BERLIN DAY 2

Eggs for breakfast then jumped on a bus to Ostbahnhof to see The Wall. There is a stretch of about 300 metres where the wall is still intact, and on the East side it is a gallery - various artists have done pertinent graffiti art. The west side is just a load of genuine graffiti. It's rather beautiful actually. For some reason I'd imagined the wall to be much wider than it is - it's less than a foot wide - but it's still very imposing.

We walked along the length of the wall, adjacent to the river Spree which was full of great creaking lumps of ice, then crossed the river via the Oberbaumbr bridge. The sun was shining and it was all rather lovely.

We wandered the streets of the Turkish area of Kreuzburg, stopping at a little café for a coffee and to warm our hands in front of the open fire. We took a short cut through a scary park on our way to the Turkish market at Maybachufer. There were some very dodgy-looking characters standing about behaving very oddly. Drug-dealing I think. So we got the Hell outta there.

The Turkish market was exotic and the architecture in Kreuzburg is grand. We continued walking along the Urbanhaden canal - which was frozen solid and full of ice-skaters - all the way to the bottom of Friedrichstrasse, where we checked out Check Point Charlie.

At school my two least favourite subjects were German and History, hence Berlin is a confusing place to me. Check Point Charlie is guarded by American soldiers. Uh? WHAT THE FOOK HAS IT GOT TO DO WITH AMERICA? I don't get it.

Also, if only I could stop Richard from goose-stepping across all the pelican crossings...

We walked on up to Unter Den Linden, through the Brandenburg Gate and to the Reichstag - an incredibly impressive building with a huge glass dome that one can visit provided one has registered on-line, two days in advance. Which we hadn't. Ah well. It looked a bit scary to me. We probably would've bottled out anyway.

Went for a meal in a posh-looking brasserie next to the hotel. It was terrible. Really terrible service and really crap food. And reeeeally expensive. Never mind. We have found our 'favourite' bar, a Tappas place called VOLVER (hahahaha) just up the road. So we finished the evening there. Mellow. And with sore feet.