Day 8 – Berlin and The Pergamon.

Getting up at 3:30 at either end of the day is disgusting, but the early one moreso. Shuffling around in the dark we packed our gear, grabbed our passports and rugged up against the darkness still outside. Anyone would think this kind of plan was to avoid the authorities, but we had a better, greater motivation: cheap flights to Berlin!

We raced out of the house, just narrowly catching a night bus to Stratford station (an hourly opportunity). From here we travelled in air-conditioned comfort to Stansted, an airport far more to my liking than Heathrow (with the exception of the female cops carring machine guns – although that did raise a Skyhooks-related smirk). We get to the gate and sit calmly waiting. It's now almost 6:30, and I feel pretty awake, but in need of caffeine and pain-killers. My throat is beginning to really give me grief. The ground crew come out in their fluoro-laced jump suits, and mumble to the stewardesses – we hear nothing, but it continues, and then boarding begins. We shuffle through getting our tickets ripped one by one, and are led out to the tarmac where a plane has stairs awaiting us. I thought planes with stairs like this only appeared in Hollywood movies and footage of the Beatles arriving to be screamed at – shows what I know.

We board, find our seats, and are waiting calmly for the thrum of the engines to kick in. I wait so calmly, I fall asleep. (not surprising really) We are soon woken and informed that there is a fault with the plane, and they are trying to fix it. i have a quick flashback to Hong Kong, but calm myself – these things don't happen twice? HA!

It's unfixable, and so another plane has been called for. They finally get us off the plane to a bus waiting on the tarmac, now being pelted by gale-force wind and icy rain. We race across to the bus' security, and cram ourselves in. The bus then takes off, winding through the planes and detritus present, before pulling up at a plane with stairs, but firmly closed doors. A ground crewman runs out, waving and shaking his head – not our plane. We trundle off again, and after a bit more winding, find our way back at the first plane. J, D and I realise this, and when the doors open, we don't move...unlike the 18 year old morons that race for the plane, only to be turned back by a guy who looks suspiciously like Linus Roache, aka Thomas Wayne from 'Batman Begins'. Eventually we are led to our plane, which we all eagerly board. We are then told that due to the change, they have no idea how long it will be before take off, and that there are no refreshments on board. In fact, the best they can offer is boiling water with ice – the plain water is not fit for drinking. We arrive in Berlin three hours late.

Language barrier aside, I like Berlin, I really like it. Everything is set out in very sensible, logical ways to be as efficient as possible. The hilarity here is that whilst the efficiency to get the task done is present, there is NO efficiency or thought given to the next step, ie: there are entrance queues, very neatly ordered, but nothing in the way of exit queues or ways out. The airport actually had an additionally walkway built outside the building to get us from Customs to the carousels! The train ride into Berlin is smooth, and we see an awful lot of the city. We quickly find a hostel, get a room and go find lunch. J has been craving sausages, and so we find a hearty meal of...Doner kebabs. Surprisingly good, these sate our hunger and we ramble off down Karl-Liebknecht Strasse.

Having been here before, J does a good job of tour-guiding, taking us past the Berliner Dom and through to Museum Island. Sitting in the centre of town, the Island houses five museums of different types (one's actually an art gallery, but I'm nit-picking- it's old art), and we weave our way through to the Pergamon Museum. A great big slightly deco slab, this building houses the most tremendous display I have ever seen – they have rebuilt the temple and altar from the city of Pergamon within the museum itself. Walls are covered in the intricately carved friezes that ran around the temple, depicting the gods in battle against the giants – the enormous children of Gaia. This art runs around three of the room's walls, whilst the entire eastern component of the temple has been re-created (with new material where required) and fills the massive hall. This truly remarkable display is accompanied by a collection of statues and carvings from the city, including the Apollo gate, and ionic columns so tall they go from ceiling to floor in this cavernous building. (Being a certified moron, I left my camera in London, but wikipedia has some INCREDIBLE photos of the above)

The other displays include the Ishtar Gate, a brightly coloured brick entrance way into the fabled city of Babylon, and a large number of the Assyrian carvings and decorations. The scale and completeness of it all is ridiculous. We don't build anything like they did: No scale, no beauty. All of a sudden, I felt like a member of a truly boring culture.

The rest of Berlin did an incredible job of reinforcing this. We continued to walk down the Platz, which soon became Unten den Linden, the main avenue. All around us were palaces, royal armouries, the Humbolt Unversity and Staatsoper (State Opera). All of these buildings are hundreds of years old, their ornate structures adourned with statues, regal proclamations across their entrances and other wonders. J took us through the Bebelplatz, most famous for the atrocity which was Joseph Goebbels' Nazi book burnings. To remember this event, a symbolistic monument has been built into the ground – a square room can be viewed through plexi-glass below the platz, entirely white with book-cases floor-to-ceiling, completely empty. The starkness of this statement is obvious, and when I'm later told that you could fit one copy of each of the forbidden 20,000 titles in there, it rings true.

We retire back to the hostel and plan the next day's activities – a guided tour of the city, to really cover all bases and figure out what else we want to see, before heading out for true german food. We settle on a steak restaurant not far away, where the ever-helpful germans quickly determine our speech impediment, and alter their approach accordingly. This is a hallmark of the city – anyone who can, switches language and trips through it to assist us. I feel stupid, but very grateful.

New Thing Learnt Today – Traffic light men are of great cultural significance...