East Side Gallery

Final instalment of the KCL German Soc trip EXTRAVAGANZA. And never has the phrase 'the morning after the night before' ever been such an understatement (honestly, it's nearly two months later and I'm still waiting for the hangover to end).

Greg looks here how we all felt on that Sunday morning.

Unfortunately I think my ankle came off the worst that night. I'm not quite sure what happened, but I know it involved me and some stairs in a club at silly o'clock in the morning. The sad thing is, I doubt there is much more to the story than that to make me sound even the least bit graceful - I was wearing Doc Martens and everything.

Since everyone was pretty knackered we decided to take it easy for the day and head out for a nice wander/hobble along the East Side Gallery, a long stretch of the old Berlin Wall which has been turned into an international memorial for freedom. Artists from all over the world have been invited to the paint the wall, resulting in some incredibly moving reflections. Once a hideous creation which used to divide two nations, it has become a place of powerful beauty.

'The Kiss of Death' by Dmitri Vurbel, the famous Brezhnev and Honecker kiss painting.

The lovely Mathilde and Hannah doing their tourist thang.

As a massive hippy I just love this.

Trying our best to look alive for the group pic.

After spending sometime wandering along the gallery, we decided to all retreat to our natural habitat i.e. McDonald's, in a feeble attempt to eat away our exhaustion. I think it's safe to say that by this point in the trip we were truly partied- and touristed-out from the sheer amount we'd managed to pack into just five days of travel. Some of the guys then headed off to see Check Point Charlie as their last stop of the trip, but unfortunately I was just in too much pain to walk any further, so Greg and I headed back to the hostel to recuperate a little before rounding up the troops. 

Action shot of our power nap in Maccy D's.

That evening we had our final meal all together before setting out on our final venture which would be staying the night on the airport floor. I actually didn't mind it, being so exhausted I pretty much passed out straight away, plus after South America I'm pretty much used to sleeping anywhere.

Hannah loving life on her make-shift airport bed.

The trip ended in a similar vein to how it began. We were up super early and slowly migrated as a team towards the terminal. In true German fashion, Stefan even had his final beer of the trip whilst we were waiting for boarding to start (at 5am...)

The man, the myth, the legend.

Our final camp site outside Burger King, looking as glamorous as always.

It's been a while since the trip came to an end, but I think I speak for everyone when I say it really was super fun! It was so lovely for me to get a chance to really get to know some more of the guys in the German department, both in my year and the year below, and not only that, we managed the entire thing without anything going wrong! Which really, is quite impressive for a group of late teen - early twenty something year olds.