My guidebook revealed that the first Sunday of every month was free admission day to all museums on the Mueseuminsl (Museum Island) in Berlin. Today was the first Sunday in June, so off to Museuminsel I went. On arrival, I found out that the info was out dated and that free admission is now restricted to the last four hours before closing every Thursday. So much for the $25, 6-kilo brick aka guidebook I am carrying. I intended to go to the museums anyway, I still get a student discount. I bought a student ticket for 7 Euro and spent the whole morning checking out all of them. I like art, but here I wasn’t into the art as much as I was fascinated by the massive amounts of Greek, Roman, Persian, Islamic and other artifacts and exhibitions. At one point while inside the contemporary art museum, I quit checking out the paintings to watch on of the German museum staff members. The guy was so uptight about people getting a step too close to the paintings you’d think the veins in his forehead were gouing to explode anytime now. Whenever a visitor approached a painting, he dashed to him/her from behind, freaked the living shit out of them screaming “DISTANCE, PLEASE DISTANCE…BEHIND THE LINE“, stressing every syllable of his words you could almost see the letters floating in the air. This was great i wanted to shoot video, but I was too scared to do so for he could’ve bit my head off if he saw me.

After ODing myself on ancient artifacts and modern art, I ventured out and wandered into that flea market near the museums. They sold all kinds of neat stuff. I bought a bunch of Soviet-era pin replicas and a Russian Pojlot made watch. Setting the time and date on it was a pain in the rear but the watch looks cool. I almost asked the vendor’s daughter out.

Check out the stamps on this envelope:

I met with Marc and Angela at 19:00 and we went out for dinner. We went to this Vietnamese place near Hackecher (sp?) Markt. They served pretty good food at very reasonable pricing. No wonder there was a standing wait list on tables. Marc and Angela told me about their trip to Thailand and how much they enjoyed it.

My last day in Berlin is tomorrow. Marc drafted a day plan for me to save on time and research. I went to Fredrich Str. (apologies to any Germans reading this, I am probably messing up the spelling of all place names) to check out Checkpoint Charlie and the museum by the same name. The museum had some pretty intense exhibits. There were all kinds of displays explaining various ways East Berliners devised to escape to the West. They used a hot air baloon, home made single-seater plane, home made SCUBA rigs, improvised hiding places like inside TV sets, suitcases, cupboards, etc. You name it, they tried it. They also showed the methods used to deter potential escapees. Viscous guard dogs on 80-meter leashes, silent alarms (yes, there is such a thing), self-firing guns and many others. Then there was the section dedicated to the success and failure stories of people trying to get to the other side of the wall. I was into that stuff. So much intense history there. Art museums are nice, but they don’t induce that kind of historical awe a museum of this kind does.

Check Point Charlie:

The Jewish Holocuast Memorial in Berlin:

I forgot where this was taken, but i think it had to do with a tribute to the fallen of WWII:

Part of the Berlin Wall:

I am pretty sure she was taking a picture of me . So I did likewise. its only fair

I checked out a few other places and later met up with Marc. We went for a walk in the now empty Fan Mile, go to the Potsdamer Platz where Marc explains that this whole place with its shiny buildings was built in about six years.

We go to one of the “beach bars” in Berlin, which are basically riverside outdoor pubs with sand and hammocks. We have a few Radlers (I love that stuff). Then we go to the Reichstag, a building with cool juxtaposition of old and new architecture.

I fly back to Cairo tomorrow. It seems it was only yesterday I was landing in Barcelona. That’s not fair, I want to travel some more! All in all this was a great trip, I really enjoyed it. I should be thankful I even get to travel for almost a month.

Next trip? South America…Asia…Central Africa? Who Knows? Can’t wait to go again.

I had breakfast with Marc and Angela and decided to go down to the Fan Mile stretching the length between the Brandenburger Tor to the Victory Pillar. The weather was great. The games of the day were Britain vs. Portugal and Brazil Vs. France. The place was packed. or at least I thought so until later Marc told me there was close to one million people here yesterday during Germany’s game. I walked around, took some pictures and watched parts of the games.

