i know a guy who knows a guy...

well the past week has been an eventful one - hopefully i dont forget anything!

last monday we went out looking for cheap bikes to take around europe. we went to little johns bikes in hackesher markt (v. central location) and they didnt have any but their other store did. we trekked out to the 'burbs (and by trekked i mean took the 'tube') only to find the bikes were pretty bad so we came back into town. kelly and prue got bikes from up the road from us, so we thought that would be a good place to try. we walked up and asked at the first bike shop that we saw. the guy couldnt speak english but his friend was like 'no, he doesnt sell them, but i do. come with me!' we were wary, but he said he was taking us to a shop, so we followed him. he took us down the street and around the corner to a second hand washing machine store and pointed to two rusty old bikes. he grabbed one and practically pulled it apart to repair everything. meanwhile, his neighbour brought out a nice looking bike. we stood there for ages trying to make the guy understand that we didnt want his bike, but we wanted his neighbours instead. in the end we ended up shoving them the money and running. he was a really nice guy, but couldnt understand why we didnt want his old, rusty and broken bike. half our problem was solved. as we were walking home we came across another bike shop and asked the owner if he was selling second hand bikes. he replied: no, but my neighbour upstairs is. come back tomorrow at 9.30!

so we did. and it turned out to be a really nice 'holland style' bike. it also turned out that we got ripped off with my bike, because jess' was 30 euros cheaper and much nicer. ah well, you live and learn.

on tuesday we took out our bikes (named eike the bikie - mine - and rosie - jess.) with kelly and prue and rode over via the brandenberg gate to yet another museum in the west! it was called the story of berlin and it was so intense. it detailed, and i mean really detailed the history of berlin starting from around the 1200s. there was SO much information! and then, just when you thought there couldnt be any more, world war two came around. and then the cold war. it was so overwhelming! after that we needed something a lot less sombre so we headed over the the aquarium to hang out with the fish. that was cool - they had heaps of different varieties. jess had fun pointing out all the fish she has to kelly and prue.

on wednesday we went to the cute little cafe we discovered down the street. they do the best coffee in berlin by far. we then rode into town and got some saddlebags to put on our new bikes. we look all professional when we ride now. we went to the main train station to try and book our tickets to paris and then lady could hardly speak any english. we found out that we couldnt catch the train til tuesday AND it would take two days to get there! but at least it was booked. after that we walked down friedrichstraße and ended up at checkpoint charlie. as you do, when you go for a walk. there was no one around so i made jess pose for a picture, but she wasnt very happy because it was raining pretty heavily.

on friday we went op shop shopping around prenzlaur berg. we got a map from the one opposite our apartment and set off. we found some fantastic shops with heaps of original gdr stuff in them. it was awesome to see the area - there are so many little awesome shops and the people are so interesting to watch.

tent shopping was on the agenda for saturday. we went to a couple of stores and found an awesome one that doesnt look too difficult to put up, and is small enough to fit in our bags. we also picked up a couple of blow up mattresses but we got the cheap ones, so hopefully they will be ok. we took kelly and prue out for dinner to say thankyou for having us. we went to an awesome vegetarian restaurant in kreuzberg. the food was amazing! very rich and much enjoyed by all.

on sunday we slept in late before going to a flea market around the corner. it was sooooo cool! im so glad we got there late as we could have very easily spent all our money there. jess got a few t shirts and i found an awesome bike! it was a sad moment, but i traded eike in. i now have franz, who is a holland bike like jess' and is much easier to ride than eike.

on our last day in berlin we went to the sony centre to check out the architecture. it was pretty cool so we sat and had hot chocolates to keep out of the rain. we rode back through checkpoint charlie to get souvenirs (we love tourist shops now!) and via the brandenburg gate to the reichstag. we were going to go in but the dome was closed for cleaning and the line was so long. we rode home and just as we turned on to our street it started raining cats and dogs and we got saturated! it was like perth rain - it came down sideways! prue cooked us a delicious dinner and we went down to the scotch and soda (the pub downstairs) and had cocktails.

off to paris now... if we make it in one piece!

nien, das ist mein hamburger!

we got to berlin late on sunday night. we got on the train at the airport, got off at charlottenburg and practically tripped up the stairs to the hostel it was that close to the train station. awesome!

 we love hostels that we dont have to walk to. and we had a twin room, which was fantastic after the 200 bed dorms at herrang! we spent the first few days recovering from herrang - sleep is SO good! we went in to town and walked up the shopping strip on the second day. it was cool because we knew where we were - sort of. we kept going: hey! i remember that! its nice to be somewhere sort of familiar. charlottenburg is a nice area. but, we found out, not as nice as mitte. or prenzlaur berg. east rocks. we met up with kelly and prue on wednesday night and had...

delicious fried rice with zucchini and lemongrass. and champignons. it was delicious! i thought about it all the next day!!

