Thursday 31 July 2008

Day 1. Duct tape, flights and tents..

Got up at 330am to get to the airport to make our flight to Amsterdam at 5.55am. We had packed our makeshift bike bags to the brim packing the bikes, clothes, tent etc all into a bag designed for carrying a bodyboard... hefty doses of duct tape was then applied to reduce the chances of it giving up the ghost after 5 minutes. 
The baggage allowance was 20 kilo for each bag and a surcharge of €12 for every kilo over that, I think we all started sweating it when we lumbered up to put our bags on the scales. Mine was 25k but luckily the wife put it through without any charge, Wally's and Jo's being way over too. 
When we went to pass through security things didn't go as smoothly, as soon as Jo's bag went through the x-ray machine the security neck started twitching, little did we know that he had all of his tools taped together like a makeshift cluster bomb as well as 2 full size bottles of sun tan lotion! He had to run back down and put the stuff through in his luggage and we made the flight on time. 
 
We waited for our connecting flight in Amsterdam and arrived into Berlin TXL airport for around 11 am. Once we pitched our tents we got our heads  down for a couple of hours. The first thing we did when we woke was locate the nearest Imbiss (kebab house) and promptly ordered a chicken doner each. The doner was invented in Berlin by a Turkish immigrant in the 80's and the city has the largest Turkish population in any city outside of Turkey so you know the 'babs are second to none! The heavens opened soon after and rained for most of the day, we mooched around Mitte for a while and ran into Ratty and the rest of the lads while we sat drinking outside of a restaurant. 
The evening involved more drinking from bar to bar, met up with Ross and went to the local techno beach bar until the wee hours. After finally getting back to the campsite everyone was done- long and tiring day. 




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