Berlin, day two:

in which we have a gay old time.

We decided to do a bit of light sightseeing on Sunday, so after a leisurely breakfast we headed off towards the centre. Paul was a good tour guide, taking us along Unter den Linden (the Champs-Elysée-esque main avenue of Berlin), under the Brandenburg Gate and past the Reichstag.

It turns out I'm an architectural communist. We didn't see as much of the old West Berlin as we did the East, but I much preferred the mixture in the East of blocky communist bombast and pre-war elegance. Plus the really, really fucking tall Fernsehturm just defies description. "Make it look like an olive on a cocktail stick, comrade. But make it twelve hundred feet tall!" <maniacal laughter>

We passed the Holocaust Memorial, not open yet, oddly, given that Sunday was the 60^th anniversary of VE day, and Berlin was crawling with riot police and protesters of various persuasions. At the Potsdamer Platz, we called it a sightseeing day and the boozing kicked off. A couple of drinks later, having returned to the flat to gird ourselves for the evening's entertainment, we set off for a restaurant chosen by Josh as serving typical Bavarian food.

The sun was out when we left, and eventually, after a pint on the way, we found the restaurant as it was getting dark. We got seats easily enough, and ordered something of a sausage fest (oh the irony): three huge platters of various forms of pig. It was great. We ate, drank, and wondered about the 'Sergey' magazine we found down the side of one of the seats, featuring a cover with two muscular chaps in sailor uniforms.

At this point Antonio mentions there's a rainbow flag outside.

We've managed to stumble inadvertently into a gay-friendly restaurant. I had no idea restaurants were such hotbeds of homophobic feeling that this one needed to declare its open-mindedness, but there you go. Of course Josh maintains that his choice was entirely innocent.

We finished our hog and caught the train (we'd walked that far away) back towards the Alexanderplatz. Josh had found a club called Café Moskau nearby, and we strolled down the socialist Legoland of Karl Marx Allee. After a fortifying beer and tequila at a disturbingly Wetherspoons-alike bar across the street, we headed into the club, handing over the €8 entry fee and getting our hands stamped with a logo spelling "GMF".

Josh was grumbling about the apparent lack of ladies, and we all told him to stop moaning and enjoy the sleek, minimalist decoration and tasteful lighting. Granted, it did seem a bit empty - apparently the clubs don't really kick off until midnight or so - and there was a distinct lack of women, but we ploughed on to the bar and ordered our first UK-priced (i.e. expensive) drink of the holiday.

We settled into a table. "Wow," I said, seeing a quite astonishingly good looking girl near the bar, "that girl's really pretty. Look!"

She was, and she was also the only one we saw in the entire club. "Uh, there seem to be rather a lot of sleeveless T-shirts around, guys. Also very muscular looking blokes in tight jeans."

Paul, looking at the stamp on our hands and a projected GMF logo on the wall, mused: "You know, I thought the club here was called WMF, not GMF."

"Oh," I said. "So what does the 'G' stand for- ah. Right."

Josh's unerring, unconscious gay spider-sense had struck again.

We had a couple of drinks, admired the surroundings a bit more (the venue had been an officers' club in communist times) and resolved to find yet another bar. So, a couple of taxis later we finally got to another minimal, sleek, tastefully lit bar, only for Paul to fall asleep and Jeff and Josh to monopolise the fußball table.

I still haven't been able to quite get the bastard stamp off my hand.

* * *

On Monday morning, we rolled out of our various air, camp and sofa beds and got slowly ready to leave. Paul's bathroom suffered that day, I can tell you. If there's one lesson we all learned in Berlin, it's to stay upwind of Josh.

FIN

P.S: Must say thanks to Paul for putting us up and for being a combined tour guide/holiday rep. Thanks, man - hopefully see you over here in November!