Saturday July 21, 2007

I think Tasha and I had one of the best sleeps since we have been in Europe because it was so dark and quiet outside. It was nice to wake up and look out the window and see open land, animals, and flowers instead of the side of buildings. We packed up our stuff while Joanne prepared breakfast for us. She made us some Kona coffee that I gave to them as a gift for letting us stay with them, which was a nice taste of home. After breakfast Kim wanted to give Tasha and I some good Danish music so he burned a CD of Nik and Jay a Danish pop group popular among young girls. After relaxing a bit we loaded our things into the car and headed off to the train station for our train to Berlin. On the way into the train station Tasha’s bag decided to break so we she had to figure out how to manage a broken suitcase along with her new bag. She managed to figure it out with some practice though. Kim and Joanne sat with us until our train arrived and we boarded. We never thought we would get the chance to be sent off on a train but that was the second time. It felt so special. The train was pretty packed and not a lot of people thought about getting seat reservations so they were forced to stand up the whole 5 hour train ride, but thank goodness Tasha and I had reservations. For lunch we brought leftovers from dinner last night that tasted even better than they did last night and enjoyed them on the train. I think we might have made everyone in our car salivate because the smell filled the air with quickness. We just relaxed for the next couple of hours until we arrived in Hamburg where we had a 1-hour wait until our train in Berlin. In that one-hour both Tasha and I had a chance to step outside the train station and see Hamburg really at a glance. Once we got in Berlin we had to figure out how to get to the correct trains and metros to get to our hostel but eventually managed to do it while dragging our heavy bags up and down stairs. Once we arrived on the street at our train station we had to ask for help in finding the correct street and direction towards our hostel. We found it thanks to the nice German man that helped us. The hostel, East Seven Berlin, was really nice and clean, but didn’t have a lift and of course we were on the top floor so that was a challenge, but we managed to do it. Because we arrived late we didn’t have time or energy to do anything so we just showered, used the Internet, and went to sleep.