Friday, June 10th

Our first morning began with Jerry having lost something, which is a pre-requisite these days for Dungroamin Holidays. On this occasion it was his phone which was a problem because it meant we could not ring him up to find out where he was if he lost himself. A full body and room search had failed to to find the phone plus of course the not always obvious action of Fiona ringing the phone. He thought it might have dropped out of his pocket during the meal the previous evening but a call to said establishment did not lead to discovery. During the day he retraced his tracks to the various establishments visited on the previous day, all to no avail. However, our story has a happy ending as later that day, a further search located the phone in the pocket of the trousers he was wearing the previous evening – it not being detected by Fiona’s call because she had forgotten to put the international dialling code in front of the number!

On our first day we decided to try one of the city tours, as we find this a good way of seeing lots of things and highlighting where we might want to go back later. The tours in Berlin are advertised as free, which they are, but you are asked to give a tip at the end if you have enjoyed the tour. Our guide was a Canadian who spoke very good English and promised to teach us everything there is to know about Berlin.

The history of Berlin is very much centred aound the Second World War, the Cold War and the Berlin Wall. It was interesting getting the history from the point of view of a Canadian.

After our tour, we decided to go on a boat trip to see more of the city. Whilst waiting, we grabbed some ice creams with Fiona managing to find something called a “Bum Bum”. I think she got it from the bottom of the freezer!

The river trip passes between the old East and West sides of the city and it was very noticeable by the age of the buildings.

In the evening we set out to find somewhere to eat. We walked in a smilar direction but found a different restaurant to the previous evening. Again it was warm enough to sit outside.

Alan proudly produced his German dictionary to assist with the menu, only to find it was full of French words – he had packed the wrong dictionary!

The German’s obviously don’t go in for fast food as our meal took all evening and it was after midnight by the time we got back to the hotel.