"I'm in London Still" - nah we just got here!

After a nightmare day of travel from Berlin to Frankfurt (as usual we took the cheap option of travel and so this caused us the hassel of changing trains 5 times before hitting the airport!) we boarded our last leg to London. Claire and Marc, a couple that we met in Asia a few years ago who were fortunate enough to visit Bendigo and enjoy one of Kristen's mum's roasts on their travels in Australia picked us up and we have been occupying their couch ever since! It's been great catching up with our mates from our last trip! We haven't yet really had the chance to see much of London as we have been job and house hunting ever since we got here.
We are living in South West London with 5 others and are sharing a massive room with two big beds (meaning that we will no longer have to spoon each other) and our own bathroom (that becomes the communal one when parties occur).
And we are both working now which is great as we are earning the pound. God it's so expensive here! We have gone being millionaires in India to being completely skint here multiplying every pound by 2.4 to see the real price of that coffee... Yeah it's not nice knowing that you are forking out a 6 dollars for a coffee!
We have been having fun catching up with old travel friends and just wandering around but haven't really done the touristy bits yet. We'll put heaps of photos up in the next post and show our house, house mates and other things.

Back to Beautiful Berlin

After returning from Prague we arrived back in beautiful Berlin where the amazing sunny weather was waiting. We had a nice few days visiting markets, having picnics in the park and generally loving ourselves sick! Here are a few photos:
Our picnic in the park with lovely Carolin and Steffen.













Out for dinner with Steffen Friday night.








Bratwurst after bratwurst. Guess what? We found that they don't actually eat saurkraut on their bratwursts! That is just our attempt at throwing all things German in one meal apparently!!










Ampleman can only be found in East Berlin.







Weird bins can be seen everywhere.












TV tower in Alexanderplatz, our neck of the woods.









Kristen with a few random German bears.




















Prost is the German Cheers!









Strange war memorabilia can be found on almost every corner in Berlin, including gas masks - yuck.

Clare trying on some animal.

Sipping lattes on the waters edge in the sun. Heaven!

Ciao Czech! 'Popping over' to Prague

We are loving Europe in that everything is so close! We were able to just pop over to Prague for a visit from Berlin and back again which is such a nice feeling. Ok it wasn't really 'popping over' for us as of course we took the cheap option and found ourselves on yet another long and painful bus journey but popping over is possible for those who have money to spend on luxuries like train rides or flights. Anyhow, we're not complaining...
Prague was absolutely stunning!

Europeans call it 'Europes favourite city' and we would have to agree that it was pretty amazing. We spent our 4 days there just wandering around admiring the architecture and visiting the sights.


Look at this view!!!!

The famous St Wenseslas Statue.

We stayed in a backpackers 14 bed dorm and so the both of us had weary eyes most of the time as we had a rude awakening the first night as a group of drunken girls turned the light on and decided to discuss the whole nights events at 4am! Then the next night the top bunk right next to Kristen and above Clare was shaking violently under the pressure of probably the worst snoring that a bed can endure. Our tiredness of course had nothing to do with the 21st birthday party on a boat that we incidently got an invite to and attended happily! It was pretty amazing - 2 bars on deck, a nightclub on the top deck and a nice place to chill out underneath.

Here is a photo of us as we arrived...

Czech's love their beer and can be found guzzling any time of the day

This was us wedged in on an overcrowded bus. You literally have to push your way in and then its a real fight to hold your place as the bus turns brutally around corners. You'd swear the bus driver was giggling to himself playing dominos with his passengers. At one stage Kristen went flying forward into Clare who in turn headbutted a poor undeserving woman.

Guten Tag Europe!! Germany here we come!

We had a fairly painless 12 hour flight to Frankfurt and hung about in the Frankfurt train station for a few hours before boarding one of the two trains we were to take to get to Berlin. On a Sunday morning at 6am we were greeted by many party goers who were heading to Maccas before home after a hard night which was interesting.
The train ride was a little painful as at this stage we were feeling a bit of jetlag and got quite restless. We managed to stay awake though because the scenery was just beautiful.

We thoroughly enjoyed being able to buy a salad roll for lunch!
Lovely Annie (our best mate Hel's Mum for those who don't know) was awaiting at us at the station where we arrived and has been spoiling us rotten ever since.
So far we have done a load of washing (a luxury after 3.5 months of hand washing in random sinks and buckets - it never quite smells the same), had a bath, been fed some juicy home cooked food and even made a meal last night! We had almost forgotten how to use a kitchen.
It's really cold here at the moment and we are loving it as we realised that we have been in hot hot weather for 6 months now after the summer at home before we left. So it's just awesome to rug up and drink hot drinks and sit in front of the heater.
Clare relaxing in front of the heater.
Kristen, Annie and Dorothea in the loungeroom.







Hmm you would think that someone has moved in here... Clare is in here somewhere believe it or not!










Annie and Dorothea polishing their dessert after eating a meal of salmon cakes we made them.







Kristen in Annie's apron. What a novel sight!







We have spent the past few days wandering around Berlin and went on a small scale shopping spree for winter clothes as its freezing here at the moment. We were expecting things to be so expensive here but they're not! The main expense is travel. It cost us €89 to get from Franfurt to Berlin on the train which was a very short distance. The same trip in India would have cost less than 2!
Berlin is an awesome place. It's huge really! We have been exploring one district per day. We are staying in the best and currently most popular district called Mitte and went to the old favourite Charlottenburg yesterday. We are going back there today to visit the erotica museum and will also go to a holocaust war memorial museum. We went on Monday but it was shut. It will be amazing seeing the damage hitler caused not so long ago.

Here are some pictures of the past few days in Berlin:












Clare in the rain at the holocaust war memorial.





















Enjoying coffees out of the rain...












Kristen's first real German bratwurst.









We have even been able to get our eyelashes tinted and are planning on a haircut some time soon. It's so much cheaper than home for this sort of thing!