Been a little quiet over here since my birthday, because I flew over to this super-cool place and spent a few days with 2 of my best buds from school… yeah that’s right – I was in Berlin.

My incredibly talented and beautiful friend Blondie is an artist, and is originally from Germany. She moved over to England for a good chunk of life, and is now living back in Berlin, so it was about time that Charli and I hopped on a plane over to see her.

First two comments about the Berlin: the public transport system is so easy to use, and we found Blondie’s flat really easily. There are a lot of cool vintage cars.

We dumped our stuff and headed over to nearby Mauerpark, where they have a flea market on Sundays, and – probably one of the greatest things I’ve ever witnessed – community karaoke.

Basically, this dude turns up with his karaoke machine and sets it up in this old amphitheatre, and everyone can have a go, Hundreds of people watch, drink beers, join in the singing, and give a heartfelt applause at the end of every song. Pure joy.

After the karaoke finished, we ate some traditional German food at a pub (asparagus soup, sauerkraut, pig knuckle) then headed back to Blondie’s to cuddle the cat and snooze.

The next day, after a delicious breakfast of fruit, radish salad and eggs, we headed over to check out the Berlin Wall memorial. I’m not a massive history buff, so I didn’t know a whole lot about it. It was so interesting and heartbreaking to read about it. Absolutely definitely worth a visit.

We then headed over to the Carnival of Cultures, which was fun, and is held in Berlin every year. Lots of interesting things to see, cocktails to drink and foods to drool over.

Another German thing was consumed – federweisser – which I believe translates as “feather wine”. This stall had loads of different flavours – we went for rhubarb, rose, and elderflower. They were all so yummy, and didn’t even taste like alcohol (dangerous).

We headed to another part of the Berlin Wall – this is probably the bit you see in most photos. Loads of colourful graffiti and people posing for photos. We followed the wall along until we got to a really cool beach bar. We sat by the river and had a beer and then watched a really fun Mexican band for a while.

Thanks to my amazing language skills (…) we made friends with the band afterwards, who bought us more beers and then took us to a club. A bit of a tipsy night.

Thanks for all the fun times, Casa Verde Colectivo.

Despite our slightly fuzzy heads the next morning, we headed out to the Currywurst Museum, which is just ridiculous. We had a blast. Charli fulfilled her dream of running a currywurst van. There was actually a pretty good film by an American woman in there, and we got to eat some currywurst at the end, mmmm.

A bit more sightseeing and wandering, until we ended up in this really cool alleyway of graffiti and cafes. Not sure what it was called, but it’s next to the Chameleon Theatre in Hackescher Courtyards. Up some heavily graffitied stairs there was a gallery & bookshop called Ballery – so inspirational, and I wrote down lots of artists’ names that I loved.

A caffeine and cake stop, a bit more wandering and then back to Blondie’s flat to try on my new t-shirt, watch cartoons and eat a homemade meal.

Phew.

Our last day. We had a yummy breakfast out, and then headed over to Blondie’s studio to see where she works. It made me really really want a studio of my own… maybe one day.

We said our goodbyes, and Charli and I headed over to the TV tower to get a good final look at Berlin. It was interesting to see all the buildings from up high and spot some places we’d been.

We stuffed our faces with beer and schnitzel before heading to the airport.

Bye Berlin, I will most definitely be back!