h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm off to Berlin for four days. I'll be back in the office on Monday.

I'm staying in East Berlin which should be fascinating. What won't be good is the 12-hour coach ride there and back - I'm going on a school trip with my daughter. The coach is going to be packed to the gills with overexcited teenagers.

Mmmm, this is going to be fun...

Be sure to bring us back 99 red balloons.

Do try to have fun.

Hi there Mr X!

I'm sure it *will* be fun - I'm just in dread of the journey!

We're going to see lots of interesting places that I've only read about Checkpoint Charlie will be interesting, all the escape attempts over the wall and so on!

I'm packing now - that reminds me, must put in my camera!

12 hours? That's nothing...

A trip I went on a few years ago to the Czech Republic was a 23 hour journey... in the middle of summer!

Have a great time, okay?

12 hours in a coach is not something I'm currently prepared to do unless someone pays me. But I'm sure it'll be fine...

BAD timing Peta... A few days earlier or later I would have dropped by on you in Berlin. But as I'll be leaving for Vienna in a few hours ...

12 hours on a bus? We did that for school exchanges from Germany to Cardiff. And if youse are really nice I won't brag about the 67 hours on buses from Adelaide via Perth to North-Western Australia.


Tube

Berlin was a fantastic city, I really liked it. I'll definitely go back sometime.

We went to the Reichstag, which was mainly destroyed during the war, and rebuilt after the coldwar, by Sir Norman Foster, a brilliant architect, and its very impressive building. All meeting rooms are visible from the outside, to show that its an open parliament.

The Berlin wall was fascinating, the art on it is amazing. Graffetti in its highest form. The graffetti has spread all over the walls of the city too, particularly in East Berlin, so much so that it starts to pull the city together , its the common element. In years to come the city may be the place people go to see street art, the wall will be preserved, but might the rest it be too, as an extension of the wall, a kind of city theme?

We had a wonderful guide called Paddy (it was a history trip). Paddy was stationed in Berlin during the cold war, so he knew all about it, apparently the Americans got the posh area of the city to look after, the French got the shopping area, and the English got the red light district...

The kids were great too, a mixed bunch of teenagers aged 15-18 years old, the bus driver said that they were the nicest kids he'd had on his bus in twelve years of driving, which was a huge compliment. They were funny and daft, but all so well behaved, that they were a delight to be out with. ( I do get so p*ssed off that people bunch teenagers together and say that they're all evil and badly behaved, it's just not true, many of them are lovely, funny individuals! Yey, to teenagers!)

I'll go back there, Berlin is a fascinating city. A mix of old and new, seeped in history. Wonderful!

so pleased to hear you had a great time.

I remember being on a coach for 10-days, but *I* was a teenager then and it was a school tour around Austria, Italy, Belgium and Germany, and we did get to stay in some nice hotels.

I loved Austria the best and always vowed I'd return.

Innsbruck is

I teenagers too, they emerge as humans on the other side!

Did your daughter enjoy it as much as Mum did?

Yes, she had a great time too.

It was her fifteenth birthday while we were away, and she got a cake and a card signed by everyone on the trip, she was delighted and went a great shade of pink!

I did a history trip with school that included Berlin in November 1989. It was a very strange and wonderful and exciting time to see the place, I hope to go back at some point and see how it has evolved since reunification.

We also did it by coach, but no nice hotels - my cheapskate school booked us in to youth hostels in the east

Hi Kelli,

They've apparently built loads of new buildings in the last few years, so it's probably changed quite a bit.

We were in a youth hostel in East Germany too, a town called Magdeberg. It was okay, but as you say, a bit basic...