Berlin, done.... for now!

Well, I did it... I went to Berlin!

For the first time in almost 3 years at easyJet, I used my staff travel for me!  It was all arranged rather last minute, with my outbound flight booked a matter of just over 2 hours before departure.  An hour of rushed packing, finding travel insurance, ordering euros, and excited madness later and before I knew it, I was at Gatwick, passing through passenger security, picking up my €130 and rushing down to the gate.  Despite missing the start of boarding, I still managed to get a seat in the extra legroom rows, and before long I was in the air and enroute to Germany, excited and a little bewildered about how just a few hours before, I'd been sat in my room wondering what to do with the day!

Just before takeoff, I'd quickly downloaded the TripAdvisor app for Berlin, so got down to writing a few hostel details down during the flight.  On arrival, I got the train into town and found an internet terminal at the Dunkin' Donuts shop in Alexanderplatz (one of the main areas of town).  I searched for places to stay and narrowed my list down to a few hostels.  Luckily the first one I visited, the Aletto hostel in Kudamm, turned out to be really nice, so I ended up staying there.  The receptionist was originally from Yorkshire, so checking in was really easy having someone fluent in English to help and advise me.

After settling in, I popped into the supermarket inside the nearby Zoologischer Garten train station, and bought myself some drinks and a pack of white chocolate Twix's, before heading over to the Olympic Stadium for the first night of the fireworks.  After taking ages to work out that stehplatz and sitplatz meant standing and sitting respectively, I opted for a standing ticket, and made my way into the stadium.  The fireworks were pretty good, but the skies opened up at some points (I didn't have a hood or an umbrella), and the wind was blowing towards us so some of the displays were clouded in smoke!  Still, it was pretty impressive.  Afterwards, I headed back to the hostel and considered going out clubbing, but as I wanted to do lots on the Saturday, I decided to get an early(ish) night.

"ooooooooooh, aaahhhhhhhhh"

Up and early on the Saturday, I had my breakfast at the hostel and then headed to join a walking tour.  It was about €10 and involved lots of walking (obviously) and lots of points of historical importance including some of the museums, the location of the Nazi book-burning, Hitler's bunker, the Royal Palace, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, one of the former East Berlin's 'ghost stations', the Brandenburg Gate and lots of points relating to the Berlin Wall.  Our tour guide, Kristin, was excellent and her hand-drawn map of the divided Germany after WWII finally helped me to understand what the Berlin Wall was all about - I had it all wrong in my head up until then!

It all makes sense now!

Afterwards, I headed back to Alexanderplatz to decide what to do with the rest of the day.  I saw that there was a miniature world exhibit at the 'Alexa' centre, so headed there.  Turns out the Alexa centre was a massive shopping mall with a big food court, tonnes of shops, a gym and the model world on the top floor.

Despite being weary, I headed inside the miniature world and was a little disappointed to find it wasn't quite what I'd expected.  The main room was a massive model railway, with some areas built as miniature replicas of parts of Berlin.  Lots of new areas were still being built so it looked like a bit of a construction site.  There was also a smaller room set up as an airport, which was pretty cool.  I was expecting the one I'd seen on YouTube, but it turns out that was in Frankfurt, and this was a little less advanced.  Still, it was fun to watch, and I'm glad I went.  I got a few videos to put on YouTube too, so perhaps that will help me work towards my goal of having a video with 1 million views (highly doubtful with these ones!).  I'll stick the link on a later post once they're up.  After leaving, I realised I was low on money, so reluctantly drew €100 out of the ATM.

In the evening, I headed back to the Olympic Stadium for the second day of fireworks.  I left it a little late and they'd started by the time I arrived, so I just watched them from outside along with a thousand or so Berliners.  The weather was much drier and the displays seemed bigger... in hindsight I should have probably paid to go in, but I still got to watch the whole thing, albeit from a distance!

I headed back to the hostel to get changed for a night out clubbing but on arriving back at my room, I realised that one of the other residents of the dorm had nicked my towel... he actually stole a damp towel!  It was the only thing I didn't lock away as, well.... who would want a used wet towel!  But he clearly did as he'd taken it and left!  Sadly that put me in a right mood, and after trying with great difficulty to find out from the night receptionist whether the cleaning staff might have taken it, I decided to call it a night and head to bed.

