Day 18 - Sleepless in Berlin

Man were we pumped to have an overnight train and save the money instead of spending it on a hotel. the layout of our bed was really cool and i even fit. We got our own pilow and locked compartment. Allison slept across the aisle from me with a curtain inbetween us. Once we got started I knew i was not going to sleep much that night. Rocking back and forth all night long with many stops inbetween. Now I am notsure if i want to do that again. We arrived not really sure which train stop to get off so we just picked on... wrong one. But while we were there we got directions to our hostelwe hanted to stay at. Once we got back to the train station it took us around a half an hour to find our train track. This has been a reoccurring frustration of mine that VERY few people we run into can give us any type of directions (half the time i am even surprised that they are getting on the right trains themselves. I resort to giving people the map and pointing to them where we need to go. 90% of the time i am lucky if they even know where they are on the map. Often times i have to show them where we are. It is maps are only a foreign thing. Maybe I just grew up using a map alot and feel that i have at least the competency level. anyways enought venting. We got our hostel and it was great, small and quite and the host was unbelievably helpful and accomodating. 10 minutes after we arrived a guide picked us up for the "free" walking tour for this city and he looked exactly like my friend CHRIS BOWDEN!!! Tight pants, walks fast, tight shirt, musician working on his third album, the way he talks...EVERYTHING about this guy reminded me of Chris (dont worry i took pictures of this guy to show everyone). This was going to be a great tour spending it with a friend. Man was I right. This guy was ncredible. Everytime we stopped he found a big enough spot for the whole group to be in the shade. If there is one thing i hate it is standing out in the hot sun (allison intentionally stands in the sun which i never will understand). I found myself laughing out loud because i was so excited at how good this tour was. He was an incredible story teller too. I would get goose bumps everytime he gave a lengthy story about the city and the history that it holds about WWII and the following cold war. Once we ended the four hour tour we retraced our steps and revisited all the sights again because we were moving at a pretty good pace. We got something to eat and looked into our train for the next day to Prague. In the evening we went for a walk and revisited the Jewish memorial and took some cool pictures then went back to the Hostel.