I went back to Marc’s place around 20:00. He was having a bunch of his friends over for a barbecue and the France vs. Brazil game. We hung out until around 2:00 a.m.

Second rule of budget travel: If you intend to extend your stay, pay for your hostel bed in advance the night before.

I got kicked out of the hostel in Amsterdam the following day because, unbeknown to me, you can’t extend your stay in the morning during the high season. I hauled my backpack and walked to the tourist office in the train station and had them book a bed for me to avoid walking around with all that crap I am carrying on my back. I got a reservation for Berlin while I was there. The ticket office in Amsterdam’s Centraal (yes, it is Centraal not Central) train station is one of the most crowded I’ve seen so far. Minimum wait was 40 minutes. Armies of tourists in Amsterdam. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough trip time left to go to other parts of Holland, I wanted to catch some World Cup action in Berlin. I had lunch in an Egyptian-owned shop, went to some recommended book and record stores and bought more crap to carry for the rest of the trip.

This is bicycle country:

Back in my hostel I meet a group of Swedes just arriving in town. We have the usual “backpacker” conversation: Where are you from? How long have you been traveling? Where to next? Where’ve you been before, yadda yadda. At this point I realize for the first time on this trip what a lonely bastard I was. When traveling solo you never actually feel lonely until you meet a group of people traveling together. I’ll still take it though, I don’t mind traveling alone. Its more flexible, you set your own itinerary, oversleep when you want and leave to the next stop on a whim.

In the evening it was time to go check out Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District. No pictures here. Not in the interest of keeping this a G-rated website, I just didn’t take any

Arrived in Bern at 8:20 and met Bettina, one of my hosts from CouchSurfing who was waiting at the station as agreed. We went to their apartment and I met with the rest of the flat mates: Nils, Simmy and Andrea (3 siblings). They were a really cool and hospitable bunch.

Spent the day walking around Bern and met up with some friends from Germany who happened to coincidentally be here. Nils asked if I wanted to go to Interlaken in the evening to watch the Switzerland Vs. South Korea game. I said sure. Switzerland won 2-0. Intense partying ensued in Interlaken.

Crappy cellphone pic: Between the two heads of the random people in front of me you can see the glow of the huge screen in Interlaken upon which the whole town seemed to converge for the game.

Later we met up with Nils’ friends, hit a bar, then went to a friend’s house were we spent the night. I woke up on the floor of Nils’ friend living room. It took me about 20 seconds to register where I was and what I was doing there. No one was awake yet. I left quietly and headed in the general direction of where I remembered the train station was. 15 Minutes later I was on the train back to Bern.

Nils had invited me earlier to visit his family’s house in a Zweiswimmen (sp?), a little town an hour and a half east of Bern by train. He and Rebecca, his girlfriend, headed there directly from Interlaken and I went with Simmi. It was cool to go have the opportunity to get away from the tourist-hogged spots and checkout some little Swiss villages. I was still searching for the Pink Cows of Switzerland (never mind that…inside joke).

The thing about traveling by train in Switzerland is that your nose is glued to the window at all times, eyes darting from one friggin gorgeous scene to the next. You curse when the train goes inside a tunnel becuase you don’t want to miss a minute of this beauty. The whole country is plain stunning. Green hills, snow-capped mountains in the distance, blue skies and cottage-dotted fields. Wow! The same goes for Swiss girls. Spent the day at Nils’ house, met his family – all very cool people – and had dinner with them. I hopped on the train back to Bern in the evening.

I had a funny conversation with Bettina and Andrea about my name and how many Europeans mess it up when they try to pronounce it for the first time. I jokingly said that I am going to start writing it with an umlaut (H?ni). Which, if you think about it, makes sense.

The next day I went to Lucerne. I came here in 2005 but never really had a good chance to check out this beautiful town. Went to a couple art museums, which were really cool and hung out at this music festival of sorts which was taking place near the boat docking area.

checking my trip itinerary, I decided to leave directly to Paris the following day, skipping Annecy in order not to push the schedule envelope to the max. I would’ve like to stay a few more days in Switzerland and chekout more of it, but the voice inside my head told me that I must keep moving, must go to the Netherlands, and finally Berlin where the World Cup awaits.