Thursday, June 9th

Time for another Dungroamin adventure. All except Jerry and Fiona (who prefer to get lost on their own) gathered at Luton airport for our luxurious premier class Easyjet flight to Berlin. Everything went very smoothly and we were soon landing in Berlin for the next part of our journey. This involved walking with our suit cases to the train station about 400m away.

At the station we discovered a distinct lack of humans as the place had been taken over by machines. However we did discover that they spoke English and using our superior intellect soon worked out how to get a ticket. The machines were very clever, as they detected Chris’s couterfeit Euros straight away and threw them back at him. But, Chris, being a banker, had a cunning plan, which was to screw up the freshly printed note thus fooling the machine into thinking it was real.

Having studied the timetable, we concluded we needed a RB14. We went up to the platform and found a train with that number on it so clamdered on hoping it was going into Berlin rather than away.

After the first few stops we breathed a sigh of relief as we realised we were going in the right direction.

Alan noted that the carriages did not have loads of hanging hand holds like we do on British trains. He concluded this must be because the ride was so smooth they didn’t need them. As he said this, there was an almighty jolt and he nearly ended up two carriages along!

But fortune was with us as the train did go to Berlin where we disembarked. There was no sign of the Dungroamin Holidays courier at the station so we decided to set off in search of our hotel dragging our suit cases beind us. I would be an under–statement to say this was a long way, but my suit case now needs a 6,000 mile service!

Having booked in and freshened up, we set out in search of an eating place. As we walked up the road, Alan quickly learned that the colour of the paving slabs is important, as he was nearly run over by a bicycle as he inadvertantly stepped onto a cycle path in the middle of the pedestrian walkway.

We soon found somewhere to eat and were able to sit outside as it was still warm.

For some reason nobody ordered anything with salad. It might have been because at the time we went on this weekend, there was an epidemic of salmonella poisoning attributed to salad and centred in Germany.

Fully satiated, we returned to the hotel without being run over by any more bikes.