Berlin

I need to catch everyone up on our creepy hostel and our adventures in Berlin. The first day we were here, we checked into the weirdest and sketchiest hostel I have ever been to. If all hostels are this bad, I am coming home next week; seriously. Anyway, we arrived at 11 am and some guy who wasn't wearing deodorant let us in. The cost for 5 nights was 180 euro which we had to pay upfront and in cash - no refunds. I also had to put a deposit down of 20 euro for the room key; this was placed in a glass jar on the table. The check-out system was taking my 20 euro back out of the jar and replacing it with the room key whenever I felt like leaving. When I asked what kept other people from taking my 20 euro, the guy's response was, "well, it hasn't happened yet!"
Then he gave us the grand tour of the hostel. There was no shower, two working toilets, holes in the floors of the bathroom, the kitchen floors were particle board and hadn't been cleaned in weeks, the front desk was a kitchen table, and - although we were the only guests - we got the last pair of clean sheets. (Don't worry, we didn't actually use them. We slept in our sleep sacks.) The carpet in our room clearly hadn't been vacuumed and there were several vomit stains spread throughout the room. SKETCH.
At first, Kirst and I decided to make the most of the situation and came up with a game plan. We would only sleep at the hostel. We wouldn't shower for 5 days. We would see every single part of Berlin so that we would NEVER need to be in our hostel. We were going to be fine. But then we walked outside.
Our lovely hostel was situated in the ghetto of Berlin. While we were walking towards downtown (in effort to escape our humble abode) some old man came right up to kirsten and said, "I love you, I love you! Kiss me, kiss me!" We also had to walk right by a high-security prison to get to the town center. By now, we were genuinely freaked out. We stayed in the nicer part of town as long as we could before it started getting dark.
Upon our return to the ghetto hostel, we began looking up better places to stay instead of our current situation. (Thanks, Mom and Dad for helping us pay for our safer accommodation!) We moved to a super cute bed and breakfast on the other side of town at 7:30 the next morning. We also contacted my aunt Wendy's friends in Stuttgart to see if we could visit some Portlanders for a nice change. With our new plan and reserved beds, we felt much better in Berlin and thought we were done dealing with that crazy hostel. WRONG.
Last night the owner of the hostel called me to ask why we weren't there. I explained the situation and general lack of cleanliness of the hostel and he was astonished. He said that he is currently remodeling the hostel and that the woman who checked us in was supposed to show us the place and make sure we still want to stay there before she took our money. I told him that this never happened and that a woman never checked us in, some guy did. We never saw another person the entire time we were there. Now he was really shocked because he has no male employees working for him. In fact, he has no idea who checked us in. Basically, Kirst and I were alone in some building where some guy who doesn't even work there has access to every room. We could have been killed. Scary.
Anyway, this owner said he would like to refund us all our money and asked me to give him my bank account number. What?! Yeah right. I told him that he could mail me a check so we'll see if that ever happens.
You can all breathe a sigh of relief and know that Kirsten and I are currently on a train to Stuttgart and spending a few nights with Cordy and Rich before heading to Amsterdam. We won't be in a hostel again until Paris (September 19th). Our new rules include: we see the rooms and bathrooms before we pay; don't book any hostels that include the words "crazy" or "cozy;" don't book hostels that don't show pictures of the rooms.

On a totally different subject, we did in fact enjoy ourselves in Berlin. On Sunday we went to the Humboldt Museum which is all about evolution; thank goodness I had Kirsten as a personal tour guide so she could explain everything to me. Monday we went shopping and saw all the important monuments such as the Berlin wall and the Berliner Dom. Today we woke up extra early to visit Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp just north of Berlin in a small town, Oranienburg. Only a few of the original building were still standing but they had rebuilt several others just for the museum. Probably the most haunting part was the execution trench, where thousands of camp prisoners were shot.
As soon as I make it to a computer I will upload all my pictures; I have tons! We are arriving in Stuttgart in a few hours and I can't wait to see Cordy and Rich!
Xo
Meg
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