This was a relatively easy day, without too much to speak of, or so I hope. I woke up as usual after the rustling of others and I went to get breakfast, which was the usual thing at the Prague Hostel, I doubt they ever change it really. I sat next to the Argentinian girl, Katerina, and she soon after left. I walked back to the room packed up my things, and headed off to the reception desk to check out. When I got there, at least they were curious enough to offer a computer to check train schedules, so that I did and discovered that the next train was leaving at 11:18, this was about a little over an hour away, so I figured I would just head to the train station. This I did, and when I got there, because I had received the deposit back, I had 200 Kn to burn, and I really did not know what to do with it. I ended up buying some food, that cost me less than 100 Kn, and so now I have a good deal left, but oh well, I guess it is one more souvenir. I did finally board my train, and once again found I had a box to myself, I sat on one that was to be reserved from Dresden to Berlin, so I decided to write the entry for the day before then, before we arrived in Dresden. I did this, and it took a while and ate up most of my battery.
I then eventually walked down the hall, and found another free box and this one had no reservations, so I fetched my stuff and relocated myself. After I did this, not to escape people per se, but to avoid taking up someone’s space, I discovered that it was a bit in vain anyway. When we got to Dresden, we made two stops. At the first stop, First a German bloke came in and sat down, he and I talked in German for probably about ten minutes, and I am fairly certain he knows English, but he did not speak a word of it. We talked about Dresden and America, and so forth, and also a little bit about the war in Iraq as well as Saddam Hussein’s trial, and such like that. A little later, still at the first stop, a young lesbian couple came in, and they were a bit dyked out. It was a bit amusing to me, because they were very affectionate to each other in the car, and though they were not making out or anything like that, they did everything up to that level, but it was almost more cute than annoying. We then went to the second stop in Dresden, and two more girls came in, both of whom were German, meaning that everyone in the car but me was German, and from what I saw no one spoke English, but then not much German was really spoken either. The train ride consisted of me listening to music, reading part of my book, looking at the German countryside and that is about it, the girl across from me and I kept glancing at each other, I think we maybe had a little crush on each other, but maybe that is just my imagination.
We finally arrived in Berlin and after we got off the train, I had a really difficult time finding the U-Bahn, or subway. I did eventually find it, bought a ticket for 2.10 Euros for two hours, which I thought was ridiculous. Anyway, I hopped on the train, and found my way to the street my hostel was on, but apparently I needed to stay on the train for another stop, and so that again disoriented me, but eventually I set myself right. I did make it to the hostel, and it was probably the biggest and funkiest one I have yet been to. It had all sorts of blue neon lights, modern looking and feeling things and just seemed very hip. The room itself was fairly nice as an 8 person room goes, with plenty of wall outlets, which seem to be a rarity in Europe, and a sink in the room, of course there is only one bathroom per floor. But the more interesting thought to me about this was that this hostel is in East Berlin, and yet it is so nice, obviously it is more recent, or perhaps well renovated from a communist block building. Anyway, when I got there the room seemed to be empty, and I was finding my bed and talking a bit out loud to myself, and then I discovered there was somebody sleeping in the bed next to mine. I felt a bit embarrassed and decided to go check out the rest of the hostel, as it was rather big.
When I did this, I went downstairs and bought 15 minutes on the internet for 1 Euro, and I never heard of a worse rate, that was equivalent to $5.00/hour! Anyway, I emailed Alyssa, as it was her birthday, and tried to email my brothers as well, but unfortunately the bloody thing closed the very second I was about to press send. I then thought to get something to eat at the café, there I saw that ‘Pizza mit Salami’ was only 1.50 Euros, which I was quite happy about so I got two... when I actually got it, it was the worst pizza I ever had in my life, it was simply awful, and it had corn and stuff on the base, the cheese was bad and the sauce was even worse. After forcing myself to eat this, because I did not want to be wasteful. I went back upstairs fetched my coat, and decided to go out, I then learned there were actually two people in the bed, male and female, and feeling a bit embarrassed I left quite quickly. I went out found a gas station where I bought a coke and a candy bar, walked back to the room, where it was empty and sat down to relax, when an Japanese guy walked into the room, and we talked a while, I then went down to the mess hall and ordered some fries and the Japanese guy went there as well, we talked again for a while and then went back upstairs.
A little while after I was sitting on the bed, the couple who were in the bed came into the room (they had been out a little earlier) and apparently they were a nice couple named Nate and Asia, Nate was from Boston and Asia was Polish. He was teaching English in Poland and they were here to help renew his passport, and she was along for company. They invited me to go out with them for a while, and feeling it would be a good idea to have company for a night I did. We went first to an Irish pub, yes they are all over Europe, and it was actually a rather charming night, we talked about quite a lot of things, and the pub had some really nice colloquial music playing live. We watched that for a while, I drank a Guinness and they had a Kilkenny. We then wandered further throughout Berlin, and tried to find more Kneipen or Bars, which proved to be a bit more difficult than I should have thought. We eventually walked into a bar where an English speaking beer crawl was going on, and ordered some things there. We talked about a lot of things including politics, American potential and so forth, unfortunately Asia seemed to be a bit upset, because she was not so included in the discussions with Nate and I, or so I think, but she was really fun to hang out with anyway. We returned to the hostel at about 1:00 in the morning and turned on the lights which woke everyone up in their beds, and we felt guilty for doing that, so we went to bed shortly after that and that was the night.