In the morning, I spoke to the receptionists again, who advised me the cleaning staff hadn't taken the towel, so I decided to try forget it and make the most of the day.  I packed, left my bag in the storage room, and headed into town.  I had a look around Hauptbanhof, the main train station in Berlin and, after a wander in the then glorious sunshine, stumbled upon the German Parliament building or 'Bundestag', which happened to be holding an open day where the public could have a wander inside.  I got a free bag of goodies, had a quick look around and listened to the youth band playing outside before catching a train and tram over to part of East Berlin for the English tour of Hohenschönhausen, the SS Stasi prison museum.  

The tour was really interesting - we saw the 'Submarine' (the horrendous underground wing), the more sanitised cells above ground, the room were prisoners were registered, and heard stories about the prisoners' experiences and things that went on.  It was really weird to think that this place was still in use as recently as 1989, that this was happening during my lifetime.

Om-nom-nommmm

After leaving the museum, I headed back to the Alexa centre to use their free wifi.  Having not yet booked a flight home, I checked the passenger loads to Gatwick and, having realised that no staff travel seats were going to come up, I decided to book the staff seat to Luton that evening.  Although most of the shops in the centre were closed, there was a bakery open so I indulged in some 'healthy cuisine' and headed back to the hostel to grab my bag.

On the way to the airport, I stopped off and bought a ticket to the viewing platform of the gigantic TV Tower.  My 'slot' meant I got up there just in time for sunset.  Sadly, my camera battery died just as the Sun was disappearing below the horizon, so I missed a few good photo ops, but still got a fair few nice ones.

I headed back to the airport, checked in, and just as I approached the queue for security, I noticed that the person in front of me was none other than a good friend from a few years back, Kevin.  We sat together and caught up on the last couple of years during the flight, before heading our separate ways at Luton.  I got the train back to Gatwick, arriving home at about 2am.

All things considered, I had a fantastic weekend, am really glad I booked it, and have now got the travel bug, so can't wait to go away again.  My days off in October are all Saturday to Monday, so I have plenty of opportunities for 3-day trips, I just need to get some willing volunteers to come with me!  My bestie, Adam and his other half are hopefully gonna come away with me for one trip, and we'll hit the clubs of some unsuspecting European city... stay tuned for further developments!

Bye for now :)

Laziness and a last minute holiday?

The videos are gone!

Woohoo!  I dropped them off at the City-Link depot a few days ago and they had arrived by the following morning.  They were real heavy too, so it's nice to think I won't have to lug them around when I move house in a couple of months time.  No responses on the floppy disks yet, so I think they might be heading to the charity shop very soon.

Today is my second day off work... well, I say off work, I'm on standby.  Right now, as it happens, so the phone could ring at any point between now and 10.30pm and they could call me for a flight, but I've been on standby since 2.30pm, and I'm not sure what I could be called for at this late hour.  If I 'survive', I have 4 days off as of tomorrow :)

I'd like to say I've done absolutely loads over the last 2 days, but in truth I've been a bit lazy.  I finally put a couple of bits on eBay today, and also listed a big glass chess set on Gumtree, so hopefully those will get taken, but other than that, I haven't done much.  To photograph the eBay bits, I cleared a space on my floor, and it's great to be able to see a large area of my carpet again, although everything has just been stacked in a pile on my bed, so it's all going back onto the floor again later!

The weather was quite nice yesterday so in the afternoon, I took a wander down to my local park and spent an hour on the grass chilling with some tunes on my iPod.  While laying there, I watched a little bug land on a flower next to me.  It slowly and carefully checked every stamen (I used google to find that word!) for pollen before moving to the next and doing the same again.  It seemed that that was its only job... the reason it existed.  It didn't need to worry about money or work or anything like that... its purpose was to do only what it was doing.  It got me thinking about all the things that take up most of my time... whether they were relevant and important.  Does it really matter if I make £2 selling something on eBay, when in 1/10th of the time, I could drop it off at a charity shop and be done with it.  It got me thinking about my purpose... do I even have one?  For a long time, I've believed that somehow I'll change the world for the better.  And I still think that's the case, but perhaps I need to concentrate my efforts on the important things... move away from the small, menial and somewhat pointless tasks, even if doing them does give me a sense of achievement.  I think pondering one's purpose is something that could take months... years... and it's not something I'm going to figure out over an hour in the park, but I do think it's woken me up a little to the time I 'waste' on small jobs when I could be concentrating on the bigger picture.  I might even have a look tonight at all the piles of stuff around me to see what can be dealt with here and now.

....deeeep, huh!

