Day 13: Unlucky for some, not so much for me: Berlin

My first full day in Berlin and awoke to dreary skies (am I back in Melbourne? Still, good beer drinking weather!!!), so not much good for looking around and getting bearings. Still, after nearly 2 weeks is good not to have to pack up and leave for somewhere else, so enjoyed just hanging out with Jaimi doing domestic duties (and speaking to Denewey via skype. yay!). Finally ventured out in the arvo to go into the city. Without any real office precinct, and with the bad weather keeping people indoors, it was very quiet and a bit eerie, but did start to get a feel for the place and see how it could be. We checked out an old brewery that has been converted into a 'Kulturbrauerei' (I questioned that it was already a centre of culture while it was a brewery) and found a pub that does a 10 Euro 900g pork knuckle with a beer sauce that we will have to go back and try.It has been interesting to see how cheap beer and food is in this place, and that you can recycle bottles at the supermarket and then you get credit at the supermarket just to make the cheap beer and food even cheaper (this must be a homeless person's Mecca).

Still, the best part of the day came after Jaimi and I had a great pizza from the joint up the road from him, when we hit a local pub (Eck Kneip) of Jaimi and the crew living around here and got to hang out with some aussies that are calling Berlin home for the moment. This included James and Lottie who I hadn't seen since they had left OZ to come over to Europe, so was great to hang out with them and meet everyone else, who could cross the language barrier to order beers for me, just so I could bore them by talking beer to them. Of course had to start on the local delicacy of pils (Berliner Kindl) which as expected is good for throwing down quick and has just enough flavour so you don't think you are drinking frothy water (ok, intentionally being a little harsh here), before finding a beer closer to my taste in the Erdinger Wheat Dunkel (still a bit watery in texture but with some good roasted malt flavour to make it interesting), and was great to see James and Joe came along for that ride with me. Unfortunately had such a good time that time ran away and soon we were trying to work out the bill to get home at 1am on a Tuesday night. Still, cheers to you all for giving me a great welcome to this city, and am looking forward to catching up again while I am here.

Beefy