I have quite a soft spot for Berlin. When I visited when I was 18, I was blown away by the combo of glamour and grit, vibrant culture, cutting-edge architecture, fabulous food, intense parties and tangible history. I never intended on actually going to Berlin but I was so glad I took the advice of other travellers and headed over, and now this was going to be my third time there!

Our train ride to Berlin was a bit of a bust. Initially we were quite happy, we were all in nice compartments and it was supposed to be the shortest journey (four hours) and we even had wifi, but halfway through we were stopped and didn’t move for another two hours. And the internet stopped working. There was a poor guy in Max and Sinéad’s compartment that was loosing his mind because he was catching a train to see his girlfriend, who he had not seen in months and the delay was causing him to miss his connecting train. The whole thing was a bit of a disaster, not for us really we were fine, but for a considerable number of the other patrons on the train (we were just happy that we had snacks). When we arrived, we caught the bus to our hostel, checked in and dropped off our bags so we could go and hunt down some dinner. Roisin had seen a burger place near our hostel while we were on the bus, so we headed back up the road and enjoyed some very delicious burgers and fries (they had so many options that it was ridiculous, vegan, vegetarian and meats galore) and headed to bed for an early night.

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As the girls went off early in the morning for a perfect introduction to the wonderful Berlin (a Sandermans Tour, who would have guessed), I slept in a little longer and then headed off on an explore of my own. This time in Berlin I was really looking forward to just walking the streets and exploring the abundance of space, street art, cultural expression and vast swathes of green. After wandering around aimlessly and people watching, I headed over to check out some of the traditional Bavarian clothes – dirndl or lederhosen – that were in all of the department stores to see if any were appropriate for us to buy for Oktoberfest. Some were absolutely beautiful, but they were all a bit pricey for us. At the same time, the girls were learning about a booming turn-of-the-century metropolis left destitute by the First World War, a city that then led the way in avant-garde art, music and literature throughout the Golden Twenties before Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and a capital that was divided for occupation by the Allies after World War II (with the jagged scar of the Berlin Wall cutting through the center of the city) and its path to unification. Seriously how can one not love learning about Berlin?

Meeting up with the girls after their tour at the burning of the books memorial, you could see how much they loved their guide and gushed about how seamlessly she weaved in and out of Berlin’s messy, complicated and fascinating history. They chatted all the way to lunch about the tour as well as their thoughts on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (I personally love this memorial because one really is able to interpret it in a myriad of different ways, which I think makes you able to connect with the piece). We stopped at this cute little restaurant for lunch and enjoyed a delicious mushroom risotto before heading off to explore the Berlin Zoo.

I felt like a giant kid as we skipped on into the zoo and proceeded to run around for the next few hours. We were extra excited because Berlin’s zoo holds a triple record as Germany’s oldest, most species-rich and most popular animal park. It was established in 1844 under King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, who not only donated the land but also pheasants and other animals from the royal family’s private reserve on the Pfaueninsel. It did not even come close to disappointing, with more than 18,600 animals representing 1500 species, including orangutans, koalas, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, elephants and penguins. Not only that, but all the enclosures were wonderful and designed to resemble their natural habitat. We even got to play in the “petting” part of the zoo, feeding some of the goats and miniature ponies with the handfuls of food we got for about 20 cents. It was awesome.

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I was really excited to take the girls to Burgermeister for dinner. It is probably the most interesting burger joints I have ever encountered – located in an old public toilet in Berlin, extraordinary location (in one of the busiest nightlife areas), open until early in the morning, cultural melting point for Berliners from all layers of society and most importantly the burgers are crazy delicious!! In fact locals have been quoted saying ‘It is our shining beacon of burger love in the darkness of a long Kreuzberg night’. The only potential negative is that there is always a line, but it’s worth the wait. Once we got our food we secured a lovely section of cement that we could sit on just outside the restaurant and dug into our burgers, cheese covered fries and beers. It was amazing (I am getting hungry just writing about it). It was also somewhat comical as we were interrupted by some mice hanging out in the grass nearby and a passerby who meowed at us while walking with his wife and baby and drinking a beer. Berlin certainly is a unique place! We were planning on going to have a drink tonight as Berlin is also known for its nightlife and Caitlin (Sinead’s friend) had arrived, but we were all tired and poor Sinéad was staring to come down with that awful bug so Roisin and I decided to go out and have one drink while the others went home. We tried to find what was supposed to be this cute little bar, but could not find it to save our lives and ended up walking our way around a super creepy park  (which granted probably wasn’t creepy during the day), but that did mean that we stumbled across this adorable little bar called Scotch & Sofa. The staff is super friendly and attentive,  the cocktails were good bang for the buck and the atmosphere was great. We enjoyed our long island iced tea and took in the coziness, great lighting, comfortable sofa chairs, cool/quirky bar area, clashing wallpaper and the 50s television sets.

