tent roof where some people park their motorcycles.
We arrived around 11 p.m. and we had no problem to get inside. They have strict dress codes which you have to follow. We had worried a little that they wouldn't let us in so we had spent a lot of effort to look as cool as possible. It is a pity that we didn't take a photo of ourselves since I think that we looked really great. I had a long, black skin jacket and black skin trousers. I had really cool, black skin shoes which I bought in Japan. I had a black t-shirt with white crosses made of a special fabric. On my head I had a black hat in the same shape as the white hats the USA navy officers use. Reeta was also looking really good with a black, cool, short, skin jacket she had bought for the occasion together with black leather shoes and black leggings. She had a black scarf and looked a little like a gypsy.
There were not so many people when we arrived but it got quite crowdy later on during the night. The entrance fee was 20 euros each. You are not allowed to take photos so the above photos are from their homepage. They show you how some people can be dressed
At quarter to one in the night the shows began. That night they had three different shows. First a young woman made a glass hover in front of her but her main performance was as a sword-swallower. She put a long sword down her throat several times and when she was ready she just dropped the sword on a piece of wood and the sword got stuck in it which showed that it both was real and that it had a very sharp point. After that she used a clothes-hanger of metal-wire which she pulled out to make it longer and thinner so she could put it down her throat.
The second show was performed by another young woman with a big, frog doll. She danced around holding it in her hands before she finally kissed it. After that she pretended to go into a trance and started to take of her clothes while she danced around on the stage. She had put on something which covered her nipples and she never took of her panties. She also used two big feathers which she used to cover her body during her performance.
A lady with a man in a wheel chair finally entered the stage. They gave lollipops to two persons in the audience before they gave one to a young woman in the audience. She came up on the stage and fell down to the floor when she tasted the lollipop. The man in the wheel chair started to take of the bandage which covered his head and put some of it into the mouth of the woman. Artificial skin covered his body which he started to pull off and he also put that into the mouth of the young woman. The woman had by the way taken of some clothes during the show so she was topless. Blood came from the mans mouth and dripped down on the woman's body. The woman who had been more or less lifeless woke up and replaced the nurse who had in the beginning entered the stage with the man.
The club has two major dance floors and that day we also found a third, a little smaller dance floor downstairs. It has at least 5 bars and in a cooler room with an opening in the roof they have a swimming pool which is big enough for swimming. The club has sexy, or maybe a little pornographic, paintings on the inside walls. A woman walked around in the club and handed out candy to people.
A man who worked in the cloak-room was bare chested and the woman who took our clothes was completely naked. We bought some drinks at one of the bars and the woman who served us was also naked with the exception of tiny, transparent garments.
I visited the club the previous year and that night they had a fetish party which I didn't know about. I am not sure I would have dared to enter the club if I had known that. You can read more about it in that travel story. I then thought that a fetish party was about having sex, pervert sex. I also thought that the people wouldn't be so attractive and that it would be mostly elderly men. I now know that it isn't like that at all. It is like a masquerade where quite young, mostly very attractive people are dressed in very cool and often sexy dresses. I haven't counted but my impression is that there are as many women as men. People are very nice and behave good and I think that most of the people go there just to dance, drink and socialize with other people just as in other, more ordinary clubs. I went to a 30+ club at the town Kungsbacka in Sweden not so long time ago. People there were not so attractive. The men had mostly jeans and some even had gymnasium shoes. They were probably more drunk at the 30+ club compared to Kit Kat club and one man at the 30+ club was even rude towards me. I think that more people dance at Kit Kat club compared to the 30+ club. I have to say that fetish clubs such as Kit Kat club are much more fun compared to 30+ clubs.
You are allowed to have sex and you are allowed to be nude at Kit Kat club. I will tell you all I saw during our night at the club.
We left the club after 4 a.m. and took the metro back to the hostel. You only had to wait 3-4 minutes for the trains even during the night.
A lot of people had a really fun bachelor party ('svensexa' in Swedish) which started at the hostel. They were dressed as the lifeguards in Baywatch.
We went to the start of the carnival and arrived just a little before it started 12:30. The weather was nice and it wasn't difficult to find a place along the road under a tree since you didn't want to spend the whole day in direct sunshine.
More people arrived and some people soon stood in front of you so it was difficult to take photos. A man with a handicapped person arrived and told me to move aside so they could pass. I thought that they were going to the other side of the street where they had a special area for handicapped people but as soon as they passed me they thought that it was good enough to just stand there in front of me. I had then had enough of people who stood in my way so I couldn't take photos. I went myself to the other side which actually is an area in the middle of a big street. There it was easy to take good photos which I will try to remember to next year. Luckily I had brought sun protection cream with me so I didn't get too sun burnt.
I stood there 4-5 hours but if I remember correct only two thirds of the almost one hundred groups passed during that time. You had to stay some more hours if you wanted to see all groups. We walked instead towards the remaining carnival groups and I took some photos of the groups which looked nice. In the end were some radio channel groups which wasn't much to look at but there were a lot of people around them who enjoyed the music they played.
I think we walked towards the hostel around 6 p.m. and came to an area along the channel which I hadn't seen before. It is however just on the other side of the festival area from the hostel. It was really nice there and I think that Berlin has a lot of nice areas which still have to be discovered.
