BERLIN!

Hey Everyone,

After a few more days of sight seeing in London i departed from Stanstead Airport to Berlin. Leaving Stanstead Airport was my first real experience traveling by myself so that was quite interesting, but all ended well after some confusion. I met a nice German girl on the plane who helped me out with finding the train I needed on arrival. It ended up she was 2nd in Germany for 10km endurance swimming, so we had some interesting conversations.

I met mark at the train station and we went back to his sisters apartment which is in an old renovated building in east germany, so its very nice, big and contemperary. Marks neice is very cute, she is learning 3 languages fluently: english, german and swedish!



We headed out this morning to walk through Berlin, the photo is of Fafas (Marks Sister) apartment, very very cool! The first stop was at a war memorial, although neither me or Mark really knew what it was for, none the less, we both got amongst it and the following photo resulted!



We then carried on to a museum with a fountain in the middle of a very nice park, there was also a monument for Albert Einstein, and naturally we got involved in all of this too.









At the place where the Nazis burned all those books, we met a friendly kiwi bear and got a photo with him, figure it out yourself, we werent even on drugs, and heres the photo to prove it!



We went to the german parliament and got a nice german lady to take a photo of us.



Germany is obviously in football fever, and with a little bit more exploring we found a giant pair of football boots that were screaming out at us to be climbed on.





On our walk back to Fafa`s house for dinner we got dragged onto a bus, little did we know, my decision to go on this bus would turn out to be a good one. It was a Corona bus, free beer and a free double decker bus tour of Berlin, we couldn`t believe our luck. We think we were liked by the corona girls on the bus, as they kept telling us we were only allowed one beer, but some how we ended up with 4 each... someones smiling down on us...







Anyway, thats all from me for now. Mark says hi and sends his love to anyone who deserves it. Will do another post in the next day or two, we are thinking of hopping on the bus again tomorrow.

Lots of love to all, post comments or email me, its great to hear from you,

From the other end of the world, Vinny

Sightseeing in London

Hey Everyone,

We have spent the last 2 days sightseeing through London. On tuesday, our first day here, we went to the natural history and science museums, and had a ride on the London Eye, a huge ferris wheel style thing in the center of London. The views from the top were amazing!

On wednesday we went to Buckingham Palace, which was really nice, the sun was shining and the place was packed with tourists like us. After that we went to the British Museum which was probably my favourite spot yet in london. The building is amazing, and its so eye opening looking at all of the greek artifacts that are over 3000 years old. They also had a display on early humans, where they had the first human toold ever found, which were around 1.8million years old!

Las night we went to a litle English pub which was an experience, they serve tap beer warm here which was not liked by me and tamzin, so we now have to order cold beer. Tamzins aunt and cousins who we are staying with are really nice, we get lovely home cooked meals which we will definatly miss in a few days!

Thats all for now, hopefully i will have some photos soon when i find an electronics shop.

Much love, Vin

Arrived In London

After 3 flights and 2 airports we finally arrived in Hethrow airport in london. The flights went well, I slept 80% of the time which always helps, and Hethrow was surprisingly easy to get through with almost no security to speak of.

Tamzin's cousin Rob picked us up from the airport and we went back to his house where we watched the world cup (everyone's crazy about it here) and had dinner. This was followed by a short walk and a visit to a litle pub which was quite an experience.

Its just past 9 at night now and definatly time for bed, seein as how is abou 8am at home!

Will write again soon!

Leaving Auckland

My family (+ Scott) came to see me off at the airport yesterday...