Found a new house for us, boys

I hear it has central heating, too. Handy in Berlin, though unnecessary when its 27 degrees :-)

Berlin is a rather impressive and substantial city. (That photo is of the Reichstag – parliament by the way) I arrived after 2 hours or so on the train (really not bad for 200+ km), dumped my bags in the hostel and spotted a group of English boys heading out to do the sightseeing thing so jumped on board. Did a hell of a lot of walking and photo snapping and moderately successful train navigation. So I’m already feeling pretty comfortable with getting around sans bike!

Speaking of the bike, it is apparently sitting in Sachsen (within cooee of the racetrack) and will be repaired tomorrow for 350 euro or so. Thank god for Olly once again saving the day with his masterful command of Deutch and negotiating skills.

I, however, am staying here and flying to London on Saturday. I’m pretty comfortable with that decision actually because, truth be told, I wasn’t much looking forward to that long ride across to London. It’ll be mostly autobahn and various slower highways and I can only assume that the traffic gets worse as one gets closer to the UK.

But, I now have the option of returning to pick up the bike in a couple of weeks and enjoying some more of the Swiss/Austrian alps which were all I was essentially interested in anyway. Not exactly sure of what I’m going to do, but I have a few options to evaluate. As long as I don’t crash it/get it stolen/have it break down again I ought to get some money back on it. We’ll see :-) Purple Jules – you’d be surprised (or not) at how difficult roadside repairs can be when you need a 230 euro part that you cannot name in the local tongue, or indeed find anyone who could nor have any means of transport. Nuff said.

Anyway I’m certainly in far higher spirits than I was 24 hours ago!

Actually that’s not strictly true. I had good fun last night when this group of around 10 Spanish boys rocked up at the hostel. You may notice I’ve been using the term ‘boys’ a lot. That is with some purpose, becuase just about every male I’ve met in these hotels has been a ripe old 18 or 19. Guess it doesn’t take long for the English to save up those 20 quid for a flight to Stockholm.

So back to the Spaniards. They all actually spoke remarkably good English. So we played some soccer and the guitars then came out. I really enjoyed hearing some authentic Spanish guitar playing, and was rather bemused when the Metallica, ACDC and Nirvana tunes came out. Hearing “Pennyroyal Tea” sung with a Spanish twang is definitely something to remember.

So some fun and an excellent night’s sleep last night has put me in good shape to try and keep up with these English beer guzzlers tonight. We’ll see.

Kudos to this hostel for running their internet terminals on Linux/X Windows. Although there’s no immediately apparent way to switch out of German keyboard mode which can be verz annozing! Oh and Lucas I think it might be KDE…

And finally thanks muchly to everyone who posts comments on here. I do love reading them even though I tend to not reply to them directly, but that’s only because I do a quick brain dump in here then log off to drink more beer. Or something.

Bye now.

7 Responses to “Found a new house for us, boys”

  1. Simon says:

    Glad to hear the bike is mendable! And if you were planning on riding around London on it, it’s probably a good idea you broke down when you did. You need to be mental to ride a bike around London ;-)

    The SitePoint iPod photo competition is underway, but we haven’t had an entry yet. We need a photo to kick it off- did you take that cover with you?

    http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181423

  2. Jess says:

    Ha ha, I thought the term “boys” was for my benefit ;)

  3. leslie says:

    Jules, I am glad that you are in good spirit after this unpleasant interruption of your original plan. But I look at it as a deus ex machina and there is always a good side of bad things.My extra special and strong radiation is with you! Love to read your stories and comments and waiting to see more pics.Enjoy your stay in good old Britain and collect busily new impressions.Hope you find good beer in England too. :-) Take care.GPA

  4. Purple Jules says:

    Seems to all be working out rather well over there mate. Mikey moved the blue thing out of the hall yesterday. I believe you that bike fixing was hard, I just couldn’t handle too many sympathetic replies to your post ;)

  5. Lucas Chan says:

    Bleh. KDE. =)

    Stay safe.

  6. Mikey says:

    Yup, the blue thinge, coz I didn’t want Purple Jules to belt me up. So, tell us more about this “central heating” … I’m excited about the sound of that, being winter here and all.

  7. Jase says:

    I thought it was all for Jess too ;-]