Sponge Bucket: brrrrrrrr-lin.

hola! this shall be a short post as i was only in lovely berlin for a very short time and most of that time i was drinking or drunk or sleeping off the hangover. i am not known for being a party animal but something about berlin got me in the mood... perhaps zis is becoz of zier waging techno scene, yaah?

berlin actually wasn't originally on the itinerary but i decided to go last minute after charlie's time in paris was coming to a close and i felt i had done my dash there as well. the fact that charlie's manfriend, dylan, and our friend who is a man, josh, were to be in berlin at the same time was the icing on the schwarzwälder kirschtorte. so, waking up at 5.30am, i farewelled a sleepy charlie (who would be flying out at a far more reasonable hour) and caught the train to germany. eight and a half hours later, two weary travellers arrived on the doorstep of charlie's german BFF isabella, her BF bernd and their RRRUFFF frida. oh my goodness, how i loved frida. taking her to the park for a game of fetch is one of my fondest memories of berlin. i would throw her ball and she would literally spring (boing! boing!) through the long grass like a kangaroo, snuffle about for a few minutes and then run back to me and refuse to give me the ball. you could see her little mind working at these times: 'i want the human to throw the ball… but it's mine. but i reeeeeally wanna chase after it… but i mustn't let her touch it. i'll put it down so she think it's ok to throw it… haha! sucker! my ball.'

isabella and bernd were every inch as fantastic as their poochy and we had mucho, mucho good times with them. the first evening charlie and i met up with isabella and her friends for dinner and drinks at a restaurant in which it was not compulsory to pay (kinda like lentil as anything for melbourne viewers… the concept still boggles my mind, especially since most of the patrons are uni students or dropkicks who certainly have no intention of paying. how do these places stay afloat?? and in case you were wondering, i paid 2 euros and got a bowl of pasta, a piece of cake and three glasses of vino. so yes, i count myself in the dropkick category). afterwards we met up with the boys and bought many bottles of alcohol for a night-time picnic; however, as luck would have it, the heavens decided to open up and unleash a furious downpour upon us, forcing us to seek cover until it subsided. alas, that’s how i spent my first night in berlin: sitting on a torn-off bit of cardboard drinking beer in a graffiti-covered doorway that smelt like a combination of urine, used nappies, burger king and puke. what a cliché, no?

the next day, charlie, dylan, josh, their friend gabe and i had a day of sightseeing and glorious food consumption, starting off with the best bagel i’ve ever eaten. we headed off on a big walk around the city, beginning the tour in warm sunshine and again being caught out by freezing cold rain. despite seeing some awesome sights, we were a pretty miserable bunch towards the end, with everyone bickering over where to eat, how much their feet hurt, how wet they were, how hungover they felt etc. etc. however, in the end, we found a small italian restaurant that made ridiculously good food, shared a bottle of vino together and spirits were once again lifted. that night was another big one, culminating in charlie losing her passport on the d-floor of a hip-hop club (note to self: you are not rihanna. it is not sexy when you try to be. stop.)

the following morning, while everyone else got to nurse their exploding hangovers like normal humans, charlie and i took a trip to the embassy to get her a temporary passport. this proved to be a much more difficult task than one would imagine, thanks to the numerous vodkas consumed the night before. for one, we had no idea where the club was, which made lodging a police report very, very difficult. the policeman actually laughed at us when we told him this: 'baht ladiez, we need zis informacion to make zee weport!' that night, i ruled out any chance of going out and charlie felt the same. so while the boys went to the infamous club berghein and saw various sex acts carried out before their very eyes, we watched keeping up with the kardashians and ate delicious german chocolate. the next day i knew we'd made the right decision when josh, dylan and gabe kept passing out over our morning bagels (they had not yet been to sleep).

my last night in berlin was a doozy, starting off with bernd cooking the most delicious meal for us (some sort of crumbed ball of deliciousness with mushroom sauce... oh me oh my). isabella and bernd invited some friends over to their apartment for drinks and before long, we were dancing around their apartment while sipping from bottles of spitzi (a combination of coke and fanta) and our good friend, vodka. we decided to head out to this new club that was actually a big garden under the stars, with little fires to sit around and a couple of small ponds. the most hilarious moment of the night came when an über hipster tried to look ethereal and moody by peering into a pond and ended up falling in. oh how we laughed!

i stumbled home to isabella and bernd's the next day at noon after... ahem... spending the night elsewhere. there was barely enough time for teasing (although they definitely managed to) before i had to pack my bags and head off to the train station, only briefly detouring so charlie could get a new passport photo taken in one of those photo booths (a waste of time evidently... apparently you're not allowed to have graffiti in the background of your passport photo... who knew!?)

ok so definitely not a short post, as promised! soz! up next: nice, france! and don't worry, i've already pretty much written it so it shouldn't be too long before it's up. although with my track record, it's entirely possible you won't be reading anything until christmas.

kisses!