Adios Europe

This is our last night in Europe. It seems sad to say that, but sometimes you need to admit when you've had enough, and for us I think we passed that mark about 3 weeks ago! Nevertheless, we have had an awesome time here in Berlin. We caught up with Tim Hinchliff and his wife (although their son was in day care!) and that was really cool. It was nice to end the holiday similar to how we began, with some old friends and relaxing over food and drinks.

Berlin has been pretty awesome. The amount of histroy that is crammed into this (relatively) little area is quite overwhelming. We went on an excellent guided walking tour on our first morning and it really helped us orient ourselves with both the geography and history of the city. Almost nothing remains from the era of the Third Reich aprat from the odd building here and there. There are numerous museums and memorials devoted to particular aspects of the wars and their causes, as well as monuments to all the victims.

Unfortunately we saved our tiniest, noisiest, smelliest hostel for our last stop. I would struggle to recommend it to anyone, and after talking to Tim it sounds like there are plenty of better choices for less money. Coming from the excellent accomodation we had in Prague it was quite a downer. Oh well, only a few more nights and we'll be back in our own bed! It will be nice to be back home and to cook a meal for ourselves. We realised the other night that we have eaten out for over 50 nights in a row! We have seldom had cooking facilities so we've been grabbing fruit and yoghurt for breakfast and touristy local fare for lunch and dinner. It may sound like a dream to some (no dishes!) but after a while you start to wonder what they are putting in the food and how good (or bad) for you it really is.

We have a long flight ahead of us tomorrow, and then a couple of days in Hong Kong to get back on to semi-Adelaide time... and to get in some last minute shopping! Our flight gets in early inthe morning and I think Michelle is already planning how to sleep on the plane so she can head straight to the markets! It will be the final stretching of the wallet before we get home and start saving for the next big thing.

Will probably update from HK. Until then.... adios! Au revoir! Auf wiedersehen!