Adventures from my Eurotrip: Hamelin and Berlin

At the end of my last post, we'd just managed to save our suitcases from the luggage attendant in Amsterdam and were about to board the train to Germany.

It was a simple plan. Take the night train from Amsterdam to Hannover, Hannover to Hamelin, and arrive in Hamelin in time to watch the Pied Piper show. There were few opportunities for us to make a mess of this. But sometimes fate will intervene and even the simplest of travel plans end with a run-in with the police.

It was almost midnight when our first train of the night came to a screeching halt in the middle of nowhere. An announcement over the loud speaker assured us there was no need to panic and that we were just experiencing some technical issues. The next thing we knew the police were boarding the train and arresting the men in the carriage next to ours.

As two of our fellow passengers were led away in handcuffs, we started talking to some guys who were also straining out of the window to see what was going on. And so we spent the night playing Danish card games and listening to renditions of happy birthday in 4 different languages with our new buddies, Martin and Michael.


Our train arrived in Hannover half an hour early at 2am (we were all still in our sleeping bags and pjs and all but fell onto the platform) and the next train to Hamelin wasn't until 6am. I'll sum up those four arduous hours in the train station by saying that Bethan slept in her McDonalds while Hayleigh and I played cards, watched by an ever-growing crowd of drunken Germans. Needless to say, by the time we got to Hamlin at 8am, learned that check in was not until 3pm, and wandered into town to take our seats for the famous Pied Piper show, the lack of sleep had taken its toll in the form of hysteria in Bethan and I, and a general hatred for everything and everyone in Hayleigh.

There are a few things you need to know about Hamelin.
1. It is not what you'd call a tourist destination. In fact, the only thing there is to see or do in Hamelin is watch the Pied Piper show.
2. Practically no one in Hamelin speaks English due to the fact that nobody ever goes there.
3. Absolutely everything is closed on a Sunday.

Nevertheless, the show was very enjoyable for those of us who weren't driven to the depths of despair by sleep deprivation, despite the fact that it was entirely in German and we had no idea what was going on. It wasn't until the show was over that we realised we'd done everything there was to do in Hamelin. So we went back to our hostel (which, in fact, turned out to be a children's activity camp) and got drunk on something that posed as German schnapps, but tasted more like a slow-acting poison.

One of the most monumental occurrences happened while we were in Hamelin. Bethan bought her 1 euro travelling hat. How quickly that hat went from being a gem, the best bargain she'd ever found, and a general great investment, to the bane of her life, purely because whenever we travelled she was forced to wear it and be judged by the locals. That in itself is a great indication of how little there is to do in Hamelin. Our highlight was the day Bethan bought a hat.

From Hamelin we went to Berlin, that wonderful city with its famous nightlife. Unfortunately we didn't make it far past the hostel bar on either of our nights there. Cocktails were strong, chilli vodka was free and Liverpudlians were in abundance. All around us, the non-Brits in the bar were sipping their wine in a civilised manner while we thrashed the English at an intense game of ring of fire. The next day the infamous carrier bag made a return.

By night we stayed in the confines of our hostel, but by day we were fantastic tourists. We leaned all about "that wall everyone keeps going on about" and wandered over to Brandenburg Gate. It was here that fate, with her insistence that our trip should not be in any way normal, intervened again. There we were, innocently trying to work out who this gate was supposed to be keeping out or letting in and why, when a film crew casually rolls up with some guy we've never heard of who is apparently extremely famous. Before we knew it we were extras in whatever bizarre sketch they were filming. We had absolutely no idea what was going on, but we were at the front, cheering louder than anyone.

Germany took from us many, many euros, much of our self respect, a fair bit of Bethan's stomach lining, and more sleep than we can hope to get back in the next 3 months. But what's more important is what we took from Germany, which includes, a new appreciation for that song, 'If you like Pina Coladas', the most ridiculous photos I've woken up to after a night out for a long time, some clue as to what the Iron Curtain was all about, and an overpriced piece of the Berlin wall.

Next up: Prague.



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