Friday 12th November 1999

I was supposed to get into work early to do some stuff before heading off to catch my train to Berlin. Ordinarily I would have flown, cos it's flippin miles away, but there were no seats left on the flights going out of both Stuttgart and Munich, when I wanted to travel.

However, due to an excessive intake of beer the night before I managed to either not set my alarm, ignore my alarm or switch off my alarm without waking up. Whatever happened I arrived at the office at 10.30am and left again at 2.00pm.

I then endured a 7.5 hour train journey from Ulm to Berlin. The journey itself wasn't so bad but it was lucky for me that I reserved a seat. There were people everywhere and the train was mobbed. Top-tip if you're travelling in Germany on a Friday or a Sunday - reserve a seat cos they're always full. The cost wasn't too bad either, relatively speaking. It was 270 DM each way, however after the purchase of a BahnCard I now get half price travel on the German railways for the next year. The BahnCard cost 265 DM, which means that the entire journey was 5 DM cheaper than without a Card, and now all the rest of my trips are half price.

I arrived at the hotel where Vicki and I were staying and wandered up to reception. The girl behind the counter didn't really speak english and my german isn't so good yet, but I eventually managed to explain that my girlfriend had a reservation and I was just here for the weekend. She seemed to have no idea about this as she had us lined up for a single room. So eventually we ended up with a twin room. Vicki arrived about 30mins later and we popped out for a quick explore. Grabbed a couple of bottles of wine and went back to the hotel as by this time it was midnight and we were both "cream-crackered".

Saturday 13th November 1999

We staggered into the breakfast room at about 11.30am and grabbed some breakfast whilst looking through "The Rough Guide to Germany". Vicki decided she wanted to go into the Reichstag, and I decided I wanted to try and find the little bit of the wall that remains. We both failed. We caught the S-Bahn up to Tiergarten and walked down "Die Strasse de 17 Juni". This is a huge, wide road running through the centre of the forest in the middle of Berlin. It's the road that runs through Brandenberg gate, and on into former Eastern Germany. As we walked along the road we came across a huge [ 67m ] memorial sort of thing with a big gold leafed chick on top. Can't remember the name of the place but a web search on Berlin is bound to throw it out. Anyway, about 700 steps up to the top later we had a seriously spectacular view out over Berlin. Sadly it was a little misty but it was still a superb view nevertheless. There were police cars buzzing everywhere and we could make out a lot of activity in the area we were heading, so down we went and continued our sightseeing.

As we approached Brandenberg gate we found ourselves in the middle of an anti-nuclear demo. It seems the German government promised to stop using nuclear energy [ I think ] before the next elections. They haven't so the people had a mad demo about it. It was pretty cool. We wandered over to The Reichstag but there was an *ENORMOUS* queue to get in, so we didn't. It was a very cold day [ well what with it being Berlin and November it doesn't come as much of a surprise ] so we grabbed some hot wine [ like you get on the ski-slopes ] from a street seller and wandered back down to Brandenberg gate from where the demo had moved on.

So we walked through and crossed into former Eastern Germany. The wall used to run just here but nothing remains of it now. I believe a few miles to the North there is still a bit standing which is surrounded by barbed wire to stop people stealing it, but we couldn't find it.

We left that section of Germany and headed back to the Zoo station, and the main shopping area of Berlin. Grabbed a sausage from a street seller [ hey it's not a trip to Germany without sausage right? ] and checked out a few snowboards. The we saw the famous broken spire church. This is a *huge* church that was bombed by the allies. It knocked off the top of it which has been left off as a reminder of what happened. We mooched around a few shops, then being utterly knackered went to the pub. Followed it up with dinner before heading back towards the hotel for more beers, pool and more beers.

Sunday 14th November 1999

Breakfast, train journey, few beers in Ulm, bed.

Monday 15th November 1999

Paperwork, read, slept.

Tuesday 16th November 1999

Went into Ulm for dinner at John Bentons. It's a good restaurant but is predominantly a steak house. I managed to find turkey on the menu after using the universal menu translator.

The universal menu translator, as I'm sure you're aware is when you talk to the waitress or whoever you're dining with and point at something and go "moo" or "cluck-cluck-bacaaaawk" or in my case "gobble-gobble".

After dinner we ended up in some boozer playing dice with Mark and Marcus.

Wednesday 17th November 1999

Dunno! I'm writing this on Wednesday 24th Novemeber and I really can't remember what I did. This is getting bad - must drink less!

Thursday 18th November 1999

The hire car was delivered to Nokia at about lunchtime and I jumped into it at about 14.00. I was taking the car to Stuttgart airport as it's considerably quicker, and only marginally more expensive to drive than it is to catch the train. The only problem with driving is that you can always rely on a heap of snow coming down for the few hours before you set off. Still, the snowplough people had been out in force and it wasn't really a problem. You're supposed to fill them up when you reach the airport but the needle was still registering over full, so I just dumped it and took my chances. We'll see what happens when I get the invoice back.

Arrived at the airport with heaps of time to spare, for a change, had a couple of beers and boarded my flight. The flight cost me about 250GBP which was a little expensive, but since it was my Mum's birthday I suppose I had to really ( awwwww ). Anyway, it seems the flight was so expensive because it's a Lufthansa business flight. So I staggered on with ripped jeans and a pair of trainers to take my place on a nice leather seat surrounded by people in pin striped suits and gay stuff like that. Still, the airline women kept me plied with beer so I didn't mind too much. The one thing that did annoy me was that the meal had beef in it and they had no veggie options. :(