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This morning was filled with catch ups and food, which is always a terrific way to spend a morning! We were very excited to be able to have breakfast with Megan – a pal from work who had been gallivanting around Europe for the past few months, and it was just wonderful to be able to swap both our best travel stories and horror travel stories. Not long after we finished gas bagging, we enjoyed a leisurely lunch finding out all about Caitlin’s last few weeks in Greece.

For one last day in Berlin we wanted to do something a little bit out of the ordinary (well I did and the other girls agreed to follow suit, although they may have regretted it later). I really wanted to explore one area of ‘Abandoned Berlin’ (the phrase used to describe one of the myriad of locations that have been left abandoned throughout the city), but we had been discussing for over a week about which place might be best to go and explore given our level of adventure is not the highest going around and the increased security at some of the more ‘popular’ sites. We weren’t strapped for choice though as Berlin is a treasure trove for derelict buildings and interesting abandoned locations. Among them: an old East German amusement park with a rusting Ferris wheel, a graffiti-covered beer factory, a crumbling NSA spy station, a rotting Iraqi embassy and a haunted zombie hospital. Berlin is, of course, not the only city in the world with places like these, however because of its history (maybe because of the economical change after the fall of the Berlin Wall, maybe because of the Second World War, but most likely each place has a more unique reason and its own hidden history), there seems to be a disproportionate amount of World War II sites, Cold War military installations, crumbling factories and the like. We ended up deciding on the abandoned maternity and children’s hospital called Säuglings-Kinderkrankenhaus Weißensee. Apparently it was the first municipal one of its kind in Prussia, and had its own cow facilities and dairy, now left vandalised and weathered. Now I am a big ol’ scaredy-cat so I could not possibly say that I wasn’t afraid of jumping through a hole we found in the fence and stumbling over the overgrown trees and plants but once we were there, I was really more excited than anything else (while the girls seemed more nervous). We walked cautiously through the empty and graffitied rooms, over bulk shattered glass, past rooms filled with toilet-seat covers, crumbling walls, creaking floorboards, fluttering curtains, up damaged staircases and past hanging cables and flaking pieces of paint. I couldn’t help but imagine the building as it was in its heyday.

Feeling like sufficient explorers (rather than in depth ones) we ran off back to the main street and headed on to our next adventure of the day. Sinéad and Caitlin returned to the hostel to do some planning for the next leg of their journey as we were leaving them together in Berlin, Roisin headed off to another museum and I went on another wander around this terrific city.

By the time we were all ready for dinner, Sinéad was feeling sufficiently awful (its so nice that when you travel/live in such close proximity you can share lovely things like horrific colds with each other). So we endeavoured to find something close and indoors to eat. Accidentally meandering the long way around (it wasn’t that long but when you are sick it seemed like the hike from hell),  we made it to a lovely traditional German pub, where we all enjoyed a hearty last meal together for the time being, and toasted to our scheduled reunion in Amsterdam.

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Bismarck and Marx, Einstein and Hitler, JFK, Bowie and about a billion more people have all shaped – and been shaped by – Berlin. I really do love this city where history stares you in the face at every turn. This is a city that staged a revolution, was headquartered by Nazis, bombed to bits, divided in two and finally reunited – and that was just in the 20th century! And yet.. a part of Berlin still feels to me like a charming and unpretentious international village with its citizens passionately feasting on the smorgasbord of life, never taking things – or the city itself – too seriously. There’s nothing static about Berlin: it’s unpredictable, unpretentious and irresistible. And I promise – if you love it, it loves you back.