Modern Gonzo on the Eurail

It has been almost sixteen hours, and my brain felt lightly seared - pinkish raw on the inside, like ahi tuna. We had successfully managed to kill an initial six-hour wait in a dreary Dortmund train pub by securing large packs of Tic-Tacs and using them as makeshift poker chips in a game of classic no-limit Texas Hold’em. A local man sat at the bar, slouched over his warm beer, under a broken light, utterly defeated. Rowdy teenagers had gathered earlier at the station, but had long since moved on, leaving the train empty save for seven stranded travelers, a bored girl behind the bar, and a mustached man who guarded the toilets, charging a neat 50c a pee. Finally, at 2:45am, we could catch the third of six connections, and begin the slow journey from Berlin to Amsterdam. If we had been on the right train, the journey would have taken a mere six hours in total. Instead, I was wondering aloud that only the best German engineering could ensure that, no matter how expertly I pretzeled my body, it was impossible to get more than 23 consecutive seconds of sleep. Of course, the true success of travel is all in one’s attitude, and when one travels Europe by Eurail, it is vital not to go off the rails.

Back the train up to summer in Berlin. A city whose turbulent modern history has left an iconic 96-mile scar. But the War is over, the World one and the Cold one, and today’s Berlin is a microcosm of culture, cafes and cool. It has become Europe’s third most popular city for tourists (after London and Paris), and somehow offers good value where the rest of Europe surges forward in a blitz of Euro glory. At least, this was my feeling at the comfy beach bars along the River Spree. A €3 cover for a pool in the river, soft electronic beats wooing the sunset. Even the hotel, a white-faced lesson in minimalism named the Ellington, presented swank for budget prices. Duke Ellington might have played in this building when it was a bar, and David Bowie might have partied here when it was a club, but the SS also held concerts here too, and so it goes for all Berlin - a lovely garden growing atop the cold cement bunkers of history. Here the Nazi’s planned their thousand year Reich. Here the Soviets ruled a world of fear and suspicion. And, here was born the Love Parade, where a million people party in the streets and embrace cultural diversity (it’s moving out of Berlin this year). And here is a city with possibly the best nightlife in Europe. These were my thoughts at 3am at the massive industrial complex that is Tresor, a pounding techno club that believes there’s no such thing as “too much strobe”.

“You can tell the difference between an East German and a West German,” explains Henrik, our Swedish guide.
“That’s not true,” argues Nicole, who grew up in the former German Democratic Republic - a noble name for the fear-soaked autocratic nightmare that was East Germany. The 96-mile Berlin Wall was built in the early 1960’s as a means to stop the flight of professionals from the East to the West. Hundreds of thousands of people quickly realized that life under the Soviets was unbearably heavy, and until the wall went up, all they had to do was stroll to the other side. That all changed in August 1961, when the people of East Berlin awoke to find themselves living on the wrong side of history. The wall was built not to stop people getting out, but rather to prevent them from getting in. The US, French and British controlled parts of Berlin was a western island in the heart of East Germany. Jumping the wall was like swimming to freedom. Swimming across the Spree was exactly that. But first you had to get past the dogs, the barbwire, the armed guards and the snipers. Some people did, most people didn’t. The wall finally came down in 1989, and Germany came together, and Berlin came together, and today the formerly ugly East Berlin is young and funky, and the wall exists as an odd legacy, a tourist attraction covered in thought-provoking graffiti. Personally I couldn’t tell the difference between an East German and West German. Everyone looked like they were doing just swell.