IOS, Athens, and Berlin... What a City.

The morning had arrived that Jim and I would leave behind us the "Island of Dreams", and venture forth to the mainland to figure out a way to get to the Oktoberfest in Munchen.

It had been a hellish final night. If i can remember correctly, consuming continued till the very wee hours. I awoke in an unfamilar room to Jim shouting that we had 20 mins to get to the boat. A very quick run and pack job was needed and succeeded. We said our goodbyes and shed a tear or two (... It was very dusty that day).

The boat ride was long and hard without the hang over cure of the beach, so i tried to sleep it off. I remember after just getting off the boat and walking to the closet McDonald's, i mentioned to my new found friend James that we had pretty much been consuming for a month straight. "What if sober Rob doesn't get along with sober James?" I asked. His reply simple and straight forward, "We just go have a drink." Excellent.

So after some very terrible Micky D's - which i can still feel in my stomach - Sarah (Cool english chick, Melrose resident and Fun Pub worker) James and I jumped in a cab and started looking for accomodation. The cabby had a place - as most do - but it was way too expensive. Luckily the Irish girls who had been at Ios had done their homework and found us a place not too far from the Acropolis right in the centre of town. Stop it.

Quiet night in after dinner and a walk through the narrow streets of the old town in Athens. Sarah and I walked to the Acropolis in the morning, and may i say, so worth the walk... Just amazing views... Apparently the Centre of Ancient Greece, on top of a a hill which looks out over the valley which is Athens (Picture to come). The museum is pretty interesting as well, lots of ancient artifacts.

Sarah left that afternoon (back to study in Edinburgh), so we took her to the train station. Walking out of the train station we saw a camera crew and a very, very attractive reporter. So knowing that we spoke zero Greek apart from the word "Malaka" (which i'm still not a hundred percent sure what that means), we asked if we could be on Star TV. We just had to say how great Greece was, Mission accomplished. If only it were that easy to get on Australian TV.

Two things you should do while in Athens... Go to the Acropolis, and go to the travel agent to book yourself out of there. Not much else going on, and i found that it was quite a dirty city.

With flights to Munich through the roof and the lack of days to get there a huge factor to cancel out trains. We decided to stop off in Berlin and catch a train down from there.

It was an early flight the next morning so Jim and I decided to rough it at the airport that night, and no Jim you cannot sleep in my sleeping bag. I flipped through the travel book and found that there was a bike tour (fattyrebiketours.com) in Berlin that left at 10am, excellent, that gave us half an hour to get to the spot from the airport the next morning.

A half hour stop off in Thessaloniki and onto Berlin where we arrived a little later than scheduled. So we Frantically tried to find the right bus and get to the "Bike on Time". Fortunately the bus stop was right outside the giant TV Tower at Alexanderplatz (the bike shop). Sorted.

Probably one of the best things i did while travelling. The tour was not only informative but it was a great way to see the city. Our tour guide was a dude from the States who had plenty of knowledge on Berlin history, and the World Wars. I had been reading a couple of novels set around the time of WWII, so it was cool to actually be there, above Hitler's bunker, the Parliment building, and all the buildings still covered in soot and dust from the bombings years before. You could even see bullet holes in some of the old outposts in West Berlin. A tad eerie...

After purchasing my Fat Tyre Bike Tours T-Shirt and a piece of the Berlin Wall it was off to the train station. Thinking that the max price would be about 30 euro each for a train ticket, James and I were shocked and appalled to be informed that the price was 80 euro each. How does get nicked sound? An idea popped into my head and i headed around the corner to Europcar. Why not just drive down Jim? Done and done. The car was 60 euro to hire and a bonus feature was that if we couldn't find accomodation in Munich we could always just sleep in the car. Sorted.

Still on a bit of a budget, that night we went for a walk through town and found a small bar and had a chat with some local German girls... James just had to tell them i was some sort of Australian celeb. Idiot. Bit embarrasing for Mills...

To be continued...