Berlin - Capital of Modern History

Well we arrived in Berlin a little tired and annoyed by our experience in Prague. The first day was therefore assigned to house keeping - phone calls, emails and washing our first big wash! On our main day in Berling we had a wail of a time.

Apparently the best way to see Berlin is on a bike, so thats what we did, wrong side of the road and on some of the worst bikes ever. We took a free bike tour which on this occasion was headed by an Australian by the name of Beth. Almost immediately she had us picking bikes and testing them, telling us that the "blue bikes" were more reliable. So me and the boys ran and got ourselves a collection of blue bikes, whichh turned out to have the craziest gear system in the world where if you pedalled backwards to braked. So after a couple of minutes of mastering this crazy sytem we were ready to set out. However Beth wanted an assistant at the back of the tour to watch for stragglers, now I wouldnt want to speculate but you could say that Jamie's eargerness to put his hand up was directly proportional to his rating of the tour guides Beth's looks. It turned out to be the funniest descision of the day.

So we set off, straight onto a main road with a left turn, cutting across a stream of oncoming traffic, most of the team managed it leaving Jamie cut off at the traffic lights with 3 chinese girls - bad luck with the lights. A bit further on and the same thing happened again as we attempted to cross a main road, the chinese girls dithering for so long that they got isolated from the rest of the group. To try and combat this I cycled as slowly as possible to hold of the traffic but unfortunately it was not to be. Jamie again isolated and left behind, by the time he caught up a full 10 minutes had passed. He had now begin to show cracks in his calm face which made me laugh out loud as he arrived which caused fil to do the same.

In the end this continued all afternoon as myself and Fil when to help Jamie and keep him company. The girls cycled on the wrong side of the road, fell over, hit bushes and bollards and could never get it right from a standing start. The history and richness of Berlin was fantastic but it was eclipsed by the funniest afternoon of cycling that any of us are ever likely to have.

I will make a quick addition here, Jamie also saved a young ballet dancer who's skirt had got trapped in her wheel by exhibiting some manly strength and became her hero for the afternoon, but we'll skirt over that otherwise he might get cocky.

Love to all

Adam