Berlin

was amazing.

just a quick post to let you know that i won't be needing the services of the British consulate after all as i was very well behaved and in my sisters words, alot more cultured and sensible than she realised.

i'll get the photos up as soon as and i hope all of you had as good a new year as I have and started off the year as happy as my good self.

A clip of that celebration was shown on my TV along with the traditional Times Square New Years Eve celebration. I was thinking of you being there and hoping you were having a hell of a time

Kathleen

How disappointing

if it makes any difference my brother and some mates spent the early hours of new year fighting co workers of mine at a house party *rolleyes*

it's kind of disheartening when you see how different the culture is considering its not that far away. the main reason i was "cultured and behaved" as my sister put it was because you cant get away with acting like a lout there because it's so out of place.

the only really drunk people i seen over there were tourists on the pub crawl i was on and even at the party people had maybe a beer or shared a bottle of wine between a group and i was getting weird looks for dirnking some red vodka crap and jaegermeister straight out of their bottles.


some cool things i did/saw:

i had snails for dinner one night was actually alot less disgusting than you'd imagine

i bought some weird flavoured chocolate for mrs jbj and my family. curry, chilli, beer, champagne and some brown one i picked up by accident i have absolutely no clue what it's supposed to be. the curry one went down like a lead balloon.

made a point of going up the reichstag dome since i hadnt done it when i was there in september. in retrospect i would have made an absolute fortune buskign there as the queue for it is massive all day long.

i went out to wannsee which probably won't mean much to folk who arent intot heir history that much but even though the conference house museum was shut for the holidays it was still a lovely place to see.

i got my passport stamped at checkpoint charlie which is kinda tacky but meh.

made my way into the wee hours of new years night after trhe party in a proper beer hall with oompa music, stein banging on the tables and all sorts.

finally i saw the mythical video for runaway sans music in previously mentioned beer hall. there's a good reason why they don't want anyone to see it. it's terrible even by 80s cock rock standards.

Glad you had a nice time Jim, did you enjoy the Scissor Sisters?? Was the beer expensive??

the scissor sisters were kinda meh


they had the hermes house band on (ala country roads take me home) and everyone went nuts. then the scissor sisters came on and they really struggled to get the crowd into it. whether its because they couldnt really talk tpo the crowd or they just werent that good is debatable. the music is definetely there to be danced to but it didnt blow me away by any means.

they actually brought the hermes house band out again before midnight to perk the crowd back up again.


considering the size of it (which is about comparable to london imo. berlin is really cheap for just about everything, especially the beer.

we went out for dinner one night. 2 starters, 2 mains, a beer and 3 cups of tea cost us the same as 2 mains, a bowl of chips and 2 cans of coke down my works restaurant for me n the missus this afternoon....

a pint in a city centre club on a saturday night is roughly £1.80 and we're talking about great beer here. i laughed at everyone drinking becks and almost died when i saw an aussie chick drinking corona :-S

i've put some photo's up on bebo for my friends to see but can i hotlink them here?

i've hotlinked stuff from sites before that have been ok on mine and not on others because it was already in my history or something like that.........

alternatively you could tell me if you see this:

You can see the building.

well that ^ was a part of the berlin wall that's still standing the goerrings old air ministry building. i think it's kinda cool and poigniant that there's 2 structures that brought the city a lot of pain and suffering in the same shot with a bare desolate looking tree. or maybe i'm getting a little full of it.




this is the allied powers flags hanging outside the checkpoint charlie museum.



the front of the brandenburg gate lit up at night.



this is the stage set up on the other side of the gate. the big white swirly thing is actually the front of the stage



APPLEMANN!!! instead of a green man, lots of traffic lights in berlin have a little green soldier.




this is a big ice slide thing you went down on a rubber ring at the potsdamer platz christmas market. i really didn't care that it was full of kids cause it was so fun



looking up at 2 of the coolest new buildings in berlin's potsdamer platz.



looking down on the heart of german democracy at the reichstag dome. i was too cold and high up to really be enthralled by this concept.