Berlin

Germany's capital was the site of more stag tour fun for me this past weekend, so I've decided to piece together the events as best I can before memory fails me entirely. With friends John & Daf, I took the early BA flight out of Heathrow, involving a 4am taxi and 2.5 pints before even boarding. After a few Bloody Marys on the flight, it was a quick turnaround at the hostel and then a tour of local bars before whiling away the afternoon in Golgatha beer garden. Schneider Weisse went down a dream in the searing heat. Then it was back to the hostel for a quick change and shower, drinks and Jager bombs in the hostel bar, and taxis to another beer garden called Schleusenkrug in Tiergarten. After plenty of beers, some schnitzel and songs, it was time to hit the clubs and we ended up at an indie club, Magnet, with overactive smoke machines and lots of attitude. By the time I got back to the hostel at 6am, I'd been drinking for 24 hours straight. Ouch.

The stag (Niz, left) with his Berlin soul mate

Three hours later, it was time to get up, put on my Baywatch gear and set off on a 6-hour bike tour with 20 other guys. This was pleasant to start with, but the hangover kicked in around midday and took a long time to clear. After a great bike tour taking in the former site of Hitler's bunker and focusing on east Berlin, we finished the afternoon at Yaam, a reggae beach bar where the Coronas with lime slipped down easily in the warm afternoon sun. Then it was a quick snooze at the hostel, before more refreshments at the hostel and taxis back to Golgatha beer garden, where we ate bratwurst and potato salad and settled on to our benches to drink steins of lager and watch the Eurovision song contest with hundreds of Germans. Someone had the bright idea to make each of the 20 stag party members pick a country out of the hat, and then cheer their selection when they appeared on the big screen. This led to a ridiculous arms race of celebrations, with people jumping on tables to support Serbia, and this very nearly got us kicked out. Luckily, we were all sober enough to make it into Matrix nightclub, where our own large table and bottles of rum, vodka & coke were awaiting us.

Daf at Write Trash 

On Sunday, a couple of poor buggers in our party missed their early flight, nearly fell out with each other and had to pay €325 each to fly home. Daf & I were the only ones staying on an extra night, and we took the opportunity (after some serious motivation) to visit Sachsenhausen concentration camp. This involved a 90-minute trip on the U-bahn out to Oranienburg and a long walk. I'd been to Berlin three times before - on a previous stag, but also with work and Ruth - and never found the time to visit the museum at Sachsenhausen, nor any other concentration camp. It's really important to me that I finally found the time to face up to the horror on display at these camps. Daf & I both hired audio guides and wandered round the huge site, which retains some of the original features such as the gate that welcomed prisoners with the term, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work sets you free).

Entrance to Sachsenhausen

Having to face up to the scale of the horror that took place there is really challenging, and I found myself sitting down often and just shaking my head. Thousands of Jews and Russian POWs met a cruel end at Sachsenhausen, and the exhibits portray how this unfolded in gruesome detail which, mixed with the knowledge that you're standing on the ground where it took place, makes for a chilling experience. The humiliation the prisoners suffered meeting for roll call at 5am every morning, and having to "salute" to the Nazi guards by putting nose to the floor and spreading their arms in supplication, is something that was portrayed intensely. One area of the site that will always stick with me is where many prisoners were killed under false pretences, led into a room for a medical examination with a loud gramophone playing to drown out the screams elsewhere in the building, and then told to stand with their back against a wall, so that a guard on the other side could poke a gun through a slit and shoot the prisoner in the neck. Cowardly, vile, disgusting. The bodies were then whisked away and burnt in nearby ovens. That the Russians moved into Sachsenhausen after the war and continued to keep prisoners in the camp, many of whom died from malnutrition, should not be viewed as anything less than a heinous crime in this context. You can't help leaving the place with a heavy heart.

Sachsenhausen memorial statue

In the evening, we decided to head to White Trash restaurant for some light relief, where I had sticky pork BBQ ribs to start and an excellent Aztec Bouillabaisse, including octopus, prawns and scallops with mango salsa, for my main. The next morning we had a stroll around the stalls at the Karneval der Kulturen, Berlin's equivalent of the Notting Hill Carnival, where I bought Rosie a cool Peruvian cardigan. Then sadly it was time to leave Berlin, firmly one of my favourite cities on the planet.