The inevitable stress that comes with flying Ryanair (honestly, why can't they allocate seats like any other normal airline) meant that a trip to a beer garden was much needed. A bit of TripAdvisor research led us to Prater Garten in Prenzlauer Berg, which seats a good few hundred people, serves a good variety of beer and wine, as well as bratwurst, pretzels and anything else vaguely German. There were so many tourists there so it probably isn't the most authentic place going, but with my horrendous German 'skills', going somewhere properly German wouldn't have been the best idea.
Day two involved a trip to the Reichstag, which was again tourist central. I'm not sure why I enjoy whinging about tourists when I've spent the last year of my life being a kind of tourist, but hey. The queues seemed pretty large if you didn't book in advance, but it's worth going to because it's free and the views are pretty wicked.
The afternoon was spent walking to Checkpoint Charlie, and reading the stories of people who tried to get from one side to the other, which was bizarre and also quite frightening to think that such things were happening so recently. There was also a fair bit of Russian written around there, which I always get excited about, being the nerd that I am. We then walked back towards our apartment, stopping for a brief shop, which included trips to Monki and Weekday as well as a little look at the Barbie Dreamhouse, which was, even for a tomboy like my, was nice and girly, and a little exciting.
In the evening we trekked across to neukölln to go and see Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and they were bloody brilliant. They played a set which easily lasted 2 hours, and I felt thoroughly entertained throughout. The singer also sounded so much like Ryan Gosling it was surreal, yet very nice!
Wednesday was probably the most exciting day for 2 reasons: the zoo, the most amazing burgers EVER. In fact, the burgers were so good, I'll skip the zoo part and just talk about food for a little while. So, I can hardly admit that we stumbled upon this place by accident, it was number 20 or something on TripAdvisor, but it was pretty sweet nonetheless. Burgermeister is situated under the under the train lines next to Schlesisches Tor station, and is a renovated block of public toilets - don't let that put you off!
We had a burger each, some cheese fries to share and two beers, costing a measly 2 euros. It's a really chilled place - you just order your burger, take a drink from the fridge (all drinks were 1 euro 50) and then you wait for your number to pop up on the little screen. You then eat your food either sitting on an empty crate, or perched at a high table. I went for the BBQ burger, which involved bacon, cheese and bbq sauce, and it was so tasty! I would definitely recommend if you want good yet cheap food in a relaxed atmosphere. I could have eaten more than one quite easily.
The rest of the trip was spent in museums, as Alex and I are really quite nerdy - I prefer to think we're cultured, but that probably isn't true. Another large chunk of our remaining time was spent sampling beer. We paid a visit to Haus Der 100 Biere, which was incredible! They had beers from all over the world, and I rather boringly decided to order a Baltika, but they had everything you could wish for - even Strongbow!
Now, can somebody take me back to Europe again please?!
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