AquaDom & SEA LIFE Berlin

I woke up a bit before my alarm, so I headed to a common room to use the wifi and give a quick call to Mum. I headed back to the room and packed my bags, got dressed, then headed down to breakfast. I wasn't really hungry, so just grabbed a croissant. A few of us sat in the lobby, swapping stories from the day (and night) before. We loaded the bus and headed on our way to Berlin just after 8.30am.
After around 3 hours driving (driving for Jo, trip planning for Tamara, sleeping for the remaining 53 of us), we stopped in a service centre for snacks and refreshments, and I tried a local soft drink called Mezzo Mix, which is basically a mix of Coke and Fanta. It tasted like coke without the fix, the orange taste wasn't that prevalent.
We jumped back on the bus, and it was time for group introductions. We headed up to the front of the bus, grabbed the microphone and told the group our names, what we do, where we're looking forward to, and a funny/random fact about ourselves.
Tamara then went through our optional me time extras throughout our trip, and we had to sign up to them all. There's so many great opportunities along the trip, and who knows when we'll be going back to them, so I signed up for most.
We stopped at another service station for food and a break. I had my first real german schnitzel and chips, although it didn't taste all that different from home!
This stop was also the location of one of the first checkpoints built in Germany during the war, Checkpoint Alpha. A bit of a sobering first insight into what we'll see throughout Germany, and at our visit to Auschwitz.
Back on the bus and Tamara told us about about Berlin and it's history, and all the places we would be getting to see over the next couple of days. It seems we'll be getting quite a bit of free time here, so that should be fun!
We'd noticed today there was quite a lot of trucks on the road, Jo told us that throughout Europe trucks aren't allowed to drive on Sundays, to help with traffic congestion and avoid accidents with all the extra people out on Sundays. This means that Mondays (like today) end up being extra busy with the backlog. There was also quite a bit of roadwork, and 2 car accidents on the other side of the road, thankfully that didn't affect us, but at 4 points over our drives, the traffic in the opposite direction was at a standstill. Lucky for us we're heading in the opposite direction.
We arrived in Berlin just after 6pm, but before arriving at our hostel we stopped for a photo op at a part of of the Berlin Wall. Unfortunately there are fences around it to stop any more vandalism, which is obviously a good thing, but makes it hard to take decent photos.
We headed to our hostel and checked in - for the next two nights my roomies are Catherine, Ashleigh and Nicole. We all just sat amd chatted for a little bit, then went down for our included dinner in the hostel bar.
We had our first taste of german sausages, two pork, one chicken. It was a good dinner, getting to know some of the other girls I hadn't really met yet.
A few of us then headed to the common room to chill, we were all exhausted from the long drive. This in turn made us all a little delirious, so hilarity ensued!
I got a message from a friend Lucas, my former zumba instructor who moved to Berlin 4 days earlier, who said he would come meet me, so I got organised and waited to hear from him.
I met him out the front of our hostel, and we headed just up the road to a pirate restaurant and bar. We had a cocktail each, which took forever to order, but tasted great! This bar was along the river, so we took a seat at a table along the edge and watched the world go by. From there we decided to wander elsewhere and found a very cute little bar off a side street. It was a small lounge bar, with cute lamps and stunning wallpaper. Another drink in there and we decided to call it a night, as it was around midnight, and Lucas needed to ride his bike home.
We got back to the hostel at around midnight, said a bit of a sad goodbye, then I headed back up to my room.
I tried to be super quiet so as not to wake anyone up, then realised on Nicole was in the room - and she was awake! I got in my pjs and hopped into bed and we chatted for a bit, then Ashleigh and Catherine came in about half an hour later. I think we ended up going to sleep around 2am.Les mer