Berlin and the Worst Train Ever

After I updated the blog last in Berlin, Anatoe and I did end up going to check out Kunsthaus Tacheles. It was a pretty cool space with tons of graffiti all over, several bars and stands serving drinks and food, cafés, galleries, a cinema, a DJ spinning out back on one of the little stages…in short everything one could want at a gathering place for alternative culture. We hung out there for a bit and watched a guy juggle fire for a little while but there weren’t many people so we decided to go to a hookah bar and just chill out for a little while there. It was a low-key evening, but that’s exactly what we needed as you’ll soon see.

The next day we left Mary’s flat (by the way, did I mention that her flat is incredible and has an amazing view of the city?) with all our stuff and walked down to Checkpoint Charlie. The museum was a bit expensive but definitely worth it. There was so much to see and take in, although it did repeat itself from time to time. I was really excited to see the models of the wall built by the woman who married the Eiffel Tower (Erika Eiffel – if you haven’t watched that documentary you should because it is really interesting. It’s about women who only fall in love with inanimate objects like walls, buildings, archery bows, and carnival rides, among other things). After the museum we went to check out parts of the Berlin Wall that were still in tact, which was definitely an interesting thing to see. On the streets in Berlin there are bricks in the ground to mark out where the wall used to stand, so after we saw the part still standing near the Checkpoint Charlie museum we decided to follow the bricks for a little while to see other pieces. We had the intention of walking down to the river, but with our stuff it was a little much.

On our way to the museum we ran into Étienne, a guy I know from Canada who was studying in Poitiers this past semester, on the street. That was cool and unexpected, so we met up with him after walking around for a little while and hung out by the Gendarmenmarkt until we had to part ways. We then made our way to the worst train I’ve ever been on in my life.

When we got to the train station we saw a massive group of Irish students hanging around near our platform. We were hoping that not all of them were going on our train, but luck was not on our side. There were actually 100 of them and most of them did not have a reservation (I found this out from one of the girls who was in our compartment on the train) and the train was already completely booked. It was so uncomfortably hot on that train and the number of people just made it worse. Most of them were loud and obnoxious and would walk back and forth in front of our compartment all the time. Then they started drinking, which didn’t make things any better. It was going to be a long twelve hours. After a while I realized that with the noise and the heat there was no possible way for me to get to sleep. (And I thought Americans had the reputation of being the obnoxious travelers.) I did eventually start to doze off, but whenever I did something woke me up. It wouldn’t have been so bad, not being able to sleep, if I was able to move around the cars a bit and stretch my legs. Well, since there were so many Irish students without reservations they resorted to sleeping two-by-two down the corridors making it impossible to move. Now, you might think that’s the worst of it, but no. At around 3:00am, when a lot of the people had fallen asleep or packed into other cars with their friends to try and sleep on the floor, the train shook so violently that I instinctively yelled “JESUS CHRIST” (probably prompting a glance from the nun in my compartment) and I thought we derailed. No joke, I thought we derailed, and so did most of the other people, because what else would you think happened when your train shakes super violently and then stops moving. At that point everyone piled into the corridor and started trying to guess what happened. I started talking to an Irish girl who was not only woken up by the shaking, but by a suitcase falling and hitting her on the nose. It was not a fun situation, and after that no one was really sleeping, so the noise started back up again. We were stationary for about a half an hour or so before we finally started moving, which I guess proves we didn’t derail. I have no idea what happened. But we made into Krakow alive and were greeted by beautiful weather!

Check out the next update to find out about our adventures in Krakow.