we moved into kelly and prues two days ago. they are staying in such a nice apartment! the area is soooo nice. the only bad part was the 300 (its actually 107) stairs to get up to the top floor of the apartment block. but at the end of the week we will have legs of steel. mmm. legs of steel. 

on friday we went to the pergamonmuseum, which was home to the babylon exhibition. 

the first half, with all the artefacts was awesome, but the second half had lots of weird modern stuff and wasnt so good. we bought the threeday museum card (much to jess' delight...) and set off to the bode museum around the corner. that was cool, it had lots of coins. we like coins. we went out with kelly and prue that night. the first bar we went to was called 8mm and was described by exberliner.com as: 

"The kind of cramped, stuffy hole   where desperate but culturally literate 30-somethings stand around soaking their liver in gin til 4:00am on a Monday night. But it's better than that: a lot of the barflies there are actually talented, multi-lingual flimmakers or over-the-hill cutting edge DJs. Yes, it's smoky and a bit grimy. But the DJs have class and the project the same weird movie all the time."

yes, we saw the barflies. yes, we saw the weird, slightly creepy movie and yes, we heard the djs. it was almost too cool for school. but we are cooler than school and therefore were too cool for it. 

on saturday we got up ready for another big day of museuming. we started off with the photography museum. there was an exhibiton on helmut newton which was amazing. he took some fantastic photos. there were also photos of the paparazzi and of 70s celebrities that didnt know they were being photographed. most of them were by helmut but there were a few from other photographers. for example, all the photographs of helmut newton were by a lady called alice springs, which we found quite hilarious. the guards didnt get what was quite so funny.

the second museum we went to was the berlinische gallerie. this had lots of modern art from the 80s and some disturbing photographs. we didnt like this one as much as the first museum. the gallerie was quite a walk from any tube station so we set off down one street back to the nearest tube station and stumbled upon the juedisches museum, or the jewish museum. when we were in berlin before we were told about a museum with crazy architecture and sloping floors which jess was quite keen to go to, but we couldnt remember what it was called. we walked into the jewish museum and were like: '... wait a minute... this is it!' it was the most amazing museum ever! the whole experience was intense. there was a room called the memory tower and it was a triangular tower with a tiny hole letting natural light in. it was meant for reflection and for people to think what they liked. another room was the memory void. (check photos on flickr because its hard to describe) it was like walking over the faces of the jews who lost their lives during the holocaust. they were metal and when people walked on them they made a clanking noise which echoed throughout the museum. the way the whole museum was set out was fantastic. there wasnt an overload of information; just enough to make you think.

on saturday night we made dinner..... ange went to the store and came back with ingredients for a masterpiece. well, a masterpiece in our eyes. we cut up an onion, diced some garlic, and cooked them good and through, then we put a cut up zuccini, and two cut up fresh tomatoes, half a tin of diced tomatoes to make it saucy. then we put it on wholemeal pasta and voila! a masterpiece. well, it was delicious..

yesterday we got up ready for our final museum day. we headed out to museum island again and discovered an awesome market strip. we spent a bit of time thinning out our wallets before heading into the egyptian museum. we saw nefertiti's head sculpture. that was awse, except for the guards that told me off for everything i did including breathing on an exhibit...

we then went on to the DDR museum, a hands on museum about life in the GDR. that was awesome. we got to pull drawers out and they had stuff in them we could play with. totally cool!

the last museum was the anne frank zentrum in mitte (the hip and happening centre of east berlin) it was done really well and had a contrast of modern life and anne franks life. there wasnt an overload of information which was good, seeing as we were nearly brain-dead from all the museuming we'd done over the past few days. 

ok, well, ange has pretty much covered most of it, so i wont write too much. Prenzlaur Berg (where we are currently staying) is awesome. kelly and prues apartment is the bomb. it is the coolest place, right in the middle of east berlin, only two train stops away from everywhere and anywhere! the apartment itself is such a nice place and we are so grateful that we could stay here. and just to top it off, prue's cooking is like eating at your favourite restaurant!

last night we all went for a stroll down the street and went to this little wine bar thats hidden into the rows of cafe's and apartments. you step down into this little doorway, and find yourself in this most amazing space. its a tiny bar, and you pay one euro to get in. the lady then suggests a wine you might like (they only do red wine - dad, you'd love this place) and then you find a seat at this big wooden tables and the lady brings your wine and some water. the atmosphere was so great, its very dimly lit, mostly by candles, with bright fairy lights dotted here and there. it almost feels like you're in a cave. very cool. we stayed there for hours, talking so much we only had one bottle of wine! at the end, you go and you pay only what you think the wine deserved. pretty cool yeah?

so all in all, berlin is definately up there in my most favourite places in europe...i can say that now because i've been to many... woohooo!! tomorrow we're going over to the west to the aquarium at zoologischer garten, which i am extremely excited about, and we're also going to check out some more museums and galleries.