Reeta bought coffee for 2.70 euros and we both bought a piece of good meat in bread for 6.50 euros each when we passed the festival area. It was so crowded so it was difficult to walk. They played music at the four stages. At one stage they played Latin music which was nice to hear. We didn't stay since we wanted to go home, leave the camera and rest for a while. On the way between the festival area and the hostel is a Chinese shop where you could buy beer and other alcoholic liquids. I bought a bottle with 70 cl vodka. It was called Gorbatschow and cost 13 euros. We arrived at the hostel around 7 p.m.
The two guys from England had left my room and instead two nice, young women from Bulgaria had arrived. One of them had a cute teddy bear. I looked at it later when they wasn't around and saw that it also had a little baby teddy bear.
We returned to the festival area around 9 p.m. after we had rested and taken a shower. We bought some African food which was nice. It is easy to spend a few euros here and there on all the food from different parts of the world such as India, Thailand, Africa, South America and other places. After some days you get however tired of that kind of food.
I woke up 7:30 by the sound of someone closing the door. The two girls from Bulgaria went up, took a shower and went out 30 minutes later. Nobody had closed the window so it was light inside the room and fresh air. The American girl slept. She spends the evenings with her smartphone and apple computer. I spent some time writing my diary.
I went up and saw a bird with young ones at he channel just outside the hostel across the street.
We ate breakfast twelve o'clock when Reeta was ready. During weekends the hostel café has breakfast buffet which cost 7.90 euros. You get it 10% cheaper with a voucher from the hostel. Later we found that they have a breakfast buffet near the Netto shop which only cost half of what it cost at the hostel. We hadn't time to test it however so we don't know if we can recommend it. The buffet at the hostel was however good.
We went to the festival area where Reeta bought trousers. There were nice metal things which looked cool when they turned around in the sun shine.
We took the subway to Warschauer Strasse. A guy at the hostel had told us that there should be a lot of bars and cafés. We went to Kopennikusstrasse, I think, where we passed a shop with an incredible amount of silver jewels. The walls were covered with them. The shop was unfortunately closed since it was a banking holiday or something like that. We turned left and walked along a street with a lot of bars and cafés.
On our way home we passed part of the Berlin Wall which is called 'East Side gallery' before we walked over the bridge and took the metro back to the hostel.
We walked the last time to the festival area around half past seven. Everybody was fully occupied with packing their things but Reeta managed anyway to buy yet another pair of trousers before we went back to the hostel.
At the hostel I used my maps to locate the best Thai restaurant in Berlin according to guidebooks. It is called 'Good Time' and is located near the 'Oranienburger Tor' subway station.
Ordinary main dishes cost 13.50 euros. We took lamb and duck which cost 16.50 euros each. A big Coca Cola glass cost 4 euros. It wasn't so big but you really need a lot to drink to the spicy food.
The food was good but cheaper Thai food are also good.
Reeta bought a coffee back at the hostel before we went to bed.
I went out for a walk in the neighbourhood early in the morning. Berlin is a really nice city with a lot of green areas and it would probably be nice to rent a bicycle and have a better look around. You can rent one at the hostel for 10 euros a day if I remember correct.
We had a late flight back to Gothenburg so we stored our things in the luggage room.
After we had eaten we took the metro to Alexander Platz. The weather had been lovely during all the previous days but on Tuesday it was cloudy and you couldn't see the sun. We wasn't sure which direction we should walk but luckily found our way anyway. We walked to Alte Schönhauser Strasse and Neue Schönhauser Strasse. They were according to information we had read good shopping streets. There were also some shops but we didn't find anything special. One shop was called 'Closed' I think.
We had a rest at Hackesche Höfe where Reeta took a coffee and we both ate sushi by mistake. None of us were especially fond of sushi and we thought that we ordered ordinary tuna fish wrapped in a bread but got something completely different. It was however actually quite good.
We walked down to Alexander Platz again and continued to the Museum Island and to Friedrich Strasse which is one of the major shopping streets.
I had read about the warehouse Quarter 206 on Friedrich Strasse and wanted to check it out. It was however the very exclusive ware house we had visited on our first visit to Berlin. We were quite tired so we didn't even bother to check out the shops.
The metro station Französische Strasse were just outside the ware house so we took the metro back to our hostel. We decided that we should not by a lot of expensive food at the airport this time so we visited a Netto shop where we bought too much, ice-cream, chocolate, coffee, nuts, cakes, yoghurt and you name it.
We waited over an hour at the hostel just relaxing and I continued to read my fantasy book "A man rides through" by Stephen Donaldson.
Four hours before departure we took the metro and bus back to Tegel airport. We had to wait a little before we could check in but we had at least a lot to eat while we waited.
As soon as the check-in opened we went over and handed the guy both of our passports and were more or less sure that we should get seats next to each other. The man told us however that he couldn't arrange that so one of us had to sit in the seat behind the other. Maybe it was because we hadn't bought the tickets at the same time since we bought Reetas ticket some weeks after I bought mine ticket.
You can buy quite cheap bottles with alcohol at the tax-free shop. Reeta bought a couple of bottles but I just bought a bottle for my father who was also fetching us at the airport later on and drove us to our homes.