Berlin to Paris

Boarding the night train to Paris was exciting. France is always such a heralded place, for good reason. Delicious food and wines, gorgeous cities and scenery, beautiful accents and best of all: the croissant.

I usually sleep well on trains because the vibrations put me to sleep. Not last night. Wholey dooley. What a night. We were in a girls-only compartment. The train was ‘sold out’, and tickets were getting very expensive which is why we had to book so early. In actual fact it’s all total bullshit. In our 6 bed cabin (the size of a shoe box) held two: Ebony and I. The entire wagon had 4 people in it. What the hell? Why have the seats ‘sold out’ or so freaking expensive it’s totally unaffordable – when no one’s actually on it?!

Mind you it was a total blessing. Trains are always squishy at night and if you recall my Lake Baikal – Irkutsk to Ulan Ude experience, it’s not something I really look forward to. There’s no space to move and I don’t like that at all. This was no different. We were up on the top bunks – 2m from the ground. We were told at the next few stops we’d be picking up heaps more people. So we slept in our beds right up the top, having nightmares about falling down. When I say sleep, I mean – we laid down in the beds all night. I got to sleep fairly early on but at our next stop in Hamburg, the dude rudely awoke everyone with details of what was going on. That was it for my sleep – 10-11pm. I just couldn’t get back to sleep.

The train went very fast and there was no clakety-clack like on the Trans-Siberian. We were thrown around a fair bit and the noise from the creaking corners were noisy too. By the time the sun was up, we were ready to go and thankfully not far from Paris.

Oh, Paris.

 

 

 

I remember I did really like Paris, but I loved Rome more. I still believe it – Roman history, Italian food and gelato combine to make Rome Sally’s number one favourite city in the world (thus far). Paris would have to be a closely placed second. Wait. No. Prague second, Paris third. Brisbane fourth. Vancouver fifth. Ulaanbaatar does not make it on my list.

Anyway, we needed breakfast. A joint near the station was advertising a breakfast menu in English which caught out eye. In we went, sat down and ordered two breakfast’s. There was no choice. But who needs choice when you’re being served orange juice, tea, fresh baguette and fresh croissant with jam?

And if that wasn’t the lightest, crispiest, most amazingly flaky croissant I’ve ever had……….

Trying our luck on the metro, we found our station called ‘Felix <something or other>’ and our hostel called the Three Ducks. You’re not allowed in your room from 12-4pm so we left our bags in the luggage room and went out for a free tour of the city. It’s one of those newer tours popping up where the guide isn’t paid by the company – only by the tips they get. It was great. We walked around for 4 hours checking out things and being shown some interesting sites/told some great stuff. Rain set in, we got a bit wet. Whatever. I ordered lunch during a 15min break which turned out to be an unidentifiable piece of meat. It had no fibres but was definitely of animal origin. I would have called it a chicken liver, only it was the size of my hand and had been filleted. It could have been a chicken tasting pork liver (it was white meat). But it was so tender and so full of animal flavour……. I couldn’t eat it, which annoyed me because I’d chosen it from an array of delicious looking things.

Berlin to Paris VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We paid the guide 20 Euros (10 each) and went about getting home in order to do some washing. Oh yes, you heard me. Washing. We did it all. And dried it in a massive dryer and now I have clean everything and it’s wonderful. Food shopping for dinner at the supermarket and then chill time.

Our hostel is the yukkiest I’ve ever been to. The website claims it’s the most popular in town. Gullible Sally. It may have been 20 years ago when the bathrooms were not 100 years old, the beds not disgusting, the foyer not a pub, the showers functional, the courtyard a homeless shelter and the kitchen a useless room with a sink, a little fridge and a two burner portable stovetop.

It’s not unliveable. I don’t think we’ll die of unhygienic conditions (it’s kept quite clean, regardless of how dirty it does look). It’s just not comfortable. For what we’re paying, I guess we deserve it – there were just many other options of hostels in this price range (50 Euros/night) that we could have chosen. Nevermind. There is also a church with a belltower about 20m as the crow flies from our door. It dongs every hour for at least 3 minutes.

I did get to take some cool shots from our hostel though.

That bell definitely dongs every hour. Shitballs. I’m not going to get any sleep at all.