Well, only an hour to go until my standby is over.  I was looking at staff travel for a trip away over the next 4 days.  While looking for the dates for Berlin Pride, I discovered that the World Fireworks Championships are taking place on Saturday out there.  Looks really good, and it'd probably only cost about £120 in total with accommodation, flights and entry.  I don't speak a word of German though, so could be interesting getting around!  

The easyJet staff travel site lists all the flights available in the morning with staff seats on them.  Normally, there's about 10-15 destinations.  Looking at tomorrow's, there's about 55-60, and that's all before 10am... I'm spoilt for choice!  The Berlin flights are £47 return, although sometimes it can be cheaper to go further - Aberdeen is £48 return, yet Gran Canaria is £37!  It's all about the taxes, but still seems odd :)

Anyways, only half an hour left of my standby now.  Need to have a good think about where I might want to go on my days off... I'm absolutely CERTAIN I don't want to spend it in Crawley, unless I'm doing something fun like my paragliding course.  Hopefully my next post will be post-holiday with some great stories to tell (which reminds me, I need to tell you all about my holiday earlier this year, but that's for another post).

Bye for now :)

Pride and VHS (which sounds a bit like Prejudice)

Hello!

Well September's 'Month of Action' certainly started with a party yesterday at Brighton Pride... I had an awesome time!  I was there with easyJet and managed to blag a place on their float.  The application procedure was to submit a 15-second video on why we're proud to work for easyJet.  I did a quick last-minute vid in my bedroom and managed to submit it just 1 minute before the deadline!

Cheesy as it was, they must have liked it, as they offered me a place on the float.  It was decorated like a bright orange furry plane with a big pointy nose and massive tail.  It had a DJ deck in the middle with space for us to dance either side.  Words don't really do it justice though, so here's a pic...!

There were 8 of us on the float, plus a DJ, and every second song played would be 'Flying the Flag' by Scooch, to which we had a dance routine.  Gotta say I loved dancing to Scooch and the crowd seemed to love the routine too.  I'm sure it'll end up on YouTube before long so I'll post a link once it appears!  All 8 of us on the float were cabin crew, but they wanted at least one person in a pilots outfit... so I got a temporary promotion to Senior First Officer for the day. 

Hot or what!?

In other news, the Month of Action has been going well today.  I had several bags of VHS cassettes that had come out of my parents' loft when they recently moved house.  It took ages, but I went through each video to make sure there was nothing on them that needed saving.  I spoke to a charity shop about having them, but they said they don't really sell, so I've been advertising them (as a freebie) on Gumtree and Crawley's 'Freegle' group (a new type of freecycle).  Two people got in contact, and one guy on Gumtree asked if I could post them.  So earlier today, I finally got round to boxing them all up (they JUST fit after removing a couple of the plastic cases) and weighing them.  At almost 17kg, they're not light, but I can send them via courier for £9, so I've charged this guy £12, and they're now boxed, booked in with City-Link and sitting in my car ready to be dropped off at the depot after work tomorrow.  My room already looks a bit emptier, and it's 17kg of crap I don't need to worry about anymore.  Yes, I admit I could have just thrown them and avoided a lot of hassle, but they still work, so I think it's much better to give them to someone that would use them.  I've also advertised a set of floppy disks that I need to get rid of, again as a freebie, so hopefully I'll get some responses to those adverts tomorrow.

Somehow I managed to completely go against the spirit of decluttering yesterday at Pride and brought home about 30 easyJet whistles, 5 or 6 t-shirts, a bright orange wig, a feather boa and some other stuff!  They were gonna be binned otherwise, so I thought sod it, why not!  The t-shirts have a silhouette of a plane with a rainbow coming out the back and 'EZY RIDER' printed on them.  I'm keeping three... two for something to wear on days off when I'm just lounging about the place, and one as a memento of my day at Pride with easyJet :)   As for the whistles, well I'm gonna chuck a few in my crew bag and give them out to anyone that wants them tomorrow... I don't think I'm reeeally gonna find use for 30 whistles.

That's it for tonight... I was supposed to go to bed at around 9.45pm (as my alarm is set for 4.45am) and I was yawning back then too, but it's now 00:10, whoops.  Keep an eye out for my next post, when I'll be announcing an interesting piece of news, closely related to something from this post :)

Night!

P.S.  I have what appears to be a large bruise on my right leg... I didn't get drunk at Pride nor have I bashed into anything, so I'm a bit like 'wtf!?'.  Maybe its a bite... it's a little painful to the touch and feels quite solid.  If it's any worse tomorrow, I'll upload a photo so you can all admire it.