I took so many pictures of the wall, and went from west side to east side, and on top of that it was boiling.
I think I might talk a bit about the people I met at the hostel. I rather liked them, and I'm sure I would have liked them a lot better if I wasn't so sick. There were a bunch of rather fit Egyptians and an incredibly good looking ginger from Italy called Pierre who kept walking around the room in his pants. The Egyptians were very friendly, but one of them insisted on making me repeat his name, through my nasal voice, till I could properly pronounce it. I immediately forgot it, of course. I was too tired to argue with him. When I told Will about this, he said that he would have trolled him and kept on saying it wrong.
Pierre rocked, though as usual he was younger than me, a very fresh faced 20. On the second day we hung out for a bit and ended up going to one of the supermarkets in Alexanderplatz and having lunch together in the Platz. I bought loads of hilariously overpriced fruit and a bee buzzed over to inspect my lunch. I do not like bees and freaked out quite a bit while Pierre sat there and roared with laughter. I felt rather silly about this but the bee was really quite furry and fuzzy and just the way I hate them. After I'd managed to get the bee off my case, Pierre told me that he'd enjoyed the whole scene a lot. I didn't know whether to be pleased or offended. Pierre's a medical student, and like Will and Vera in Wroclaw, was staying at the hostel till he found a place to stay. He told me about how difficult it was to find accommodation and how he kept getting rainchecked by potential landlords. He had to go to his school in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to accompany him, but my cold felt so horrendous that I had to decline. We talked about rather average things; about how we both liked travelling and meeting people, seizing the moment, living la vida loca, and the usual stuff you talk about when you meet people that can think. The pretentiousness of facebooking people you meet while travelling. He told me how he'd spent a year (or was it half a year?) backpacking in Latin America, the hearts he'd broken, the girls he'd fallen in love with. Fell in love with and despaired over, as Jake would say. Though to be honest Pierre wasn't that despondent. He takes life very seriously, but he's still a player. He said that he was tired of saying goodbye and walking out of people's lives.
He also spent a good hour or so trolling the Egyptians and some of their beliefs, but I'm not going to write too much about that since it's a public domain after all and I don't want to get anyone into trouble.
Went over to the West side gallery located at Nordbahnhof (metro lines S1, S2, S25). This used to be a ghost station, and still retains a lot of its previous creepiness. Rather unsettling place for sure.
A...plaque, I'll call it.
Just to say that I've been here and did not notice its unfortunate name.
The West Side Gallery.
I then took a tram to the East Side Gallery. I couldn't find a gallery, but I did find the Wall.
A view from the tram. I think, but am not wholly sure, that the metal pipes denote where the Wall used to stand.
Found it.
And of course, the inevitable barrage of photos.
It was quite a walk from the tram stop though, although the Germans were very obliging when I asked for directions. When I asked a shopkeeper where "the wall" was, he pointed at one of the walls in his shop and said "Here it is!" Whilst I goggled at it, he gave a chuckle, told me he was just messing about and pointed me in the right direction.
Both sides of the wall.
The neighborhood.
Took the metro back to Alexanderplatz.
Frankfurt, be there soon.
And yes, my FOOD. Quite a hearty serving as they come at a Bavarian restaurant next to the hostel. The yellow balls tasted an awful lot like polenta, the vegetables had been pickled and tasted deliciously tangy, and the meat was stringy.
To be continued.
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