Send The Bugger Back

I finally had a decent kip last night and consequetly didn’t wake up until after 11 meaning I’d missed brekkie, drataster. This meant that my lunch plans were in limbo also, you see the main advantage of your average continental breakfast is that it makes excellent loot for meals to yet follow. Try stuffing a ‘Full English’ in your sky rocket.

These bleedin’ mosquitoes have laid siege to my body once more. But the cunning flying devils are not content with stealing my blood and making me itch lots, they have also decided to strike in unusual areas, my right ear and little finger being two such. The blighters.

The Premier League begins this weekend once more and I’m a touch excited, it’s going to be an interesting season. Me and my fantasy team (Manchester Oilers) are ready for the challenge. Claire has kindly found an Irish bar in Vilnius (where I think I will be on Saturday) that is showing our opening match against Fat Sam Rovers, bring it on.

I just had a gorgeous lasange and Bitburger at the hostel for lunch. Now I know what you’re thinking, lasange and a burger for lunch, you fat b@stard, but take that back you cretin! Bitburger is a lovely German beer served for €2.50 at the hostel, I’ve become rather fond of (and possibly dependent upon) the old girl.

Today has been another one of those days where I’ve had to spend ages planning stuff so I’ve not got out much.

I’ve booked an extra night in Riga to make it 3 and then 2 nights in Vilnius, another 2 in Warsaw and 3 in Krakow. Have also sorted a bus from Riga to Vilnius with Eurolines and researched how to get from there to Warsaw. I wish I could find a way of incorporating a Dad’s Army style map on this site, showing my Blitzkrieg like rampage through Europe with monster sized arrows.

So when I finally left the hostel grounds it was after 8 but I managed to fit quite a bit in considering.

First up I went to one of the East Berlin areas Pekka had reccomended to me, Prenzlauer Berg. It’s only about a 20 minute walk from where I’m staying and is your standard bohemian sort of suburb with lots of Apple Macs out on tables surrounded by lattes. It was worth the stroll up though and I saw a clothes shop called ‘Hoolywood’ (not a bad ‘casuals’ pun) that looked okay and if I get a chance in the morning I’ll take a proper look when it’s open.

After that I headed back over to The Reichstag which is open until midnight but last entrance is 22:00 (I did’t know that bit until I got there) and it’s now 21:50 with a pretty hefty queue so it’s not looking overly promising.

Phew, just made it. Frankly, I didn’t fancy coming back again for a third Reichstag attempt. Oh come on, you can’t surely expect any better from me by now?

It wasn’t bad actually, it’s all free and they give you an audio tour headset thing in your own language.

I then went over to the TV Tower (Fernsehturm) and thought about going up it but I decided to hold on to my 10 Euros instead. It wasn’t like I’d gone out my way to it as I had to change lines at the Alexanderplatz station next to the structure anyway.

And that was that, not a bad night’s work really eh readers.

I’m just rewarding myself with half a litre of Bitburger while I upload this bad boy. There’s a fella sat near me in the hostel who is a good shout for a Didier Drogba lookey likey except he’s a bit mincier, actually he’s a lot mincier. I bet he doesn’t dive as much though.