Wednesday, 07 October 2009

Arrived in Berlin last night around 5pm and checked into a hotel room that's reminiscent of a cabin on a cruise ship...in a good way!

We (Tour Mole and I) headed out for a drink and a bit of grub with Evo, Mick and Danny, some guys from the tour, or team Scouse as their commonly known here (scouse being a term for people from Liverpool, for those of you outside of the UK).  It was good cráic, I always laugh a lot when I'm around team scouse.

Anyway, it was an early one so I got to bed around 11pm, very proud of myself that I was having at least one early night on this tour.  I know this is a ridiculous thing to bring up in a post, but I'm not telling you this to talk about my sleeping routine, but only to tell you this.  I then woke up...BING....wide awake at 3am!  I don't know why?  It clearly wasn't jet lag....maybe it was delayed jet lag or something..... no matter what it what it was, it 3am and I was up and Adam.  I tried getting myself back over for about an hour, to no avail.  I entered the stage of major annoyance at myself, and lack of ability to sleep.  Do you know what I mean? I started getting really pissed off, which made it even harder again to sleep. I decided that the best thing to do was to pretend it was 11pm, stick a movie on and hopefully trick myself into feeling tired again.

I put on Carlito's Way, but no sleep came (although, admittedly, it's not the best film to sleep to)... to cut a tall story short, I eventually fell asleep at 8am this morning.... what a night.

I spent some of that time hanging out the window to get some cool air around me, and into the room, only to notice a plethora of pants, knickers and socks on the roof beneath me.  Clearly from when people washed their smalls in the sink and hung them on the window cill to dry, before the wind caught them and they ended up on the roof.

I had a walk around Berlin today:  Beautiful city altogether!  I sat and had a coffee at Checkpoint Charlie, albeit a redundant checkpoint these days, and couldn't help but imagine what it must have been like!?  There's something about walking around Berlin!  It feels like a very friendly and hopeful city, and yet the smoke from the embers of it's past still gets in your eyes.  Not that it feels austere, just that there's a remnant of austerity.  I must say though, that none of this comes from the people, who a clearly as appalled by the whole thing as the rest of the world, but more from my own knowledge the the cities history.  even though I was  aware of its history, it didn't stop me from falling in love with the city.  It truly is a stunning place!

Right, the tour mole is getting upset now, that I'm still here tyoing when he wants to get going back to the hotel, so I'd best sign off.

We head for Poland tomorrow....two more gigs then I'm homeward bound!!!

p.s. it's Joanne's birthday now (8th Oct) and she's feeling lonely, so please stop by her site and leave a birthday wish will you!!!!

This was an interesting welcome to the hotel room!


Evo manning the beer outlet


Mick's new haircut


Danny (flipping a sly bird?)


Tour Mole taking a picture of me taking a picture of Tour Mole



Checkpoint Charlie


This was a heavy place to be.... a memorial to the Holocaust