Friday...

After a lazy day, where all our “sight-seeing” plans failed to materialise, Sara and I took the metro to meet our friends for a BBQ on a rooftop. This was all the information they gave us, and so I innocently imagined it would be on the roof terrace of someone’s apartment or something similar. Not in Berlin!

Fabian met us on the street and led us down a small alley towards what looked like some sort of old abandoned factory. We climbed over a tall fence, and followed him towards the building where he led us through a window into the damp dark building. He had conveniently brought a torch to lead the way, which we were very grateful for as it was pitch black inside, and we followed him through twists and turns, up many flights of stairs until suddenly we were climbing out onto the roof to be greeted by around 15 or 20 other people.

The view from the roof was amazing, especially once the sun went down and the lights of Berlin were switched on. Unfortunately we had arrived a little later than originally planned and the grill was rapidly getting cold. We tried our best to cook some sausages, and got surprisingly close to succeeding before hunger got the better of us and we ate them regardless with fingers crossed for no ill effects!



Our base for the next few days was going to be with a very friendly girl called Lena that had kindly offered us a place to stay via Couchsurfing.org. We met up with Lena a little later on, dropped our bags off at her place and accompanied her to a friend’s place for some pre-party drinks. Things in Berlin don’t get started until around 3am so my pre party drinks involved a few cups of strong coffee as well as the usual bottles of cheap sparkling wine – classy ;)

Lena had told us she would take us to some of the more “ugly” clubs for the real Berlin experience and so the venue for tonight was to be a little different to Watergate. Situated in an old railway repair station, M.I.K.Z wasted no money on fancy furnishings, but was full of friendly people, psyched for the music, to dance, and make new friends.

The music was pretty good, but the DJing left a little to be desired and sketchy mix’s between records were not uncommon. I had fun, and it was nice to experience it, but in the future I would be more inclined to stick to seeing the “bigger” DJ’s in the better known clubs as I can get the M.I.K.S experience most nights in Innsbruck. Later that morning we went back to Watergate for an after party. It was in the downstairs section of the club, where all the windows are clear so daylight was allowed to light up the whole place. This really seemed to change the atmosphere and I had a lot of fun dancing in the sun.

Eventually our tired muscles got the better of us and we went back to Lena’s place at around 11.30am to grab some sleep. Sleep came quickly and we woke only at around 6pm when our bellies began to cry out for food. A very brief and sleepy trip out of the house found us eating in a very authentic Indian restaurant in on Kreuziger Strasse, which is famous for its many elaboratley decorated squats, and discussing plans for later that night.



There would be a great night at Arenaclub that I was quite motivated to go to, but on the other hand, the thought of a good night’s sleep, getting to see some of the sights of Berlin and also being fully recovered for my upcoming trip was also quite tempting. One choice was definitely more fun than the other, but one choice was also more responsible. I really didn’t know what to do, so figured I would sleep a little more before making my decision...