lots of love to all, i feel a little bit homesick.. x

nothings better than boogie woogie!

the 28th of june marked our first day at Herrang Dance Camp. getting there was uneventful (thankfully) and it only took about an hour and a half from stockholm to the VERY tiny town of herrang. and when i say tiny i mean tiny.. like one shop no atms tiny. we arrived at around 12 and had to wait around a bit before we could register for the camp. even at that early stage (it was day one week one of the 4 week camp) you could feel the excited buzz of all the dancers who were anticipating the weeks to come. we checked in without a hitch and went to find our room. the actual camp is help at a school, during the summer break. this meant we had a choice to stay in the school house or the gym. we chose the school house because it had the least beds, but even then it was still about 20 bunk beds per room.... we managed to get a good spot and i made a fort around the bottom bunk with the doonas so there was some level of privacy when getting changed etc.. normally in that situation you'd go to the toilets to change, but there was only two toilets per about 100 people, so the lines were very big!

the camp itself was quite spread out, with lots of nice places to sit and heaps of places to dance. they had set up giant pavillion tents with proper dance floors and named them the 'savoy ballroom' and 'roseland ballroom' etc. throughout the week we had three classes a day, with many international teachers. the ironic thing was that the best teachers in the whole camp according to almost everyone was shane and ruth, who are teachers in perth!! we've never had them teach us before, but we'll definately be going to their classes when we get home. we were very excited when we saw them, because we hadnt seen a familiar face for quite a while, so it was nice to see some friends from back home. every night there was a crazy meeting at 9 and then we would dance from 10 till about 3 in the morning. and 3 was going to bed early... some people danced right through till about 9 the next morning and then went to classes at 10! there was a few special guests, which were three of the Hampton sisters, who were the original dancers at the actual Savoy Ballroom. Dawn Hampton is 80, but she can dance like there's no tomorrow! she taught a really awesome class.

there is so much to write about the camp, but i feel like a zombie from lots of dancing and very little sleep, so i'll leave the rest of it to ange to tell you about.

so the first official event was the saturday night meeting. well... what can i say. it was more like a talk show on acid. lennard (the host, who fancied himself to be some kind of jay leno) interviewed teachers and got people up to tell "funny" jokes. there was a news segment every night and this involved people being interviewed about the weather or other random things. we sat there in shock for the first night, but got used to it after that. the classes were really good; we got a range of different styles and techniques which was awesome. 

each night there was a theme - monday there was a live band, tuesday was blues night (super dressed up) wednesday was rock and roll, thursday night was cabaret and friday night was party time: theme was public enemy number one (or gangster). blues night is always more dressed up because you dont sweat as much and then ruin your good clothes. 

the live bands were good but folkets hus was SO crowded and no one has any etiquette and apologises when they step on your foot or gouge your eye out. the crowd generally thins by three am, so its worth waiting up (or having a nap) to get some space on the dance floor. shane hosted the cabaret night and was hilarious; if you get aussie jokes. everyone laughed but not all of them got it. the party was fun. not fan - which is really rude in swedish. (and if you draw it out - fa-an its even ruder!) everyone got really into the gangster theme and they had fake bodies with stab wounds and a casino with fake american dollars. the dancing wasnt too bad either. 

we met some awesome people. it was weird to think that they were all there for the same reason we were. we made a couple of really good friends and it was sad to leave. we taught matthius from bavaria to say bloody oath (although he puts his hand over his heart when he says it!) and fair dinkum, so he is saying them at the end of every sentence!

so the dancing side of it was great, the social side of it was great, what about the personal hygiene, you ask? well...

ok, funny story. so we'd been dancing for hours on end and, naturally, we were desperate for a shower. so we asked where the showers were, and got all out gear together and flip-flopped our way over to a shed thing called the 'sauna house'. we opened the door, expecting ablution style showers, and were immediately faced with the very large, very bare, slightly hairy backside of one of the ladies at the camp. we were a little taken aback, but being the cool calm and very collected people we are, we brushed it aside, thinking it was like at the pools back home where some people change out of the showers. so we turned the corner and stopped in our tracks. it was like a giant orgy of naked shower people! there were two shower heads and about eight people - not just women- having a shower together, and then more naked people in the sauna. now i want you to know that we have tried all along this trip to embrace the different cultures, and the only reason we were SO shocked is that we really weren't expecting it. we hadn't thought of the whole 'swedish sauna' thing. so we stood there like deer caught in the headlights, and then backed out of the room slowly trying not to be noticed. needless to say we never did get to have a shower that night...

we're back in stockholm tonight and off to berlin tomorrow night. we're looking forward to getting back to germany for three reasons: its cheap; we know its awesome and want to do some serious exploring; its cheap.

auf wiedersehen!